Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig a shit load of graves.
After moving some of my collection from my attic to my newly decorated man cave (or the second bedroom if you speak to my wife), I stumbled upon a crate of dreamcast discs that i bought off eBay but never got round to unpacking.
Among the usual street racers and chu chu rockets was a game i had only ever played in the arcade before, Zombie revenge.
Quite what the title means I have no clue- can zombies get revenge? Are the zombies having revenge reaped on them? Is someone using them a tool for revenge? We may never know however here is what we do know.
Released in 1999 in the arcades and at the same time on Dreamcast, ZR was a spin off from the house of the dead light gun series. As such it features allot of the same characters and themes as thotd games.
Having played the first 3 hotd games and several spin off games (pinball of the dead on the GBA being a surprise fav of mine) im used to the francise trying new and bizarre directions (im looking at you typing of the dead), however this one is somthing really different.
Gone are the on rails shooting range levels, instead we get a free roaming beat em up in a 3d streets of rage style. You can punch, kick and shoot your way through the hoards of the dead that jump, run and even operate fire arms (yes there are shotgun toting zombies in this one).
The cut scenes (they use the ingame engine) feel very hotd, with hamy, stilted and just plain weirded dialogue "Here, take this. A man with golden eyes told me to give it to you!".
The game plays allot like dynamite cop, you move to a new area, punch, kick or shoot enemies till they dont get up again and then move on. After several areas are clear you move onto a boss fight, this is where zr really shines, the battles are fraught and the giant undead freaks
are well designed with a good level of challenge without being to irritating.
If only the controls weren’t so bloody fiddly! Actually aiming is automatic with your character locking onto the nearest enemy, but the camera angles make it very hard to see where you are shooting, this is not helped by the fact you shoot the creature you’re locked onto and so others can sneek up off camera and hit you before you know they are there.
Picking up items and weapons is also a drag, you have stand right on them and press the right button to pick them up, easy enough you say! Well it would be if you could see if you are actualy standing on them, the camera pans to such odd angles that your not sure where exactly the right place to stand is, this is also an issue when level hazards like lasers and fire balls that reqiure you to stand in particular spots to avoid them, you end up guessing and half the time you get killed for not having a clue where to stand.
As per usual in hotd games, you have to rescue innocents who are trapped in the now zombie infested city. These bits are quite good, they usualy take place in a store room of locked off area with little room to manoeuvre and as such add a nice degree of tention while you defend the hapless fool whose got themselves trapped with the dead (if there is not a zombie film called trapped with the dead then someone needs to make one!).
This is an out dated beatem up for a dead system, hotd has long since been rebooted as hotd overkill, a game that openly parridies itself and the francise. However it is great fun as a 2 played romp and some of the boss designs are awsome. So if you fancy an early 2000's arcade perfect zombie blast you could do allot worse...now all i need is a sequel - Zombie 2-the re-revengeaning anyone?
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