Okay Geek Farm
PC Review - Burn, Zombie, Burn!
Alex Tretrop
Note: I was very generously provided a copy of this game, free of charge, to review for you guys.
In a market that is already teaming with numerous zombie titles, Doublesix boldly steps in with their newest title Burn, Zombie, Burn! At first glance the game looks like your typical zombie shooter but is kept entertaining by interesting use of fire mechanics along with being surprisingly strategic. It’s a ton of fun to play in short bursts but a lackluster control scheme as well as some fairly redundant extra modes makes this a tough sell for PC users.
Story
Not much to speak of here. You play as Bruce, your “typical B-movie action hero” but other than a few silly one liners, you won’t really hear any other dialogue in the game. The game lays it out very simply: It’s the zombie apocalypse, survive as long as you can!
Gameplay
At first glance, Burn, Zombie, Burn! seems like your typical dual joystick shooter. Add in the fact that it’s also set during the zombie apocalypse and many people might write the game off as unoriginal and derivative. Thankfully, when you actually play the game, you’ll discover that there are quite a few original ideas that make the game an incredibly fun and tactical experience.
The game revolves around killing as many zombies as possible before you lose all your lives with a bit of variation for each mode like Defend Daisy, where you have to defend Bruce’s girlfriend, who sits in a car in the middle of the map. To do this you have many satisfying weapons but you can also use your torch which will, unsurprisingly, set all the zombies it touches on fire. The effects of this are twofold: on one hand, for every walking corpse you set on fire, you get another number added to your multiplier but all the zombies that are on fire become much faster and do a ton more damage. It encourages a risk/reward setup which can make the game all the more addicting. The game is also very frenetic and fast paced, and the fact that the zombies drop different things depending on if they’re burning or not forces you to think fast and hope you don’t get overwhelmed.
Let’s talk weapons because Burn Zombie Burn has some very fun and effective weapons. From a lightning fast pistol to lawnmowers and brainguns, each weapon is constantly tracking your kills. Once you lay waste to a certain number of undead with one particular weapon, you’ll get a weapon combo bonus, which will push your multiplier up even further and light one of three red lights on your screen. If you successfully get three weapon combos and find the “Big Red Button” somewhere on the map, you’ll activate a crazy bonus attack that varies from each level. From a bombing run to lasers to damaging rain, the game likes to get crazy whenever you activate these awesome powers.
The zombies themselves are more of the shuffling dead kind, so you won’t be seeing the ridiculous speed of some of the Left 4 Dead or 28 Days Later zombies but before you say that this detracts from the intensity of the game, let me tell you how wrong you are. As you survive longer and longer, the amount of zombies increase to some insane levels. It really helps reinforce the fact that you really can’t stop shooting for anything unless you want to die a fast and painful death.
This brings me to a more disappointing aspect of the game: the levels themselves. While you do get quite a few levels, they don’t impact the gameplay in almost anyway. Your essentially picking a backdrop instead of something that really impacts the gameplay in interesting ways. It’s a small gripe but it’s there nonetheless.
Another problem is that the game’s three playable modes all feel a little too similar. There’s the standard arcade mode, a timed mode, a “defend daisy” mode where you defend Bruce’s girlfriend and with the PC version you also get another one called “Survival.” The problem with these is that, similar to the levels, there is hardly any difference in which mode you play because your still killing zombies and trying to get a ludicrously high multiplier.
But the real kicker is in the controls, they just don’t seem like they’ve made the transition from console to PC very well. Movement is fine but the mouse is used poorly. To turn Bruce around, you have to swing the mouse around in a circle on a sort of swivel but no matter how much I fiddled with the options and sensitivity, i just couldn’t get him to make any precise movements and this can be extremely frustrating, especially in such a challenging game. Thankfully, the game does come with Gamepad support so you can use the proper control scheme or else you’ll be tearing your hair out!
Visual/Audio
Burn, Zombie, Burn! has an interesting graphics style. It’s much more colorful and cartoony looking then you’d probably expect from a game like this, but everytime you kill a zombie your rewarded with blood splater and the mushy paste you’d expect from your typical zombie game. It looks alright but the art style didn’t really stick out in my mind too much.
Audio is pretty bland across the board. I don’t really remember any of the music for the game and Bruce only speaks a few cheesy, yet appropriate, one liners. Other than that, the zombies sound like zombies and the weapons all sound pretty good. There really isn’t much out of the ordinary here and the audio does a serviceable job, even though there is very little of it.
Final Thoughts
Burn, Zombie, Burn! hasn’t exactly made the transition from console to PC very well with some lame controls and some fairly redundant new modes. Doublesix is asking for ten bucks, which I think is a little too high for many people but this very strategic game isn’t without it’s merits. The game makes you think on your feet and becomes punishingly difficult as you try to rack up as high of a score as you can, giving you all the more incentive to “just get a little further.” It seems like it could be very addicting fun but if your going to buy, I’d suggest the PS3 version as the new mode and difficulty aren’t exactly game changers. Not to mention, a controller easily fixes all the problems I had with the mouse on the PC version. It’s a fun game but a bad port, so give it a try and see if you like it. I found it to be most enjoyable in small bursts while your waiting for a download to finish or if you want your fix of zombie killing quickly and easily. I’d still recommend it to some people and if you can’t get enough of these games, you can definitely do way worse than Burn, Zombie, Burn!
But seriously, pick it up on PS3, it easily justifies the price on the console and can become seriously addicting, if you play in small bursts. It’s a very fun game and I really can’t wait to see what Doublesix does next!
