Zombie Village

Summary

What’s the deal with everyone being into zombies these days? Whether it’s Hollywood blockbusters, comic books, video games or action figures – zombies are immensely popular wherever you look. Somehow zombies have moved away from being fictional characters loved by the geekiest of geeks and have emerged as an iconic symbol.
 

Anyone who’s ever looked at the massive crowds of people in shopping malls on weekends should know what it’s like to be surrounded by, well, zombies.
Among the many zombie-themed smartphone games, I decided to take a closer look at Zombie Village – a new and promising-looking game.
 

Find out what I uncovered in today’s review.
 

Zombie Village is a very simple and straightforward game which isn’t strictly speaking a bad thing. After all, mobile gaming hits such as Angry Birds, Doodle Jump and Cut the Rope all became extremely popular as a result of their simple and catchy game concept. Just like with most games, Zombie Village is all about reaching the highest possible score. In order to collect these coveted points, you direct a fictional character through a 2D world. You walk along a straight path through several different virtually identical levels.
 

On your way to the end of the level, you encounter zombies that pop out of the ground and move about in classical zombie fashion. Zombies can attack from any direction so you have to be constantly on your toes. There are also several different types of zombies with varying levels of resistance to your weapons. Whereas it takes just 3 shots to kill a zombie at the beginning of the game, the number of shots increases to 5-6 as the game progresses. Every now and then, more resilient and aggressive zombies appear seemingly out of nowhere.
 

That’s a basic short summary of what most of the game’s about. Concerning weapons: you control them with two on- screen buttons. The green button is to be used for any stabbing or whacking weapon (i.e. knives & bats). The red button right next to is designated for firearms. At the end of each level, you can use the money collected from killing zombies to purchase more powerful weapons. You can also choose to invest the same funds in your health by acquiring medicine.
 

So is Zombie Village a fun and thrilling game? Absolutely not! Zombie Village could’ve turned out OK if it weren’t for some key mistakes. As astonishing as this may sound, Zombie Village doesn’t allow you to save your game. Every time you play the game – you have start all the way at the beginning and walk your way through at least 10-15 minutes of boring levels. That just kills the fun of it all and does nothing but make you frustrated and unhappy. What in the world were the developers thinking?
 

Bottom Line:
 

I’m not one of those reviewers that love to tear game apart, honestly. But Zombie Village was just too much for me to handle. Despite the cuteness of it all, the game is flat out boring and uneventful. It’s just a walk through an endless stream of incoming zombies. And if you happen to close or restart the game – it’s the same old thing all over again. This kind of game not only kills your motivation, but also makes you bored out of your freaking mind.
 

I hope the people behind Zombie Village won’t take offense, but they truly deserve an abysmal rating. There’s just no excuse for putting such a poor quality product out there and leading consumers on with the app description. The thing that beats me is the game’s 4 star Android Market rating with over 74 comments. Who could possibly enjoy this game?
Pros:

• Zombies
• Positive first impression

Cons:

• Boring
• Frustrating
• Games cannot be saved
• No App2SD
   

Zombie Village didn’t do too well in this category either, but it’s still better than in Functions & Use. The reason behind the average rating in this section is the good buttons and controls that work without fail.
 

After the positive first impression, you quickly start noticing how monotonous and boring the graphics actually are. All the zombies look exactly the same and your in-game character walks along the level as if he’s on a conveyor belt. The background seems to repeat itself every couple of steps and the levels end abruptly without any warning.
 

Using the weapons can be quite irritating at times. Glitches such as your gun firing two rounds with one click at random are a real nuisance.
These are all small details that ruin the big picture and can cause a lot of damage.
 

Zombie Village runs smoothly and without any problems. Unfortunately, it takes a couple of seconds too many to load each new level despite the fact that they all look EXACTLY THE SAME!
 

On the negative side, I noticed that the game crashed several times during my trial. These types of crashes are all the more frustrating when the game never saves your current level.
 

Zombie Village is available for free from the Android Market. Unfortunately, ads fill-up every loading screen and the game actually requires a constant internet connection. Now that’s an epic fail that’s bad enough to make even the dead cringe.