“Epic!” – A great looking game.
“Cool.” – Solid mechanics and physics.
“Eeh…” – Repetitive missions.
“…Bleh…” – Headache inducing cameras.
Sometimes on my way home from work at night when there are no cars on the road with me, I like to pretend that I’m the only person left in the world after a zombie apocalypse, I try to imagine what it would be like to know that right over the next hill a swarm of the undead could be waiting for my headlights to awaken their primitive minds with the promise of fresh brains behind the wheel. I pretend that I’ve got machine-guns and rocket-launchers rigged onto my truck, and a simple button on my steering wheel will set off the turbo-boosters allowing me to accelerate ridiculously fast and easily ramp off the hill and soar over the zombie fiends.
That’s normal to think about while your driving, right? Right??
The folks at EXOR Studios took all of the above and produced Zombie Driver, a game in which you control a vehicle of your choosing and go around rescuing survivors of a zombie apocalypse that are stranded throughout the city.
Just seeing that the game was called Zombie Driver had me expecting very little from the game. I really thought I was going to get three basic things from the game: 1.) Fast cars 2.) Running over Zombies 3.) Weapons for my fast cars.
Check, check, and check. But wait, there’s more.
Not only do you get fast cars, you get environmentally invincible cars. That means that you can be going 100 mph and slam straight into a wall and take no damage. Of course the zombies will beat the bejesus out of your car if they get a hold of it, but this removes the added stress that would undoubtedly come from trying to obey traffic laws, thus increasing the arcade-y feel of the game by a lot.
If you take the time to slow down enough to look around you will see nothing but great looking environments, the graphics in Zombie Driver are surprisingly well done for such a simple game. It seems a shame that because there is no need to slow down, except the few times when you are picking up the stragglers, the only time you see the scenery is when it’s a blurry streak passing you by at 85 mph.
Speaking of blurry, if you get the slightest bit of motion sickness from anything, Zombie Driver is not for you. There is something about the movement of the camera that was just giving me a headache, and I never get motion sick from anything. I could only really play Zombie Driver for about 20 minutes at a time with a short break in between to avoid getting too dizzy. Perhaps a top down camera angle wasn’t the best choice, it seemed too…claustrophobic. Like, I couldn’t really see past the edge of my screen, and in a city full of zombies I think seeing where you are heading is a pretty important thing.
If you are expecting me to go deep into the story of the game, well I’m going to disappoint you, not because I like to disappoint you, but because there really isn’t a story. There is a bit of narrative during the loading screen to each level, which makes it seem like some sort of story was attempted, but it just kinda got old reading the same sort of “go rescue these people” message between each level. I stopped reading the briefings after the third level. The developers might have just been better off sticking with a “just rescue the people at each level” overall message, then try to correlate it all into some sort of plot.
Zombie Driver is a straightforward vehicle based zombie-slaying arcade game. If you think running over zombies with a limousine and a flamethrower attached to the top of your limo sounds like fun, well then head on over to: The Zombie Driver STEAM download page and download it! It’s only ten bucks, too!
Final Grade: C+
PS: While writing this article I came across a video of a “Darkness Mod” for Zombie Driver, it makes the game happen at night and the only lights are coming from your car’s headlights and wherever there is a fire burning. It looks really impressive and adds a whole new feel to the game.
EXOR Studios Homepage
*According to new blogging regulations I must tell you that the kind folks at EXOR Studios provided me with a copy of Zombie Driver which I based my review upon.*
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