Burn Zombie, Burn!

Publisher: P2 Games
Developer: Kuju Entertainment
Cost: $10/USD (Steam)
Genre: Isometric top down shooter
Website: burnzombieburn.com

It’s hard to imagine how a game like this can’t be an immense pile of  fun. There’s chainsaws, uzis, dynamite, a wise cracking hero, fire and an unlimited stream of the undead to mow down.  Yet somehow Burn Zombie Burn! manages to take something that should be awesome personified and make it a combination of a bit of fun mixed with a lot of frustration and annoyance.

Burn Zombie Burn! is an cartooney isometric (top down from a slight angle) shooter that pits our dashing hero against hordes of the undead in a race for points. Each level has a par to beat in order to unlock the next level. You’ll also be earning achievements based on your score and you’ll get listed on global, local and friends Leaderboards for each map. You start each level with a basic pistol and a torch. The undead appear in timed waves all around you and you mow them down with whatever is at hand. There are large variety of weapons to be picked up ranging from your unlimited ammo pistol to uzis, chainguns, flamethrowers, cricket and baseball bats, shotguns, flamethrowers (ohhhh! ahhhhh!) and more esoteric weapons such as the dance gun and a brain sucking gun. You also get drops of TNT (which blow up real good) and various health packs.

What makes BZB a bit different (and gives it the title) is that you get a score multiplier based on the number of zombies that you have set on fire at any one time. Having a good multiplier and keeping it up is the only way to get a decent score and get to the next level. Zombies are afraid of fire so you can wave your torch around a bit and chase them off… but once they’re set on fire, watch out. The flaming infected are faster and tougher than their non-incinerated breathern. They also drop better loot. But killing them will lower your bonus multiplier. The trick is to keep a good balance between flaming zombies you can keep ahead of and undead that you can slaughter for points. If you set too many on fire you get overwhelmed by the horde.

Flamethrower. Nothing says fried zombies like a 20′ plume of liquid fire.

While some of the zombies  are your run of the mill shamblers in BZB, there are a variety of different flavours. Exploders and rushers perform exactly as their names imply, while dancers wear pink tu-tus and twirl their way into eating your brains. Super zombies are very large and very tough.

The levels aren’t huge but do provide enough room to run around in a big circle blasting zombies, picking up weapons and powerups and constantly loosing track of your crosshair. And that’s what you’ll spend all your time doing. There really isn’t much in the way of variety here.

The dance gun is sort of entertaining though largely useless.

A few small things that could make the game a far better experience.

1. More ammo for the guns. A few good long bursts with the Uzi and you’re looking desperately for more ammo packs which usually aren’t there. There’s always a fine line in these sorts of zombie apocalypse games between having too much ammunition and not enough and BZB has a bad habit of going to far towards the not enough side of things. Blasting zombies is the fun part. Running around looking for a firearm with which to shoot said undead monsters in the face is not fun.

2. Allow you to carry multiple weapons. It’s frustrating to have a decent weapon and accidentally run over something stupid like a cricket bat. As entertaining as it is to beat zombies until the candy comes out it’s not good when there’s a lot of them or you need a long range weapon to detonate a propane canister… Or when you have a bunch of exploding zombies coming at you and you need to play keep away so you don’t die horribly. Grrrrr.

3. Lock the crosshair (light) so it rotates around the player’s avatar rather than allowing it to move all over the screen and get lost constantly. It’s especially hard to find when there’s tons of explosions and burning zombies. Very, very annoying.

4. Better training missions. I’m sorry but “Press the fire button to fire!” isn’t very helpful in a tutorial. You also can’t check your key mappings in game. You have to do that from the launcher.

Press the fire button to fire. Yes, thank you. What button would that be exactly? I’m glad these guys don’t work for Websters.

5. More wise cracking from our Bruce Campbell look alike/Elvis sound alike hero. It’s a minor thing but if you’re going to give the guy snappy one liners add a decent number of them at least.

Conclusion: For ten dollars I really can’t complain overly. If  you’re looking for a cheapie little shooter for a few hours of entertainment and you can get over the annoying crosshair system it’s not a bad little game. Just don’t expect much for your $10.