Burn Zombie Burn! (PSN)

EDIT: THEN AGAIN, MAYBE I SHOULD JUST PLAY THE DAMN LAST-MAN-STANDING MODE.



OKAY, I LIED.

WATCH OUT - ZOMBIES ON FIRE!


Hehehe. Burn zombie burn is an arcade top-down shooter, with you dashing around blasting zombies to gain points. The scoring system is very well balanced, actually - You set zombies on fire to increase your score multiplier, but killing burning zombies reduces it. That doesn't mean you don't still get points for killing burning zombies, however. Burning zombies are alot faster, and drop powerups that upgrade your explosives. Normal zombies (You know, not on fire...) drop health and tnt to use. There's an entertaining selection of weapons such as the baseball bat (Oh, and the superior cricket bat), lawnmower, and shotgun. There's also a gun that sucks zombies brains out and shoots them out as bait. Funny stuff. The TNT is the main explosive weapon in the game. It starts with just a simple fuse and timer, but upgrades into landmines which in turn upgrade into remote detonated TNT. The gameplay is fast, entertaining, hectic and funny.

The game is divided into several modes. You've got Timed, in which you'll have to kill burning zombies to get clocks to increase your timer which is constantly ticking down and down. There's also free play, which is just to survive as long as you can with a set number of lives. And, last but not least, protect Daisy. Daisy being your girlfriend, lazing about in a car chewing gum. Kill burning zombies to get her health, but do be careful as they hurt her a bit more. There's also a splitscreen two-player mode which is a bit of fun but certainly could've been executed a little better. No last-man-standing, one player loses his lives - Game over for both. There's also a set of challenges to complete, such as the exploding zombie head which detonates by being shot. The only way to kill zombies is with the head.


The graphics aren't anything special, as they're the usual kind of cartoony style. The zombies are quite hilarious, frankly - They're as funny as they can get, considering they're brain-hungry walking corpses. You've got the tutu wearing ballerina zombies, who skip to and fro across the killing grounds. There's the really big ones who fart fire for an attack. No, I'm not kidding. The fact that they shake their asses while doing it is just all too hilarious. The animation is solid, with everything going very smooth - No frames of movement missing or anything. A few are quite comedic, as well - such as Bruce, player 1 slicking his hair back before pulling out a gun. I was ultimately amazed by the framerate, with literally hundreds of zombies onscreen at once with no FPS drops. It was quite amazing, especially with all that blood flying around. Oh, and yeah. This isn't for the squeamish. There's buckets of blood being tossed about.


The control does it's job quite well, aside from the right stick being completely unused. It's quite strange, actually - You'd think you would aim with it, but no. Well, aside from dropping weapons with R3. The left stick controls everything movement-related, with you clicking it down and having it point out where the other weapons are on the level. You can lock on to the nearest zombie with L1. You'd think that wouldn't work to well, but you'd be surprised. L2 strafes which is a VERY handy feature. R1 and X are both used to fire your weapon. Or swing it, actually - Assuming you've got a bat. Or a lawnmower. R2 brings in the titular burning zombie element with you pulling out a flaming torch to burn zombies with, which can later be replaced with a flamethrower. Triangle is used to drop TNT, of which you can boot at zombies with square. Circle detonates remote-detonated TNT.


Burn Zombie Burn is an entertaining romp through zombie-infested suburbia (and more) with a bruce campbell tribute character which is a good buy, as it's only 15 bucks. Well, all depends on where you are.

Plo- Waaait. What plot?

Graphics - 7.8 They're not bad, they're not anything special - But they're quite funny.

Gameplay - 8.3 Just plain fun.

Control - 8.0 It works very well, but the lack of use on the right stick is a little odd.

Overall - 8.0


-leo