If I could sum up Burn Zombie Burn using only a few words, I would call it Geometry Wars: Zombie Apocalypse. Developer Doublesix’s zombie shoot-em-up is a delightful mix of Geometry Wars‘ top-down, arcade action and a 60s monster movie. It’s a gem of a game, and I was surprised at how much I actually enjoyed playing it.
Burn Zombie Burn casts you as Bruce, a fitting Bruce Campbell look-alike who is all chin, as he fights off hordes and hordes of brain-hungry zombies. The game is all about the magical high score, throwing waves and waves of zombies of increasing difficulty at you to slaughter. The twist here, though, is that you can set zombies on fire. The more zombies you have on fire, the higher your score multiplier, but the more dangerous they become. When you kill blazing zombies, you gain TNT upgrades and speed boosts, making your explosive drops more powerful and making Bruce faster. When you kill the fiery zombies your multiplier drops, making it your best interest to keep a balance of toasty zombies and regular ones so you’re always scoring big.
This interesting risk/reward system is the true fuel of Burn Zombie Burn, and kept me coming back to chase my posted scores. I would constantly approach any one of the six arenas with a different mindset, experimenting with the amount of zombies I would set on fire and ways to keep them cooking, all the while trying to kill normal zombies, staying at a high multiplier. It made every session a different game of skill that became addicting, like every good arcade game should.
There are a few different modes you can partake in if you feel tired of standard Free Play. Defend Daisy places a blonde girl-next-door type in a convertible that you have to protect, Timed forces you to keep the clock full to get more points, and Survival tests how long you can stay alive. While these modes are a nice touch to extend the game’s life, they aren’t a great fit with the burning zombie mechanic. They seem more like distractions from the main attraction of Free Play.
The game also feels like it really should be a twin stick shooter. Strafing is not handled with finesse and you always seem to be facing the wrong direction as you do it. The current control setup feels a tad too complicated for the fast paced action on the screen. It’s a minor nuisance, but I couldn’t help but feel I would be getting better scores if I had fewer buttons to juggle when zombies started to surround me at every turn.
Burn Zombie Burn is a great arcade game that is likely to fill a Sunday afternoon when you want to lose yourself and just play something without epic stories or complicated gameplay mechanics. It satisfies your basic high score addiction and looks delightful doing it.
