Nukezilla Review: Zombies!!! (Windows Phone 7)

[Zombies!!! was reviewed on the HTC HD7 (T-Mobile) with a build that was provided by the developer's PR representative]

These days, I’m finding it harder and harder to come to any game featuring zombies with a blank slate and an open mind. They’re in our comics, our movies, on our t-shirts and surely soon to be in our breakfast cereals.

Considering the overwhelmingly undead zeitgeist we are living through, it’s no surprise a popular zombie-based board game is being adapted into a Windows Phone 7 mobile game and soon-to-follow Xbox Live Arcade edition featuring the nasty little brain eaters. Any game featuring the walking dead needs to bring something unique and exciting to the table in order to rise above the throngs of stale pop culture content.

Zombies!!! is a turn-based board game — which has now been turned into one of Windows Phone 7′s first games — where you play the role of a (surprisingly male only — where’s Zoey?!?) human survivor tasked with accomplishing one of two game winning goals: being the first survivor to kill 25 zombies or reaching the helipad before your fellow man.

Rather than limiting your play to moving one single piece across the board, the player has limited control over the layout of the map, by placing one nine-square section each round until the final segment (the helipad) is in play. Once the new section of the map is placed, the player is allowed to place shambling carcasses, health items and ammunition within the nine new squares; there’s even a phase of your turn where you can move the position of the undead horde to work against your opponents (the other players).

Finally, you get three cards to either play or discard during your turn, which are cleverly titled and extremely useful for adding drama to a close game by turning the tide with such dastardly actions as stripping other players of weapons or ammo (“Butter Fingers”) or filling up any building with zombies (“Just When I Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worse).

Unfortunately, Zombies!!! on Windows Phone 7 is slow, clunky and offers one solitary game type (with four varieties of the core rule set): single device or vs. CPU multiplayer. Considering this is a game designed to be played with others, the lack of an online mode is unfortunate — who plays mobile games using the puff, puff, pass method anyway?

The board game that this is based on sounds like a complete blast to play with a room of (drunk) friends, but while this appears to be a faithful translation, it lacks the most essential components of a good modern mobile hit: speed, accessibility and connectivity.

This review is Day 11 of the December Review Nukestravaganza.