Back in 1996 I played the original Playstation game, Resident Evil. It was the first game that actually had me on the edge of my seat and literally jump out of it at times too. Ever since then I’ve been hunting for a game to re-create the same atmosphere. Despite valiant attempts however by such games as F.E.A.R. and Condemend, I’ve never found one that quite hits the mark in the same way. That is until now.
Walking Dead: The Game, to give it its full title is a point and click adventure game that follows the storyline of the Walking Dead comic book series. If you are more familiar with the TV series you’ll still know what’s going on even though the TV show used some ‘creative license’ when bringing it so successfully to the big screen.
The cell shaded comic book style graphics do a great service to the comic book series and along with the awesome atmospheric soundtrack and possibly some of the best voice acting in an iOS game, if not any game, that I’ve seen Walking Dead: The Game sucks you in from the moment you start it. (The game recommends that you use headphones to play the game and I couldn’t agree more.)
You take the role of Lee Everett while be transported in the back of a police car you manage to find yourself free after the car hits a walker. From this point on it’s you and a collection of other non-walkers that you get introduced to along the way against the ever growing numbers of undead that walk the earth.
The interactions with the walkers is impressively done to ensure maximum shock value and excitement as they attempt to take your life and that of the people that you band together with.
The game moves along at a good pace and this is helped by the way that the storyline and the action sequences where you control the action are intertwined. The controls are easy to pick up, move Lee around the screen to investigate the environment is a simple case of dragging your finger across the screen while objects that can be interacted with are highlighted.
This may initially appear to make the game seem rather linear, however, thanks to the short time limits that you are given to make your decisions and how these decisions affect the gameplay that’s certainly not the case.
The characters interactions are expertly done and as mentioned before the voice acting is so good you sometimes forget that you are playing a game and not watching a movie. Decisions of how to interact with the other characters and what to say to them are given as a set of choices and making the wrong one, in the allotted time could have catastrophic ramifications.
The game is a universal app but unfortunately there is no syncing of your progress so you can’t jump between playing on the two devices which would have been nice. Some people may baulk at the price too as not only is the app a cent shy of $5 that will only get you the first episode, subsequent 4 episodes will set you back an additional $4.99 each, or $14.99 if you buy them all at the same time.
Personally the price doesn’t put me off and therefore I would highly recommend that your shell out the initial $4.99 for episode one, enjoy a thoroughly engrossing and atmospheric game and then decide whether you want to purchase the additional episodes.
Some, but not all, people are reporting issues with performance especially on older devices, I reviewed Walking Dead: The Game on both an iPad 3 and an iPhone 4S with no such issues.
[rating: 4.5/5]What we like
What to know
[rating: 2/5]
Rolling Fall Review: The undead have hit the App Store again and while the world may not be over run with zombies yet it appears the Apple’s gaming platforms certainly are. This time the zombies come in the form of Rolling Fall ($0.99), a physics based puzzle game where your task is to kill the zombies by using the gravitational pull of cannonballs falling to the ground to kill them.
Cast as the lone survivor in a city over run by flesh hunting zombies you use a variety of objects to smash, maim and ultimately kill off the zombies that infiltrate everyone of the 80 levels that come with the first instalment of the game.
The levels take up the whole of the iPhone’s screen but not beyond it so there is no scrolling around the levels required. Instead in a similar way to Cut The Rope in Rolling Fall you cut the chains of suspended iron balls, wooden boxes and a variety of bars to smash the still, in both meanings of the work, standing rag doll zombies.
As with this genre of game things start is with single chain cuts releasing balls onto the zombies putting them out of their misery. Things doesn’t stay so simple for long though and soon you will be having to perform multiple cuts in a timely man nor to ensure the balls and bars fall and roll in the appropriate direction to kill their foes.
The graphics have a certain zombiesc charm to them and the music is suitably haunting to add to the spooky environment but there is certainly nothing here that you haven’t seen before. The 3 star rating system too is a tried and tested formula that enables you to complete the game relatively quickly with a simple 1 star rating but offers the added value of being able to return to the game to clear them all with 3 stars.
The rating is scored of how fast you complete the level, how hard you hit the zombies and the number of traps you use and with every useable object having it’s own weight, friction and elasticity rating the challenge is to use them in the most appropriate way to get the best results. Don’t be expecting blood and gore in this zombbiefest however as the rag doll zombies are exactly that, simply crumbling with contact rather than being blood curdling smashed apart as you may expect in such games.
80 Levels with the promise of more to come does suggest good value for more but there’s not much variety in them to keep the more serious gamer entertained. And if you are a fan of zombies the lack of blood and guts may leave you thirsting for more also.
Pros
Cons
Zombie Digger is an awesome new game where you defend your home from a slew of zombie monsters. The zombie monsters come in all shapes and sizes and you are strapped with both creative and serious fire power to dispose them. On one side of the screen, your house; on the other side, a hoard of zombie freaks wanting nothing more than to tear your house apart. Like the Under Armor commercial says, “You must protect this house!”
