Zombie Playground does not take itself serious at all but one thing for certain is that this game would be better played as an online game as the “mini bosses” or the “adult zombies” are incredibly strong which are beatable using your “powers” which I’ll get into further down the review but for now all I’m going to say to say is for an indie company to bring this much fun into a stale genre, well done, but buyer beware there is a few downsides to the game too.
Down sides you may ask? Well there is very little wrong with the game but the one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is the inability to lock-on to a target. Later on in-game you’re gonna be seeing an awful lot of the bigger zombies (adult sized) and as you might expect they hit harder, soak up a LOT of damage, and whilst playing in solo mode you don’t have enough juice in the top right bar (gained by killing zombies) that lets you perform your special attacks (faster speed or shields) they are nigh impossible to kill unless of course you’re lucky using your ranged weapons.
Lucky? you maybe be wondering? well zombies always spawn near you and they don’t stop unless of course the script in game has decided to and if they block your initial target your gonna have to take them down ASAP as there’s more to contend with, this ain’t no fair game in solo mode, which is why I stated that it would be best played online with help from friends
Gameplay is all about finishing your objective in the quickest time possible as you will be graded on your performance, but the objectives themselves are fairly diverse and they’re not all about kill “X” amount of zombies thankfully, they actually range from finding pages from a dark book, destroying cans of soda near vending machines, finding your friend that keeps disappearing into the further parts of the school that the game is based around, amongst many many more and in-between levels you get to customise your character with the only currency you get in the game which is the experience (XP).
You earn XP by killing zombies and doing your objectives in a faster time. (Don’t worry about the $ cart in the screenshot as that was just for the kick starter backers I believe). You can purchase new hair styles with different colours, new t-shirts, hoodies, shorts, jeans, new shoes, different weapons (both melee and ranged), a pet which doesn’t do much at all as I’ve yet to see my pooch attack or pick up health during in-missions.
Graphically it is child friendly and contains no blood. It’s very colourful and pleasing on the eyes, and all the screenshots you can see here were took in “Alienware” setting, which is ultra high to you and me, and it played out very smooth with no FPS loss, even in crowded areas full of zombies.
Audiology side of things, it’s even child friendly in this department, there’s no murmuring of BRAINS!!!! from the zombies, and even my 5 year old was giggling his head off with the zombies as I was playing this in solo mode and he was helping me purchase new hair styles and clothing to what he likes to wear and what he thought was “cool”.
Sadly as you can see, there’s very little community which is a shame, but with the likes of no achievements or anything like that in-game there’s very little reason to go back through the game, apart from unlocking all the stuff in the shops. The game is very fun and is a good blast, and I’d imagine with friends helping each other out it’ll be even better.
