Review; Zombie Driver

What to know
Pretty much, take a watered down version of Left 4 Dead and mash it together with an aerial view version of Need For Speed and you have Zombie Driver. The entire purpose of Zombie Driver is to drive around, pick up survivors and deliver them to the safe house. You’ll face a variety of zombies, like regular zombies, dog zombies and Fat Zombies (which have a striking resemblance to Boomers from L4D). You’ll also have the chance to drive around and pick-up extra cash to use to upgrade your cars between stages.

Gameplay
This game reminds me of a B-list horror movie in both the best and worst ways. In the good way, the game is fun and somewhat different than other games at the moment. The somewhat cheesy plot comes across as comical trying to be serious, which is something I always enjoy. I generally have a hard time not enjoying a game that involves demolishing zombies, and this game initially reached my standards of zombie destruction.

That being said, there is not enough variety in the game. The main difference in the levels is that they are going to get more difficult, often to a frustrating degree. Occasionally, a new type of zombie is thrown in, and that gets annoying because they always seem much harder than they should. The addition of new zombies also does not break up the repetitiveness of the game, leading it to drag on at some points.

Playing with friends
No multiplayer here, so you’re either going solo or trading off with your buddies in this case.

Amusements
Take the time out to actually read what people are saying as well as the mission briefings. These can get pretty entertaining sometimes and bring a little more to the table. Besides that, there isn’t really much more fun thrown into the game (besides all the zombie mashing, that is).

For eyes and ears
Graphically, this game is “meh” at best. The highlight of the graphics is pretty much the cut scenes – non-animated montages of pictures and text plastered all over each other. Granted, improved graphics may have slowed down the game even more than what I ran into, but I personally think it would have been worth the risk. Driving around running over the same zombies repeatedly needs to be beefed up if it wants to be truly awesome.

At first, I thought the audio was pretty good, until I started getting annoyed by the music and the sound effects. The quality of the music/effects is overall up to par, but the rhythm of the music and the same sounds happening anytime ANYTHING happens really starts to get a little irritating.

Gamer goals
The game doesn’t really provide anything comparable to achievements or trophies. All you really have in front of you is a primary objective and a secondary objective. Completing the secondary objective provides you with additional money to spend on your car between stages. Personally, I set out to get all the upgrades for my cars to set an extra bar for myself throughout the game.

Glitches and mistakes
There were two main issues I ran into with the game. The first was that it seemed that every once in a while, the game would essentially bog itself down and crash. I knew this was going to happen about ten seconds ahead of time because the game would trip itself up with lag and jumpy graphics/gameplay. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t resolve this issue.

The second problem I ran into was in the actual map layout of the game. The designers apparently did not want this game to go off without frustration (or at least that’s how it appeared to me). For instance, in one part of the game there is essentially a forest covering a portion of the map. What this led to was me not being able to see where I was driving my car (which turned out to me ramming into a fence several times in a row) and losing a lot of time before I realized there was no way I was making it through to the other side.

Hearts
Unfortunately, this game only gets two hearts for me. While it is generally fun, there’s only so much zombie ramming to be had before the concept gets old. Lately, zombie games have been popping up, which leads them to be held to higher standards. Zombie Driver didn’t quite make it to those standards. The design of the game had a lot of potential, but its glitched gameplay and layout get really frustrating. In addition to that, the game starts to get somewhat repetitive.

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