Atom Zombie Smasher (PC)
Atom Zombie Smasher (PC)
Platform: PC
Developer: Blendo Games
Publisher: Blendo Games
Genre: Strategy
Released: March 14, 2011
Metacritic: 75
What is it: Command mercenaries and fight zombies a minute at a time.
0:00 – The game begins by awarding you a diploma in the “Master Study of the Recently-Possible,” dated May 5th, 1960 as music straight out of Pulp Fiction plays. Well, that gets my attention.
0:03 – This game subscribes to the “Just throw ‘em right in” school of thought. One quick rescue mission, one city zone overrun by zombies (I’m sorry, “Zed”), and I’m on my way.
0:09 – So the essence of the game is you have a chunk of city that’s about to be overrun by Zed that has a bunch of civilians in it. You need to position your units (soldiers, landmines, etc), as well as the landing zone of the rescue chopper, to rescue the maximum amount of civilians. Either you rescue them, or they get infected and become Zed. It’s simple in a small scale, but I can see this becoming very complicated, possibly even overwhelming, later on. Also, concerning if the dual “victory tracks,” one for humans, one for zombies. Apparently there’s a metagame going on here where if you win each level, but don’t do well enough, you could still lose in the end. Interesting.
0:13 – I’m loving the retro aesthetic of the game. Between the sepia toned theme and the simple dots that represent people, units, and Zed, it creates a minimalistic appearance that really fits the gameplay. Game like this benefits from simplicity, rather than overly elaborate graphics that could distract or obscure.
0:14 – Okay, after completing the mission, the game offered me a vignette to watch about a guy who finds himself trapped in his house surrounded by Zed. He responds by eating a pound of mushrooms and grabbing his katana. Well that came out of nowhere.
0:22 – Three retries on a mission, followed by a gold medal. Two things I like about this game are that it becomes quickly apparent if your strategy is going to work and that it doesn’t really penalize you if you want to stop a mission and retry it. I’m glad the game makes it easier to experiment with different strategies, because sometimes the placement of a couple of barricades makes all the difference.
0:25 – A couple of seconds of negligence and half the town becomes Zed. Restart! For a tactics game it does a nice job keeping you on your toes.
0:28 – Thanks to the addition of artillery (which is just as devastating as you’d expect) I actually manage to wipe out the attacking Zed and save this chunk of the town. I didn’t even know you could do that! I just figured “Hey, it’s a zombie game, the town is screwed, just get the people out.” Nice job suprising me, game.
0:32 – Well crap. A higher level difficulty map with no infantry or barricades to help me out, just slow firing artillery and pre-set explosives. This is going to suuuuuck.
0:40 – Sure enough, that did suck. Passed with the bare minimum needed. The Zed sure won that one. Need to be more mindful of which units I have available to help.
0:42 – New element added: scientists. Rescue them and I gain research points I can use to buy upgrades. Another level of depth added. Keep on impressin’, game.
0:57 – How good is this game? So good I just spent 15 minutes trying to get a long-shot strategy I knew could work to work instead of just accepting a passable victory and being done in 2 minutes. I don’t usually do that, but I not only wanted to, I needed to. I refused to accept acceptable and was determined to destroy those Zed bastards. That’s how good this game is.
1:00 – The hour is up, but I’m going to keep on playing. Somebody has to crush the Zed menace.
Conclusion: Atom Zombie Smasher can best be described as a high speed tower defense game delivered in bite sized chunks. It makes for a game that is both deeply strategic and (at times) absolutely frantic. Combined with the retro aesthetic and overall oddness and you have a uniquely compelling game.
Will I keep playing it: Already have. After finishing the write up I played for another 3 hours. Now to play some more.
