Zombie Revenge

For those who don't know, Zombie Revenge was originally an arcade game and, from what I hear, this Dreamcast version is a perfect port. Unfortunately the arcade game must have sucked because so does this game. Okay, to be fair it is fun to shoot waves upon waves of zombies and such, but ultimately you really need more and this game does not deliver.

What's worse, they screwed up the most important part of any game: the controls. Shooting works fine until more than one enemy is after you. When that happens you will rarely have enough time to stop the animation turn around to face him and then shoot him. When you do the guy you were shooting before will simply come up and attack you anyway. Things are a bit better when you pick up a machine gun or a flamethrower but those are slow to pick up, fast to drop (whenever anyone hits you the weapon disappears) and run out of ammo quickly.

There is also melee combat, which works better when fighting a large number of foes but is extremely slow to use and still leaves you vulnerable. Then we get running which was terribly implemented. Instead of using the control stick like it was meant to be used, the game requires you to hold the block button while walking to start running. Why you would possibly want to walk anyway is beyond me, especially given as you have a time limit, which runs down quite quickly.

Every Zombie cloud does have a silver shotgun lining, of course. The graphics are usually pretty good (though my Nintendo 64 could have pulled off most of the CG) and killing the Zombies is pretty satisfying. There is also the occasional bit during the plentiful, if repetitive, boss battles where one might grab you and you can tap the A button to get out of it's grip, Resident Evil 4-style. There is an additional mode, which adds all kinds of little bits to the arcade version. Of course, that will only really matter to fans of the original game.

The other most important element of a Zombie game is atmosphere and they either did a great job of making it campy or did a bad job of making it scary. This is very much akin to House of the Dead in the atmosphere department, but what works very well for that game fails here. The cheesy voice-overs and stupid looking enemies are just not suited to the feel of the game. This game is what happens when Resident Evil has a bad hair day and then accidentally wears his sister's clothes to work. Following this, he starts a week long hiccupping fit which makes any conversation disjointed and unbearable.

This game will only appeal to those who liked the arcade game, which will only appeal to those who don't play many video games.