The game controls in Zombie Digger are easy to pick up and fun to use. You have lots of options on how to dispose off the zombies but the control system stays constant regardless of your weapon of choice. The thing that you must remember about the weapons is that they have a timer that you must wait for to reload before you use them again. This adds an extra degree of difficulty. Another control that might be my favorite is the fact that as enemies slip by your holes that you dig or by your arsenal of weapons, you can click on them and flick them back towards where they came from to keep them from your house and give you another opportunity to kill them. Pretty awesome added control if you ask me.
You start with a simple list of weapons at your disposal but as the games goes you can purchase upgrades for each weapon. There are four categories of weapons. You begin with a shovel. To use the shovel, you simply tap a spot on the ground and it digs, the more you tap a spot the deeper the hole goes, you’ll understand soon enough why you need a deep hole. You also begin with a slingshot that you can shoot at the oncoming zombies. This is simple as you click on the zombie you want to shoot. The bomb will quickly become one of your favorites, you use it the same way as you did your slingshot but as you’d imagine, it packs more punch. Finally you have a special weapon. The special weapons are my personal favorite because they are the most creative. You tend to use these special weapons by simply clicking on its icon. The special weapons range from a flying cow that poops on and kills the zombies to a tractor that mows them down. Pretty awesome and very creative! Love the weapons in this game.
Since the monsters come in all shapes and sizes, the difficulty to dispose of them also varies. You will face everything from elephants, bouncing hedgehogs, tank-driving crocodiles, giant zombie snails, and tons of others. All of them do varying damage to your house. A word to the wise, the flying zombies quickly become the biggest problem you face. You have to beware for zombies on skateboards cruising right in and out of the holes you dig as well as enemies on pogo sticks that bounce right through and past your holes, this is where the flick option comes in handy.
This game sports over 40 levels and one of my only complaints is that it’s so fun I wish there were more levels. You have an arsenal of 12 types of weapons at your disposal as well. There are 5 gaming environments that help to change the settings while holding on to that addictive gameplay. There are unique bosses that you face and as with all of the zombies, there are unique ways to kill them all.
The visual presentation of this game is awesome. I really enjoyed all the different zombies, the change in background and all the different weapons and how they work. The weapons actions change according to the upgrade so you aren’t stuck with the same animations every time. The sounds are also pretty awesome as they sound effects are funny and accurate at the same time. The pogo stick sounds were pretty funny. I must say that this game is awesome and the presentation just compliments an already amazingly addictive game.
For 99 cents this game is a must have in my opinion and I still haven’t stopped playing it. You have the added benefit of posting your achievements in the game on Facebook and OpenFeint as well. I really like the fact that they didn’t miss on these social options as they are becoming more and more of an everyday thing. Get this game!
Pros
Cons
$0.99
Category: Games
Released: Mar 29, 2011
Version: 1.1
1.1 (iOS 4.0 Tested)
Size: 34.7 MB
Language: English
Seller: Crazy Bit
© CrazyBit 2011
Rated 9+ for the following:
Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later
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https://touchreviews.net/zombie-digger-review/feed/ 5
[rating: 4/5]
Tactical Soldier is a squad level turn based game where you control a group of soldiers fending off waves of zombies in an effort to uncover the dark secrets of an Army research base. You will fight your way through the levels searching for answers and meeting new squad members along the way. Your fists, pistols, shotguns, grenades and many other weapons will be your only defense against hoards of zombies.
The controls in this game are fairly simple and pretty standard for a turn based game on the iPhone. Tactical Soldier uses a tap/grid based control system where you tap a grid and you will move to that spot. The catch on this control system is that you only have a certain amount of action points that allow you to do different things each turn. Early you are by yourself and must search for signs of life and clues to uncover the mystery. When you have a zombie near you, you are able to use your action points to move and when you run out it’s the zombies turn. Once you are in range of the zombies you can shoot at them. Each gun has its own range so you must be clear on this or you will put yourself in bad situations, i.e. within striking range of a zombie but outside the range of your shotgun, this is a bad place to be. As the game progresses you will have new items you acquire as well as new weapons but the control system remains the same. You will go through a tutorial early on that teaches you how to move, shoot and complete actions so this is fairly simple to pick up.
The gameplay in Tactical Soldier for iPhone can change quickly. At times the game seems a bit slow but that is generally because you are still feeling out the controls. Once you have those down and you are moving about the base, the breaks in action will become few and far between and you will appreciate a small lull in the action to allow for looking around.
