Let’s face it: shooting zombies are fun. Maybe it’s because we all secretly want to go Postal at some point, and can hide behind the moral mask that these humanoids aren’t real humans. There’s no moral ambiguity: you have to shoot your former colleague in the head or become zombie chow. There are lots of games tap into our guity pleasures; otherwise games like Resident Evil and Left4Dead wouldn’t be so popular. Heck, Capcom basically buit their empire on zombie carcasses.
Everyone needs to be ready for the inevitable zombie apocalypse; even little kids. That’s why publisher Destineer has released Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ.
Sometimes we don’t need a storyline for an excuse to dispatch the undead… we just want to drop into the middle of the carnage with a buttload of ammo. This game has a little bit of a setup storyline, which only allows the justification of some of the locales. This zombie apocalypse takes place in a the ficticious world of storybook land, so it’s completely ok to slaughter to your heart’s content without feeling guilty.
After saving her grandmother from the Wolf and its army of the evil everything seemed to have gon back to normal. Nothing further from reality. With the recent and tragic death on combat of the woodman, an invasion of leper zombies endangers once again the peace in the world.
You play as Red, who has been given the full anime treatment to make her a sexy butt-kicking heroine. Of course, if you feel emasculated by playing a girl, then you can choose to play as a boy character, who has nothing to do with the classic Grimm’s Fairytale.
Gameplay is classic old-school arcade shooter, which has a variation on the classic top-down blaster. Hordes of undead and other beasties come down from the top screen (eventually spilling over to the DS’s bottom screen), which Red must mow down with her various weapons. You cannot move anywhere you want, but are stuck in seven spots along the bottom of the screen (similar to Space Invaders). You can move to another spot by clicking on it with the stylus, or by using the D-pad. The D-pad is the better choice, as your stylus hand is almost constantly taking out undead. Honestly, most of the time you need to move from your current spot to avoid being shot or grabbed.
Fortunately you can shoot anywhere on the screen by touching the touchpad: where you touch is where Red will shoot. Since only the bottom screen is touch-sensitive then the only way to take out a ghoul on the top screen is to aim at it using the bottom screen. Much of the time, your right hand obscures the view of the bottom screen, as you are constantly tapping on monsters.
You are equipped with a standard machine gun, and accumulate special guns and ammunition along the way (which have a limited number of shots). Any new guns you collect appear on the right side of the bottom screen, and they are selected by merely clicking on them with your stylus.
As mentioned before, this game takes place in a fairy-tale land. Each level has a particular theme, and you ascend to the next level by beating a special boss at the end of each. You’ll travel through to woods to Grandma’s house, Pinnochio’s toy shop, Sleeping Beauty’s castle, and even take out Santa Claus at the North Pole. The zombies come out of the ground, but I’m not exactly sure how they were able to pop out of cobblestone streets in level 2.
This game is meant to be an arcade shooter, meaning you can easily pick it up and put it down without a lot of intellecutal stimulation. Each level can take a while to complete, and there are no checkpoints or savepoints between levels. If you die (or turn off your DS) then you’ll have to start the level all over again.
The graphics are better than what I expect from a DS game. The colors are vibrant, which is odd for a zombie game but fits the theme. The enemies are made up from standard sprites, but the level uses a simple 3d engine. As your character moves from left to right, you can see the coridor in front of you change perspective slightly. The opening screen really shows off the 3d engine, which is actually rather impressive for the Nintendo DS. The music isn’t horrible either… kind of a survival-horror rock, but you really don’t notice it that much.
If there was any complaint about the graphics, it would be the lack of variation in the zombies. You encounter theme-appropriate monsters in each level, but they all look like clones of each other. As mentioned earlier, the story is a rather silly opening for a zombie shooter… and this only adds to the game’s charm. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s an arcade shooter meant to be a temporary diversion.
Overall, I was surprised how much I liked Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ. It has a wacky sense of humor, and rather solid gameplay. You have to expect to play an arcade shooter, though… if you don’t expect Final Fantasy combat or Resident Evil then you’ll be just fine. Gameplay can be repetitive, but that is expected in an arcade shooter. Zombie BBQ is a great diversion that lets us fulfill our craving for zombie dismemberment, and can be played several times over. It’s not for everyone though, but if you like crazy arcade shooters then it’s a worthwhile purchase.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||