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Zombies certainly have been the star of the show over the last couple of years, and when they haven’t been snacking on human brains they’ve been battling with plants in our back-yard. Step forward Zombie Crossing, which hopes to take good old fashioned human vs. zombie shooting action, and mix in a bit of resource management. Each one of Zombie Crossing’s three levels contains just a single screen, with the main character able to move about freely via an on-screen virtual D-pad.
When the game starts all manner of shuffling zombies appear from the right, and start to make their way over to the left of the screen. Rather than overwhelm the player all at once, they come in waves, with each wave bringing tougher zombies in greater numbers. The aim of the game is to stop them, because if more than a couple of zombies manage to make their way completely to the left side it’s game over.
Of course, it would be unfair (albeit hilarious) if players were forced to tackle the zombies with their bare hands, so the game grants access to all manner of weaponry. Money is earned by shooting zombies, and it’s here where the resource management kicks in, as each weapon costs a differing amount of money depending on their power, and they only have a limited amount of ammunition.
So, the player can choose to struggle on with the default, weak, pistol as long as they can to earn more cash and get a powerful weapon, or upgrade as soon as possible to something less lethal, but cheaper. It’s entirely up to the player how to approach this system, although they will quickly find out which method is best.
There’s no denying that Zombie Crossing is addictive. Being able to save progress through a level and pick it up later on is also definitely appealing, and lends itself well to quick blasts on the train or bus.
However, having a virtual D-pad rather than thumb-stick makes moving and turning the character in a hurry a rather clumsy affair. The character speed is also a touch slow for my liking. In addition, after every five waves a group of fast moving dogs spawn and run across the screen. Once in a while, three will appear at the top of the screen, and one will appear at the bottom. There’s no way the player can physically move in time to kill the fourth dog, meaning all one can do is watch as it smashes through the fence on the left of the screen.
All in all, though, Zombie Crossing is an enjoyable game that will see a few hours play-time battling past the waves of zombies. It provides a stiff challenge, and for $0.99 gamers can’t really go wrong.