Xbox Live Indie Game Review – Zombie Hunter
Imagine this. Someone played Wolfenstein 3D then played Call of Duty : World at War Nazi Zombies or Left 4 Dead. Now imagine a mix of those two games (in fact, a custom level for Wolfenstein 3D that was as much of a remake of Nazi Zombies as possible would actually be kinda neat) that is no where NEAR as interesting as either one.
That’s what you’ve got here. It’s a VERY basic first person shooter where you run around killing zombies and saving survivors. Occasionally you’ll pick up a scope that let’s you snipe from across the screen … which is kind of odd to me how the guy would lose it in between each level. But whatever, nobody said this game had to make any sense.
You pick up extra guns from time to time, but they all feel the EXACT same, so there’s no real point to it as far as I can tell.
As far as the graphics, they’re as basic as you can get. The levels are poorly designed, the zombies are horribly rendered and look like they’re moving in slow motion. Especially when they notice you … they take off running after you they just kind of slide across the ground, and if you move around a corner they lose interest and start meandering aimlessly like zombies do. But yeah … the levels look like garbage. The zombies and survivors look terrible. The sound is about as basic as the rest of the game. The zombies always make the exact same sound when they die, the guns have very little difference between them in both sound and function. The music is forgettable, and the few voice samples from your character are completely devoid of any kind of personality. And the overall engine … it constantly jerks around when you’re moving about and just kind of “works”. Oh … and the music. It gets old VERY quickly, but thankfully enough it can be turned down.
The gameplay is about as boring as the overall presentation. If you’ve played Call of Duty or pretty much any modern shooter, the basics of those are here. You use the sticks to move around and aim, you have your iron sights and whatnot. They just kind of work. There’s no real animation for anything your character does. There’s no animation for the reloads or the gun switching or anything. There’s not even any animation for firing the weapon. Just … it’s either a blood spot or a giant red bullet just magically appears. But with the COMPLETE lack of polish, the game DOES control well. The speed feels about right, the aiming feels decent. But it doesn’t help the just BORING gameplay of doing the same stuff throughout each of the endless levels with no saving and no reason to do any of it. Near as I can tell (I got bored fairly quickly, like, level 6 or 7 or something like that) there aren’t any ammo pickups. I’ve seen some health pickups but they’re very few and far between. Oh, and if you get surrounded by the zombies, stick your head between your legs and kiss it goodbye because you’re not getting out of it.
3.5 - But all in all, it’s a neat idea, but there’s just no reason to do any of it. That coupled with the extremely poor presentation, the fact that it’s only single player and it’s just bloody boring. BUT it’s only 80 points. I don’t regret my purchase in the end because it was so cheap. I just wish it had more to it. But overall, I’d advise just playing the trial. You’ll get your kicks and walk away until you’re bored enough to play it again.
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