PixlBit

Until Lucasarts does something with their cult classic Zombies Ate My Neighbors, this is the true spiritual successor to the classic SNES/Genesis multiplayer zombie killing simulator. From the overhead perspective to the cartoony visuals and wacky weapons, this game brought warm, fuzzy memories to someone that spent hours with Zombies Ate My Neighbors. With weapon crafting, RPG stat building, and four player co-op, this is the game I would have wanted had the series continued past Ghoul Patrol.

At its core, this is a twin stick shooter played from an overhead perspective. The game is split into different small zones where the undead rise and try to do what they do best. You’ll do whatever you can to survive by picking up excellent weapons of zombie destruction like machine guns, cricket bats, and that staple of brain-splattering, shotguns. If you run out of ammo and don’t see any nearby, you can resort to your fists, but it’s not recommended.

To exit each zone, you’ll have to get by the containment barriers: sentient robotic gates that were installed to keep the outbreak from getting out of hand. To appease these freedom blockers, you’ll need to perform one of a number of mini quests. These can range from something as simple as “Kill 15 zombies” to something more complicated, like “Kill 30 flaming zombies with the cricket bat.” Prevail over these tasks and you’ll not only gain access to the next area, but you’ll get a bonus of experience points. Get enough XP to level up and you’ll get 5 stat points to customize each character’s basic skills, like weapon damage and health.

Where All Zombies Must Die stumbles a little is when it deviates from the formula of the games it tries to emulate. It’s not level-based like Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Once you’ve seen the 10 or so areas you’ve seen the entire game, and you’ll simply be revisiting them over and over, completing repetitive quests to move between them. It’s also not a simple score-based twin stick shooter. Aiming needs to be surprisingly accurate to succeed, and ammo runs out far too quickly. That works for a survival-based game like Resident Evil or Left 4 Dead where ammo management is a core focal point, but it doesn’t fit in a title that seems to want to be a fun party game.

All Zombies Must Die feels like it was intended to be played with a group, and I can see how that would make this game way more fun. The four unique player characters each have a weapon that does specific status effects to zombies, and many of the quest requirements ask for multiple status effects. Not only are these quests required for progression, but you’ll need to kill certain types of zombies to farm crafting materials which are used to make new weapons. I’m sure that the game was designed with the intention of multiple players going into a zone and being able to create these different status effects as a team, but playing by myself and trying to complete these tasks was a real pain. I’d have to find a specific point in the environment to cause, say, a radioactive effect on a zombie, and then use my torch to set the zombie on fire before killing it. Not an easy task when you’re getting swarmed by the undead.

Another problem with the multiplayer focus on this game is that things don’t seem to be properly balanced for single player. The game starts out easy enough, but get a few levels in and the zombies get tougher, faster, and more aggressive; plus they multiply like rabbits. It’s easy to get cornered or stuck on level geometry, which makes the problem even worse. There’s nothing quite as frustrating as dying two inches from a health pickup that you couldn’t reach. I can see how this wouldn’t be a problem with another player or three, but I felt like the number of enemies I was being pitted against was intended for a full group, and not scaled down to a single-player level.

All Zombies Must Die is local co-op only, and I don’t own a second Dual Shock controller. I eventually found myself in an actual fail state where I couldn’t proceed any further. The quest I needed to complete was in a zone that felt pretty much completely broken in terms of balancing, and after many, many attempts I had to admit defeat. I consider myself to be pretty quick with games like this but too many elements seemed stacked against me.

It’s too bad, because for the 80% or so of the game I completed, I was having a really good time. All Zombies Must Die has some legitimately funny dialogue that breaks the 4^th wall constantly. Jack, the main character, thinks he’s in a video game, and will point out things like the crafting mechanic and quest-giving gates as evidence to this fact. It makes for a charming little game, and the art design is top-notch. There’s a lot of imagination at play here, and far more depth than I would expect from what boils down to a twin stick shooter. With a rowdy group of fellow zombie killers I could see this as being an addicting party game.  All Zombies Must Die is a witty, inventive, and fun game. But for the solo gamer, there’s a lot of frustration to go along with the fun.