Zombie Defense

Genre: Tower Defense

Players: 1

.

Review:

Zombie Defense is a Tower Defense game released on Wii U in 2015 and ported to PC in 2016. As you might imagine, this game has you fighting off incoming hordes of zombies, with this game having you doing so by managing a small squad of characters you can command to go specific defense points.

Okay, let’s get this out of the way first – Zombie Defense is an ugly game. Simple, poorly-detailed character models, blurry resolutions, tons of aliasing. Add to this an insultingly formulaic story, and dramatic music that I suppose fits the theme, but isn’t memorable, and is hard to take seriously with how terrible the game looks.

In addition, the controls here are not exactly idea. This game was clearly made with just the touchscreen in mind, and as a result it under-utilizes the traditional gamepad controls when those could be used for common functions that are instead mapped to buttons on the touchscreen, unnecessarily taking up space on the screen.

Yet despite the poor design choices and amateurish presentation, Zombie Defense kinda’ works. There are actually some clever systems at play here, the first being that unlike most Tower Defense games, you control people who can move at your command, meaning that you can shift them around as the situation calls for it, or to beat a hasty retreat if need be. However, the flipside of that is that you often will have to have your characters move, as different parts of the battlefield become more or less saturated with zombies.

The other element that really keeps things interesting here is this game’s massive unlock tree, where players can spend money earned in missions to increase their regiment size, gain access to more varied troops, get better weaponry, get money bonuses, and so on. There is an absolute not of upgrades to choose from, meaning that players who stick with this game can look forward to a good amount of time powering up their own personal army.

I really wish these great game mechanics had found their way into a Tower Defense game that didn’t look like poop smeared on the side of a wall, and that better use had been made of controls other than the touchscreen. However, if you can look past these flaws, I think you’ll find Zombie Defense to be an excellent entry in the Tower Defense genre.

tl;dr – Zombie Defense is, as you might imagine, a Tower Defense games where players defend against hordes of incoming zombies. The graphics are terrible and the controls leave something to be desired, but there are some clever gameplay ideas at work here, with a really meaty skill tree of unlockables. If you can look past this game’s flaws, I think you’ll find a lot of rewarding gameplay here.

Grade: B-

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