Burn, Zombie Burn!’ is one of the most addictive video games ever developed. And this addiction isn’t like being addicted to chocolate or the TV series Lost — it’s more like being addicted to crack cocaine (not that I would know anything about being addicted to cocaine, of course). During my first sitting, I played the game for five hours straight. Phone calls, door bells and repeated instant-messenger alerts were ignored, thirst and hunger dismissed, and pain forgotten. At the end of this session, I actually had to sleep to get my sapped energy back — I don’t think I have ever had to sleep after playing a video game because I was tired. Ridiculous. Oh, and the pain! The pain in my right-hand was unbearable, so unbearable that it felt like my nerves had been ripped out, dipped in boiling-hot oil, used as a bungee-cord and put back into my arm again. But I had to press on just so that I could get that silver medal. I think that sums it up: the game offers trivial rewards for an excruciatingly painful gameplay experience, and while fully understanding the pointlessness of said rewards, you just can’t stop playing I say again — ridiculous!
In BZB, you play as Bruce, a guy who looks as close to Legendary B-movie icon Bruce Campbell as the production budget and design-brief would allow him to look. If you don’t know who Bruce Campbell is, you shouldn’t be killing zombies, virtual or otherwise. Anyway, BZB’s Bruce wears a mighty large grin on his face perpetually, while a voice actor (who is most definitely NOT Bruce Campbell) belts out an array of one-liners from famous zombie movies,
including classics such as “I’m here to kill zombies and chew bubble gum ... and I’m all out of gum.”. This is nothing more than a nice touch and a gentle reminder that the main character’s name is ‘Bruce’. So, playing as Bruce, your objective in the game’s ‘arcade’ mode is to survive for as long as possible while immolating, shooting, cutting-up, mowing-down and hitting zombies for home-runs and sixes (that’s right, there’s a cricket bat). You gain more points for combos which you can perform by killing zombies with the same weapon or setting them on fire and killing them with the same weapon. Zombies are afraid of fire so they’ll back off if you light up your flaming torch unless they’re already on fire themselves, in which case they become faster and deal more damage to Bruce. After an hour or so of playing the game, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what gets the job done the fastest while giving you maximum points. I suppose referring to the combat as a ‘sandbox’ experience would be an exaggeration, but the game does give you sufficient freedom to do the killing in any manner you see fit thanks to a variety of weapons including, pistols, shotguns, Uzis, mini-guns, lawnmowers, chainsaws, flame-throwers and awesome Michael Jackson-meets-Sci-Fi weapons like the ‘Dance Gun’ and ‘Brain Gun’. Accumulating points
unlocks medals, which in turn unlock levels and bonuses. You’ll need at least a bronze in one map before you can unlock the next, and getting this ‘bronze’ medal becomes increasingly difficult as the game progresses. Maps range from a house in the woods and drive-ins to army bases and secret laboratories.
The game has a variety of modes to keep things interesting, from the generic
arcade mode, to ‘Defend Daisy’, a mode where you need to protect Bruce’s girlfriend from hordes of zombies, a timed version of the arcade mode, and a variety of ‘challenge’ game types, each with a unique scenario. Challenges are usually harder to complete, since the player is often put in precarious situations with larger numbers of zombies to fend off from the get-go. The game gives you the option of choosing from three difficulty levels: casual (not ranked, can’t upload scores), a ranked mode (with the option of uploading scores) and an ‘extreme’ difficulty mode. While the game itself is not very innovative, it offers great challenge even in the most basic difficulty setting. It’s also aspirational. Getting to that bronze medal to unlock the next map isn’t necessarily a daunting task, but getting subsequent medals certainly is. The variety in enemy types is balanced fantastically, with the game throwing progressively more difficult foes at you at one point, and giving you easy enemies to get kills at another. And suddenly, when you least expect it, it throws everything at you, causing immense panic and stressing the most powerful graphic cards with a ludicrous amount of on-screen detail. Playing a zombie-killing game has never been as much fun.
Verdict
At $8.99 on Steam, Burn Zombie Burn! is a simple, fun and hugely addictive game that does more to your hands than it does to your bank balance.
— videep@gmail.com