#Killallzombies Review
A quick look at gameplay footage of #killallzombies is all that's required to persuade most seasoned gamers that it isn't worthy of a second glance. After all, who needs to visit yet another quasi-top down universe in order to wield firearms and defeat waves of undead enemies? It's a genre that has been done so many times that footage of #killallzombies borders on being nauseating, and if you were one of the many people who enjoyed dipping into Xbox Live Indie games store on a regular basis on Xbox 360… well you will probably have to fight the urge to instantly blow chunks harder than anyone.
Here's another problem: the game isn't finished. #killallzombies has just one gameplay mode at present - the standard wave-based, Horde-style variant - but two new modes are due to appear at some point down the line: Flag Defence and co-op. Co-op may be amazing depending on how the mechanics work, and Flag Defence sounds promising too… but no release dates have been bandied around yet. Hopefully these modes arrive within the next couple of weeks, otherwise #killallzombies is likely to be forgotten by everyone until its possible appearance on PS Plus at some point.
But even though it currently has just one mode, #killallzombies has more than a little bit of brilliance about it. Despite the fact that it looks stupendously boring at first, it is really nothing of the kind; it's a thoughtful and very well executed attempt at making the world's most boring and done-to-death videogame genre exciting again. You play as a man with no backstory whatsoever (thankfully) who is stuck on a flat plain and has to fight off waves of zombies with a gun and a weak-as-can-be melee attack. That's it.
There are two things that make it interesting. Firstly, the floor is made up of lots and lots of small hexagonal panels. These tiles periodically move up and down which can do all manner of things, including back you into a corner, create a treacherous pit trap or save you from the sudden appearance of an incoming horde. Those panels can also vanish to suddenly reveal things like powerful gun turrets and explosive barrels, and later on they seem to appear out of nowhere.
The second bright idea comes in the form of the perk system. You level up very briskly indeed - at least, you do at first - and every time that you do, you're granted an upgrade perk. Some of these are very straightforward, like a new gun or 20 second's worth of slow motion, but others are much more inventive and much more fun. You can gamble on whether you'll get extra XP or explode on the spot: your chances are 50/50. You can gamble on a random weapon. You can choose from every weapon in the game, but only in the next round: the punishment for accepting it in the next round is dying in your current one.
So it can be frustrating, but winning a streak of brilliant perks one after the other is hilarious and turns the game into something that's frighteningly compulsive. Make no mistake, this is a shell of a game at present, and probably isn't worth the asking price today. That said, if the other two gameplay modes are as clever and well done as this one, it's going to be very, very easy to recommend to just about everyone. Hopefully, needless to say, the co-op mode is online too. But for now, this is definitely worth a look if you really like the look of it, as is. That audience certainly won't be disappointed.
6/10
Review By Chet Roivas
