ZOMBI UBISOFT - Classic Inspection

Imagine a game with countless doors. Opening one, you find yourself outside of a well known food chain. Behind another is a music store or ammunition shop, and yet another is filled with evil-red eyed Zombies offering to kill you with a single bite. You’ve heard of Disney Land, well this is Zombie Land, a monstrous shop till you drop of pain.

Zombi is loosely based on ‘Dawn of the Dead.’ You control the actions of four survivors – Alex, Sylvie, Yan and Patrick. Your helicopter has run low on fuel, and in an emergency you have to land on the rooftop of a nearby shopping mall. Your mission is to get more fuel and fly the hell outta there. Just like in the film you must navigate your way through a vast shopping mall whilst trying to avoid flesh eating Zombies and contact with other surviving humans hell bent on stealing your ride.

Zombi is an adventure game which incorporates animated point and click graphics, as opposed to an arcade adventure game. The upper half of the screen shows a pretty picture viewed from a first person perspective showing the player’s immediate surroundings. The lower half of the screen is divided into four selection boxes.  Clicking on these will pickup, drop and in most cases use the item you are carrying.

To help stop these Death-bringers, on offer is an array of highly effective weaponry which makes life fun, while the challenge of route-finding makes the brain and reactions work overtime. However; the main challenge of the game is learning how to play it. The game begins with your crew standing on a rooftop, waiting for your first command. The commands are entered using the icon driven menu system - you simply point to an area or hover over an object and select the action you’d like to take. Learning to use the available weapons is a must; especially on a later level when everything switches to an Operation Wolf shootout for the escape.  If you are to survive any length of time in the Mall, mastery of weapons is essential.

The graphics and sound provided on the menu set an eerie atmosphere; sadly the same can’t be said for in-game. Sound is severely reduced and nonexistent for large parts of the game… whilst the graphics although very detailed are sadly lacking colour.    

The idea of an adventure game might bring you out in spots, but Zombie from Ubisoft was one of the first games released that helped me turn my back on real life. I’ve marked it down because of the graphics and sound, but Zombies, B-movie dialogue and interactivity with your environment provide a gripping storyline and a murderous adventure.