Sadly, not a game about the travails of an Undead police sniper, working hard to prevent tragedy in various hostage situations.

Sadly.

Zombie Sniper 3D is, well, a game, about sniping Zombies, in 3D.

A very frustrating, boring game about sniping Zombies in 3D.

Here’s what a gameplay session of Zombie Sniper 3D is like:

Your game starts with your unseen character looking out at a simple polygonal cityscape from the balcony of an apartment about three stories high. Extremely stiff mannequin-like figures slowly… slide.. or sidle perhaps… toward the front door of the apartment building. Occasionally they emit a groaning sound to let you know that they are, in fact, supposed to be Zombies and not extras from another sequel to the movie Mannequin, or perhaps that one episode of The Twilight Zone.

Or perhaps androids from Star Trek: TNG; they look a bit like them too.

You’re obviously supposed to shoot these creatures, whatever they are, because you see the whole world with a targeting reticule superimposed upon it. (When all you have is a sniper rifle, everything looks like the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’?)

Shooting them earns you money, which somehow translates instantaneously into more rounds for your gun. Different types of shots earn different amounts, though the game doesn’t explain or document precisely how much… anywhere that I can see.

The aiming mechanism is extremely stiff, forcing you to zoom back and forth wildly so that you can move the reticule to the proper location. Zoom too far in, and you’re hopelessly slow; too far out, far too fast. Compared to a modern shooter it’s incredibly stiff and unappealing to aim this gun, whatever it is.

If you miss a target, you then get to wait about a minute for it to slide inside the building and up the stairs to appear behind you, breaking into your ‘safe house’. Which has an open front door; yet there’s a glass shattering sound when they
enter for the first time. Weird, eh?

It’s basically impossible to get enough money to reload your gun without headshots, which are very difficult to achieve until the Zombie mannequins are inside your safe house, at which point you don’t get extra dollars for shooting them. This leaves the outside play, where you can either get good shots lined up with your clumsy aim, or not get enough dollars PER shot to reload effectively. It might be possible to get fast enough to get the shots reliably… but who cares to do so?

Added bonus: if you run out of bullets and don’t have enough cash to buy more rounds, you have to wait until a Zombiequin gets up the stairs, into your apartment and eats your brain. Games that waste your time are a pet peeve of mine, so this was extra-annoying.

The ZRC gives Zombie Sniper 3D an extra thumb down. Not only is it an insult to Zombies, it’s an insult to videogame sniping and amateur assasins everywhere, plus it reminded me of a terrible 80s movie.

Uggh. Time to wash out my brain.

Tags: Videogames

This entry was posted by John Sears on Wednesday, October 6th, 2010 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.