To say that Zombies have become quite popular would be an understatement. Whether it TV shows, movies, video games, downloadable content, graphic novels and comics, people cannot get enough zombies. People seem to be obsessed with them. They show up everywhere. For the past few years, they can be found in the App Store via affordable games to pass the time with. Can Zombie Burst stand out from the pack? Read on.
A good zombie game should always have some sort of back story to go along with it. Zombie Burst fares pretty well in this regard. Zombie Burst tells the story of how a professor created a new way of filtering water using a certain mineral and nuclear radiation. Of course something goes wrong and most of those who drank the water became zombies with transparent heads and swollen brains.  Those remaining were left with freakishly strong hands perfect for zombie bursting… I’m not joking, it actually says that!
There are ten locations to unlock in the game and you start out in a restroom. At the beginning of each level, a short cartoon plays depicting a zombie doing something comical before you are rushed by hordes of zombies that you must kill with your bare hands. Most of the zombies in the game can be eliminated by popping their heads with your fingers in a pinching motion. When they burst, their brain goo explodes onto the screen, obscuring it a bit. As the goo gets thicker, you need to make swiping motions back and forth quickly to clean it off your screen.
If a zombie does get to you, it will leave a “crack” on your screen, making it hard to see the other zombies coming. You can take up to three hits before you fail and have to start the stage over. At times I found it hard to properly burst some zombies as they stagger towards you. Some zombies require multiple pinches and some pinches unfortunately do not register. I also had problems with cleaning the goo off the screen. Perhaps this issue can be fixed later with a patch. Another unfair issue I noticed is that once your screen is cracked the first time, you are pretty much dead because nothing seems to register right at all after that, which was quite frustrating.
There is little variation in the gameplay. There are no power-ups or evolution that might spice things up a little. It gets hard very quickly, and rapid pinch motions start to hurt after a while. A “bomb” is offered to help clear the game, but you have to buy these and it wasn’t clear how much they were either.
The graphics are a mixed bag. Backgrounds are nicely drawn but static, and in some stages the zombies just pop into existence rather than come from a visible source. The zombies themselves left me with no lasting impressions. They all look the same other than different sized heads for you to burst. I really wanted to like the look but in this case I just didn’t. Visually the game comes across as rushed. The music in the game is fairly generic.  The creepy ominous music normally found in zombie games is present; however, there is nothing special here. The zombies make typical grunts, moans and growls as they come at you. There are lots of squishy sound effects as you burst zombies left and right but it gets really old really fast.
With so many zombie games on the iOS, developers need to make zombie mobile games that stand out. Zombie Burst, unfortunately, is not one of them. The stale visuals and problematic control issues make this game hard to recommend. While Zombie Burst is only $0.99 costing you around the price of a can of pop, the reality is you are likely better off quenching your thirst.
