Here at GBG, we love our top down shooters almost as much as we love old school games. The recent Zombie Party is a nice mixture of both. Like a cartoonish Smash TV set in a 16-bit Zelda game, Zombie Party looks very much like a game from consoles past.

With no narrative, you’ll load the game with the option of 4 game modes, each similar yet very different. My personal favorite was a wave based shooter similar to Zombie Apocalypse. You’ll select one of many characters, each with their own starting weapons and varying base stats and then take on waves of undead, bugs, walking trees, and other monstrosities, dropping power-ups, ammo and coins regularly. These battles culminate in a boss battle.

In addition to this mode, there is a rouge lite option, which plays very similar to the wave based mode. Playing like The Binding of Isaac, you are given a randomly generated world to work through, picking up upgrades and leveling your character along the way. While you will retain any coins you earn in this mode, all progress is reset upon death. This mode is not necessarily bad or less fun to play; you simply do not earn as many coins as you do during the wave based mode.

While ammo is limited in these modes, the additional pick-ups come extremely quickly and you’ll find your character automatically swapping regularly. With the exception of a few of the weaker starting weapons, each option does pack a considerable enough punch.

Should you choose, you can battle your friends or bots in a battle mode. Without online support, this mode is lacking due to the AIs mediocrity. While not awful, it only offered a mild distraction, and only when I had 3 friends available.

My least favorite option was the arcade mode, which switched formats from a top down shooter to a side scrolling heavily pixelated style, similar to Volgarr or Pitfall. Being painfully difficult, I did not make it far enough to determine if there was more to this game type.

While each character features their own pros and cons, once the action starts, the base characters are essentially all the same due to the various types of ammo types that drop regularly. You can cycle through these, but I found it quite difficult to select exactly what weapon I wanted and avoid the enemies at the same time. While not game breaking, it was mildly annoying when I’d be shooting a SMG at a boss, knowing I had a full rocket launcher available.

The game controls well and is extremely easy to pick up. With the exception of how difficult it is to change items or ammo types mid battle, most players will not struggle making it through the first few levels with little practice. The difficulty does scale a bit after the first couple boss encounters though. This will require careful planning as where you wish to put your hard earned coins. While I have not been able to purchase many, the upgrades do show a pretty substantial increase to whichever stats you choose to improve. By adding just a single point into the hit point stat, I was able to add an additional 2 stages to where I was stuck with the base character.

There are a large number of unlockable characters, each with their own suite of purchasable upgrades. Both the characters and said upgrades are a little on the steep side, which makes progression in this game a bit slow. Not to mention needing to use the same coins during intermissions through vendors to purchase health potions and the like.

As a budget priced game, there is a decent amount of content for the price. If the upgrade system was not quite as slow paced and an online component was added, it would be a more enjoyable experience, but this should not turn you off of this game if you are looking for something to scratch that old school itch.

7 out of 10

Pros

• Large Number of Characters to Choose From
• Fun Weapons
• Multiple Game Modes Offered

Cons

• Overpriced Upgrades and Characters
• Slow Progression

Zombie Party was developed by Peach Pie Productions and published by Black Shell Media. It was released on PC June 10, 2016, and X1 on October 6th, 2017 for $9.99.  The game was provided to us for review on X1. For more on Zombie Party, visit its official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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