Age of Zombies – Mindlessly Addictive Shoot-em-up Game
by Paul Wilks
Sep 28, 2011 12:55 PM –
Install
Age of Zombies is a silly and fun time-travelling shoot-em-up. With the help of pint-sized Duke Nukem wannabe Barry Steakfries, you must travel to 5 different time zones killing wave after tidal wave of zombie-kind who, due to some evil scientist, now inhabit all of history. Using a delicious array of powerful weaponry, some dubious quips and a die-hard attitude, help Barry kill everything in sight in this utterly crazy game.
Price: ~$2.95
Tested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: Low Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Great gameplay!
- Polished retro graphics!
- Loads of cool weapons!
- Challenging levels!
- Brilliant sound!
Cons
- 5 locations might make the game a bit short for some.
Features:
Introducing Barry Steakfries, the gun-toting, one-liner quoting gung-ho semi-imbecile. With a name like that what do you expect? Barry is thrust into the action very quickly in this game, after an evil scientist sends hoards of zombies back in time to take over history. Initially he is dumped back to pre-historic times where the cavemen have all been turned into undead zombie kind. Barry must, well, lets not show restraint here, kill every last one of them.
Fortunately he has quite an arsenal at his disposal. Armed initially with a pretty effective handgun, he can periodically upgrade this to shotguns, SMGs, flame-throwers and chainsaws. These are all pretty effective at turning zombies into jam- especially the chainsaw; messy but effective. You also have a secondary weapon- this can be grenades, mines or even a cool bazooka. There are few other little bonuses to collect too, so look out for them.
Probably the highlight of the game is getting to take on a T-Rex in the pre-historic period. While obviously cavemen and dinosaurs didn’t exist in the same period, Barry Steakfries isn’t the genial academic historian who would carefully raise this fundamentally impossible overlap- instead he opts for an SMG, a belt-ful of hand grenades and running around a lot.
You control Barry by the use of two onscreen sticks- one for moving, one for firing his weapons. This is a bit tricky to start with but you soon get the hang of it. I generally find these kind of controls a bit burdensome, but I had no problem playing Age of Zombies and the controls were intuitive and fun. The game is actually optimized for a Sony Xperia Play phone, so if you have those extra controls this will be even straightforward!
The scale of destruction in the game is phenomenal and taking out loads and loads of evil brain-thirsty zombies is pretty violent but fun. The graphics are retro-cartoony so while things get messy it’s not exactly Doom-style gore and realism. Sadly there are only 5 worlds to tackle, which seems a bit short, but each world has 2 or 3 levels so there is plenty of death to deal. I just think with a few more time-zones the developer could have an absolute epic, while still being an awesome game, this falls just a little short of that.
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Age of Zombies – In-game view 1
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Age of Zombies – In-game view 2
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Age of Zombies – In-game view 3
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Age of Zombies – In-game view 4
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Age of Zombies – In-game view 5
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Age of Zombies – Level complete
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Age of Zombies – End of level menu
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Age of Zombies – Intro story
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Age of Zombies – Zombie T-rex is the first level boss
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Age of Zombies – T-Rex will charge at you
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Age of Zombies – T-Rex- no match for Barry!
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Age of Zombies – Red arrows indicate off-screen zombies
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Age of Zombies – Quirky humor throughout
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Age of Zombies – Multiple bonuses
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Age of Zombies – Kill zombies = win awards!
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Age of Zombies – Flame thrower. Now that’s effective!
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Age of Zombies – Best to keep moving unless you have a powerful weapon
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Age of Zombies – Barry often provides his insight on developments
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Age of Zombies – Barry often chimes in with quips
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Age of Zombies – Barry gets chomped
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Age of Zombies – 1930s Chicago era
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Age of Zombies – Splash page
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Age of Zombies – Main menu
Fun Factor:
Age of Zombies is a barrel full of fun and brilliant to play. There’s something quite cool about chainsawing your way through a hundred or more zombies in a few devastating moments. Finishing off the T-Rex is just as superb. It’s more than a little mindless, but it’s delightful shoot-em-up carnage at its very best.
Addictive:
There is something quite immersive and compelling about wiping history clean of zombie-kind. The game is loads of fun, quite silly and tricky at times too. Unless you keep moving Barry is overwhelmed in no time at all. This makes it genuinely challenging and addictive if you want to finish the levels.
Graphics:
Graphics are a bit old-school, but still good and smooth. It’s nothing to write home about but the visuals are fun. There is plenty of detail in the way the zombies implode under the weight of a chainsaw- usually into a mushy pool of gore and this is delightfully rendered. It’s never going to be among the best graphics as far as games go- and, to be honest, if the graphics were any better you’d want to slap a much higher maturity rating on it than it has!
Accelerometer, Vibration & Sound:
The music is pretty pounding and intensive. Like a sound clash between the A-team and Rocky themes. It’s as over the top and silly as the premise the game provides, so it’s very fitting for Barry and his mentality. Barry does tend to grunt a lot, again a kind of subconscious homage to action heroes, with doltish Ramboisms and monosyllabic grunting throughout. It’s fun, mostly.