Fans of zombies and aliens don’t tend to find much media that involves both of those things but Zombies, Aliens and Guns is here to change all that. It’s a top-down twin-stick shooter from Sergio Poverony that sees you playing as a lone soldier who needs to take on the alien threat that is turning humanity into a bunch of brain-craving bastards.
The game’s core mechanics are pretty straightforward. You move about with the left stick, you aim with right and R2 fires your gun (we prefer aim-to-fire in these games but, alas, there’s no option for that here). There’s also a very limited dash facility mapped to L2 also (not that the game told us about that). So, yep, you’ll be moving and shooting.
Generally the game tells you where to go with a handy pointer and that’ll point you to whatever your next objective is. These are usually hostages who will aimlessly follow you around (amazingly, we apparently didn’t manage to save a single one, not that it mattered) or crates to open. Collect all of those two things in a level and head to the exit and you’ll be taken to the next one. And, for the most part, that explains pretty much 90% of the game.
Along the way enemies will run towards you or stay at the periphery of the screen shooting at you. They seem to spawn based on how far forward you go, so there’s a case to be made for mopping them up as you go or else you could be overwhelmed. That’s mainly down to your fairly weak firepower rather than overwhelming numbers but you’ll probably see over half of the game before running into any kind of challenge.
It’s all quite playable though and you do pick up different types of weapons along the way (not that any of these are game-changingly good) but after a while it does start to feel like a bit of a grind. Thankfully, the game does occasionally mix things up with either an arena stage (where you just have to kill everyone in a small area) or a vehicle section. These are quite enjoyable as, unlike the main game, you don’t need to worry about ammo consumption. Indeed, for a while, it’s only running out of ammo that can cause you any real troubles but even then that, and your health, do recover over time so patience is often the key to success with this game.
The sad truth though is that really we only had one bit of difficulty with the game and that was with one of the later bosses and then that was only because it was such a bullet sponge that it took ages to kill it while avoiding fire hazards and spawning enemies. The fact that it was far harder than the final boss speaks a bit to the game’s lack of balance.
Ultimately, it’s that lack of dynamism and game balancing that really hurts Zombies, Aliens and Guns. It’s not a bad game but it’s not one that’ll make any real impression. Nor will it last you much more than ninety minutes (although there are some extra challenge modes on offer if you want to extend your time with the game after earning all the trophies). With no leaderboards on offer, there’s no real incentive to keep playing once the game is beaten and you’ll probably struggle to entice anyone into playing this game in co-op (which is supported locally only).
On the plus side, the graphics are quite striking. They use a 2.5 style with flat sprites (think Parappa The Rapper) and are gloriously colourful. It’s slightly spoiled by a slightly sickly camera rocking motion (and some screen-shaking that can’t be turned off) but overall the visuals are pleasing. That said, the boss designs are pretty basic and the enemy types get very repetitive after a while with new types being introduced very sparingly.
There’s not much else you can say about it really. It’s a shallow but playable shooter which never excites and only occasionally challenges but it’s a bit longer than the usual Platinum fodder that we get on PSN and the game’s look gives it a bit of polish.
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