The shooting mechanism in this game took me a minute to get a feel for. That’s not to say that it is complicated because it is not but there is a method to the madness. When a zombie is in range, you can click on your weapon to ready it for firing, you then click on your target (zombie) and then click again to shoot the zombie. This all seems pretty simple and it is but don’t forget to pay attention to the percentage that appears over the zombie’s head when you click on it because this is the percentage you have of actually shooting the zombie. Trust me, bullets are precious and you do not want to run out. It is about 10 times faster killing a zombie with a gun as opposed to bare hands and you don’t want to find that out the hard way. Getting closer to the zombie increases your percentage but don’t get too close or you will have more than one zombie on you in the blink of an eye. The zombies also miss sometime so don’t think that just because you are near, you’re a goner.
Dealing with the squad can be a bit cumbersome at times but it would be a real pain to not have that extra fire power. This game utilizes the squad immensely so don’t ignore your squad. The game makes this difficult because you must move them just as you move your character but it is easy to sometimes forget that you need to equip them with weapons as well. You can actually even pass weapons and other items back and forth throughout the game so that helps as well.
The level design is pretty simple but very nice. The game is set in a military research center so you certainly have that appearance throughout. However, the game throws a steady dosage of doors, long corridors, etc. that change up the way you approach the zombies. These zombies can prove vital to defending your position but also serve as a trap if you let the zombies too close. Write that down.
The overall appearance of this game was pretty impressive. With the ability to pinch to zoom and rotate the angle of the camera with your fingers, you always have the prospective that you want. The level detail is great when you are zoomed in and easily navigated when zoomed out. You don’t gain or lose anything from either angle so you aren’t penalized for your preference and that is awesome. The visual aspects are great and flow well for a turn based game. The audio was one of my favorite parts of the game short of the mumbled commands you receive at the beginning. The music changes when zombies are in your presence and the guns sound great. I was impressed with the overall presentation of this game.
Pros
Cons
$4.99
Category: Games
Updated: Apr 03, 2011
Current Version: 1.0.1
1.0.1 (iOS 4.0 Tested)
Size: 53.3 MB
Language: English
Seller: Full Control ApS
© Full Control & WIT Entertainment
Rated 9+ for the following:
Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
Frequent/Intense Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), and iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later
It appears that there is a war going on, a war between zombies and vampires in an attempt to take over all forms of entertainment, from games and books to movies there doesn’t appear to be a platform or genre that hasn’t had the zombie or vampire treatment. In this case though we can notch one up for the zombies as it is the undead that have infiltrated the soccer field in Pro Zombie Soccer.
As the title would suggest this is no ordinary soccer game, you aren’t going to find yourself taking a team of rotting human flesh to the world cup final, instead you take the role of Jax a talented soccer player who has fallen on hard times and finds himself getting bitten by a zombie, not any old zombie though, this is Julinho the world famous zombie soccer star and this starts Jax’s fight against the undead.
The story is told in a graphic comic book style and it’s well written and beautifully illustrated with a humorous storyline which continues between all the 9 worlds.
As with most successful games the control system needs to be easy and that is certainly the case for Pro Zombie Soccer where you control the aim and the kicking of your primary weapon, a.k.a. a soccer ball, fire the control button on the left side of the screen. With your thumb held down on the button you can set the direction of your shot while letting go will kick the ball.
To begin, a simple kick is all that’s required to decapitate the living dead that are after your blood. However, within a couple of levels new bloodthirsty zombies are introduced to the game-play that will either require multiple kicks or the use of one of the power-ups that are available to you.
The simple power-up is activated by holding down your thumb on the action button for a couple of seconds before you shoot, however killing multiple zombies will fill up your power bar and once it’s filled you can activate one of the special power-up that will enable you to kill multiple un-dead in one go. My favourite of these is the satellite power-up which activates a laser beam from outer-space which you can aim at multiple zombies via the accelerometer and kill them all.
As Jax makes his progress through the game he’ll go through multiple locations some of which he will stand staionary while the zombies attack him from the right, much like Plant’s Vs Zombies, while other levels will see Jax running through the levels killing the oncoming zombies as he does. Even on these levels though you don’t need to worry about speed or direction, just the shooting.
Pro Zombie Soccer for iPhone is also integrated with their own gaming network named Crystal which provides online leader boards and multiple achievements which add extra value to the game even once you’ve complete the game.
There are also 3 difficulty levels, Normal, Hardcore and Zombie mode although while I was able to complete the game on Normal I’m yet to complete it on Hardcore let alone Zombie mode.
Pro Zombie Soccer is nothing like you would expect from a game with soccer in the title but that’s no bad thing and is the perfect antidote to those of you that have had your fill of the World Cup! If you are quick you should still be able to grab Pro Zombie Soccer at the sale price of just 99 cents.
Price: $0.99 (iTunes Store)
Category: Games
Updated: Jun 28, 2010
Reviewed Version: 1.1
1.1 (iOS 4.0 Tested)
Size: 82.6 MB
Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
Seller: Chillingo Ltd
© Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later.
