What do nuns and priests tell their congregation about ghosts and zombies? SHOOT THE @#$%ers dead! Er… dead-again. With grenades. In this 2D, side-perspective shooter, you’ll find yourself running back and forth, taking pop-shots at various ghouls and creeps over increasingly difficult waves.
Title: Ghosts’n Zombies | Developer: TipCat Interactive | Genre: Action, Casual |
Players: 1 | Version: 1.3 | Size: 15.8MB | Price: $0.99
Click QRC image (from phone) or scan with a barcode reader.
Ghosts’n Zombies has but one, vastly simple premise – shoot stuff.
There are, in-total, nine levels to blaze your way through in this game – each level composed of six stages. By tilting your phone in landscape-mode, you’ll run side-to-side while tapping to shoot. The more ghosts, bats, and other floaty-things you manage to knock-out in one shot, the bigger your bonus will be of crystals and filling your power-up meter. Crystals continually rain-down from above as you kill things, and picking them up gives you more ammo – something which you’ll rarely find in short-supply.
As you collect crystals and succeed in killing-combos, you’ll quickly find your power-up meter filling. On the first meter fill-up, you’ll get temporary grenade-power! If you’re a patient type, wait for another fill and grab the flame-thrower. In addition to power-ups, various random-drops and stationary items will assist you in your quest for demon-destruction. For example, a little cross will zap everything on the screen, and many levels will have you using rocks to hide-behind, or stalactites to break-off on your enemies’ heads.
Controls: Tilting the phone from side-to-side will run your character left and right. Holding your finger on the screen aims the crosshair, and taking your finger off the screen again will shoot your weapon.
Graphics: Ghosts’n Zombies sports a familiar, Halloween’ish, cartoony feel. The graphics are good – crisp lines and colors – albeit a tad drab and un-detailed. The characters themselves are nicely done.
Sound: Sound has got some major issues on my Evo. The rocker-button on my phone has zero effect as far as raising or lowering the volume in-game, and I had to first adjust the volume in my media player before playing the game. In addition, there’s no background music and the sound-effects themselves are a bit cheesy. A couple times, I even found the sound-effects continuing after quitting.
Options: You can toggle sound-effects and music, and there’s a Survival mode which runs you through six insane-making levels of larger and larger waves of enemies. Sadly, even the Evo has a hard time handling all the action on the screen toward the end of each stage once things get particularly hairy.
Verdict: Ghosts’n Zombies is an entertaining distraction at-best, which is made only slightly better by its inexpensive price-point. The sound issues, as well as the inability to drop-back to the main menu without quitting entirely, tend to border on the annoying and detract from the fun-factor. Also, this game is rather easy – even at the later levels. However, if you can get past the technical issues and just want a super-casual shooting experience, Ghosts’n Zombies may just work for you.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
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