Age of Zombies ($2.99) is the newest universal app from Halfbrick Studios, makers of the big splash hit, Fruit Ninja. AoZ is very much your standard dual stick shooter: you’ll take control of wannabe action star, Barry Steakfries, as he shoots and asplodes his way through zombies in five different time periods. I’ve spent about […]
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Quick Look: Age of Zombies for iPhone and iPad

Oct 28th 2010 by

Age of Zombies ($2.99) is the newest universal app from Halfbrick Studios, makers of the big splash hit, Fruit Ninja.

AoZ is very much your standard dual stick shooter: you’ll take control of wannabe action star, Barry Steakfries, as he shoots and asplodes his way through zombies in five different time periods.

I’ve spent about an hour with the iPhone version and can attest to there being a lot of gory action, but most everything else in this game falls on its face (and doesn’t really get up again).

Barry Steakfries

One of the things that irks me most about Age of Zombies is the protagonist, Barry Steakfries. I get that he’s supposed to be filled with cheesy one-liners, but that only works if you stick to the same kind of cheese all throughout. A lot of what Barry says sounds like it was picked at random and then stuffed into a cutscene. It’s like Parmesan sprinkled on Cheez Whiz spread over Gorgonzola.

Sometimes Barry sounds like a tough-as-nails action hero (“Lock n’ Load”),  sometimes he sounds like a surfer (“I’ll be all like, ‘Hey dudes, check out my caveman zombie!'”), and other times he doesn’t even sound like he speaks English (“Ah, crap. This does not look like Big Jimmy Bob’s Ultimate Beer n’ Burger Bar”).

These are just three of the choicest lines I’ve recorded in an hour of play, although there are many more that I can’t even begin to describe (“Hooray! These filthy undeads got their hands on the peaceful caveman folk of this fascinating era”). Every time I finish reading something Mr. Steakfries has said I have to remind myself to stop gnashing my teeth.

Gameplay

Playing Age of Zombies is a fairly simple affair. The movement and firing analog sticks will appear anywhere you place your thumbs, so the game does feature a pretty flexible control scheme.

Whether you choose the game’s normal or survival mode, you’ll spend the majority of your time weaving in and out of zombie waves and will never relax your trigger finger until everything on screen is dead (or un-undead, if we have to be technical). It’s actually quite exciting at first, but it gets old after the third or fourth round.

As in many dual stick shooters, Barry Steakfries has a decent default weapon, but will have to rely on power-ups (shotguns, flamethrowers, grenades, etc.) to really put the hurt on his enemies. These power-ups are also the best way to rack up a big score multiplier so you can flaunt your high scores on the Game Center or OpenFeint networks.

Presentation

Shooting zombies in the face is fun, but there isn’t much variety to it. That’s why game developers really need to make sure everything *feels* right, and there are many things about Age of Zombies that just don’t.

There are all sorts of strange little inconsistencies in the game. Barry’s default weapon is actually a pistol, but his sprite *always* shows him carrying a shotgun (and so does the splash screen art, actually). Surely, a few more weapon models couldn’t have hurt.

Then there’s the voice acting. Most action games have your protagonist announcing or reacting to the sweet boomstick they’ve just picked up, but Age of Zombies has your enemies doing that part for you. The first level in the normal game mode has you facing zombies in pre-historic times, so every time you pick up a shotgun, the caveman zombies mumble “SHAWGUNN!”. The same goes for grenades (“GWANAID!”). This gets switched up a bit when you make it to the gangster period and it sounds like The Fonz is announcing all of your  pickups (“heeeey grenade!”), but it’s still pretty confusing.

Conclusion

I could go on about Age of Zombies, but I think my overall impression is quite clear. I don’t think I demand all that much from action titles like this, but I can’t help but think of AoZ as a rough and unpolished product. It even lags when I load it up on my iPhone 3GS on iOS 4.1.

I’d feel hard pressed to recommend Age of Zombies to anyone, such as it is now, and I’m actually surprised that this is a Halfbrick Studios product. Let me put it this way: if you want the best that Halfbrick Studios has to offer, pick up Fruit Ninja (still one of my favourite little iPhone games), but if you want a good dual stick shooter, walk decidedly past Age of Zombies.

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Age of Zombies was provided by Halfbrick Studios for review on iSource. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.

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