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It would be juvenile to say that Left 4 Dead isn't an arcade riff on the now infamous Left 4 Dead series. But, believe it or not that's exactly what I was told when first wrapping my hands around the controller at this year's E3. Really? Needless to say, we found a shocking amount of similarities between the two titles, but unfortunately for Zombie Apocalypse it doesn't quite pack as much zombie punching muscle as we had hoped for.
In Zombie Apocalypse, you and up to 3 other people must fight off wave after wave of zombies on small city based battlefields from a top-down camera perspective. You start off with basic artillery at the beginning of each of the seven battlegrounds (standard rifle and a chainsaw) and as time goes on random, more powerful weapons will begin to appear on the landscape that you can pick up and use to continue your zombie killing spree. Weapons will literally get progressively stronger the longer you are alive for the round and you also have an exploding teddy bear that you can use to blow up a whole mess of zombies when things begin to get a little crazy on screen.
Early on, the game is quite enjoyable. After all, who wouldn't enjoy shredding zombies on a budget in 4-player co-op? Unfortunately, that fun doesn't last as long as you'd like, as things begin to get extremely repetitive rather quickly. You will quickly realize that there is very little depth to this arcade title, which is unfortunate because a few more additions could have easily put this game in the upper crop of Arcade titles.
For starters, there's no leveling system. As you make your way through each arena you will just start over again, losing your previous weapons, which is made more frustrating by the fact that each arena things obviously continue to get a bit harder. There isn't much diversity in the zombie types, but the game tries to trick you up a bit by adding some radioactive zombies and making the environment completely dark except for a little circle of light that hovers around your character. Once you beat these 7 stages you will sort of realize there isn't much point in going back and doing it again unless you're a stickler for achievements.
Lastly, for a co-op/multiplayer game I couldn't help but notice that when you're not playing with friends the rest of the 3 player slots are not used. That's right, you're playing solo. Sure, the AI is never amazingly useful, but it's better than nothing at all and is also one more element that had it been entered into the game (perhaps with action commands you could send to the AI to help you out) it would have only knocked the score a little higher.
To its credit, though, the game's ending reward, 7 Days in Hell, is rather worthwhile in that it's essentially a massacre mode through a movie filtered lens. It's pretty neat and actually should have been used throughout the rest of the game.
In the end, Zombie Apocalypse ultimately is quite enjoyable... for a short while. If you're looking to just blow stuff up on a dime store budget then I still feel this game is worth the coin, but if you're expecting a deep, arcade version of Left 4 Dead then I'm sorry to say that you're stuck with Left 4 Dead, as if that's a bad thing.
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