Did I mention the game froze entirely during the tutorial? While it’s possible that this could potentially depend on the settings, I tinkered around with different resolutions, turned all special effects off, and there was no change in these issues. Given that the game’s purpose is to throw tons of zombies at you, a clunky framerate makes the mechanical issues all the more noticeable. Even the menus seem sluggish and unresponsive, the music gets repetitive (and sometimes events triggered music which would overlap the standard background, which was not pleasant to the ear), and the graphics, while appropriately dark, struggle to maintain a smooth framerate. The game’s presentation as a whole is pretty sparse, which isn’t inherently bad but it further contributes to a feeling of unclarity. Now, you can light certain things like fences on fire, and zombies will also ignite each other, so there are some options, but using the torch just didn’t feel right to me. If a flamethrower replaced the torch but it simply had smaller range, that could’ve worked – or maybe the ability to pour gasoline around and light a trail of it could’ve been interested, as well. You can find a flamethrower pickup and I relished in this however, it was clearly a powerup in that it let me burn zombies across the whole screen. I’d point at a crowd, pull the trigger, and some of them would fall apart. For example, with the shotgun, I could never see any form of bullet flying through the air. Weapon contact also feels off – the visual feedback makes it harder than it should be to tell where your bullets are going. There is a lock-on key which will automatically direct you to the closest beast, so embalming zombies often means running headlong through a crowd whilst holding the lock-on button. The risk/reward system is clever in concept but because movement is slippery and contact is imprecise it falters. Since you have to get up right next to them to light them on fire, most of your damage is likely going to be incurred while trying to ignite the undead rather than in fending them off. Running through a lightly dispersed crowd of zombies with your torch out feels like rolling a dice, as hit detection is somewhat unclear, and it’s difficult to tell when a zombie is going to hit you until it’s already happened. Naturally, there are also different types of zombies, like ones that explode on contact, ones that charge straight at you, and ones with fast, irregular movement patterns.Īll of these concepts work well in tandem and unite to form a challenging experience, but the fact is that Burn Zombie Burn’s physical mechanics just don’t quite feel right. Your combos and upgrades get reset when you die, so staying alive longer usually results in exponentially larger scores. Build up three different weapon combos and you can press a switch to activate a change in the environment. Each weapon type also builds up a combo bonus bar if you continue killing zombies with the same weapon in quick succession. There are a few other ideas that keep you on your toes – dynamite can be used to take out a lot of zombies at once, and by killing zombies that are on fire you can earn upgrades to your dynamite. You have to set zombies on fire to build up a combo, but the higher your combo the more dangerous things get for you – not to mention that burning zombies do eventually burn away. Thus, the game’s core mechanic revolves around a balancing act. Burning zombies move faster and deal more damage, but for each zombie that is ignited, your score multiplier increases by one. However, by holding down your ‘Torch’ button/key you whip out a torch which can be used to light zombies ablaze. There are a few different modes that alter your approach somewhat but the goal is the same overall: kill zombies, don’t die. It’s bare bones as a concept and is really more of an arcade game than anything else. Players run around, weaving around scrambling zombies and grabbing pickups while destroying them to rack up a high score. Gameplay takes place across a handful of confined maps with different layouts and weapon spawn points. The game uses a specific mechanic to try and keep things fresh – lighting zombies up without destroying them is beneficial, so long as you can keep Bruce, the Elvis-like, jive-talking hero, alive. Burn Zombie Burn is trying to appeal to me with these ingredients by imitating so many top-down zombie destruction simulators that have come before it. I love killing zombies – un-killing them? Re-killing them? Best not to think too hard on that one.
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