I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 Review

A-

Good luck getting the song out of your head. I am warning you up front so that you hear me loud and clear. Also, I refuse to type the game's name again so from now on it will be referred to as "gam3."

For the first time in my reviews I am introducing bullet points, look out:

• This game [type] has been done many times in and many forms, but this one works better than most.
• It's tongue-in-cheek delivery gets our guard down and it's self-mockery is easy related to.
• There are little nuggets of originality that are instantly recognized as "kickass."

Allow me to extrapolate, dear reader.

Top-down shooters, dual stick shooters, and zombie shooters in general are plague-like themselves, spreading everywhere all of the time. But gam3 is sexy because it keeps all of the fun parts and gets rid of the crap. You cannot deny that blowing away hordes of zombies is really entertaining, and when you add in smooth gameplay, lots of guns, attractive effects/graphics, and a dose of the bizarre, you've got a winner. But that's not exactly hard to find either honestly, sooo....

What draws us to the game and allows us to shrug off it's common theme/style is that we're immediately told that the game is not taking itself seriously. The title, the box art, the titlescreen - they are sending a message. Gam3 is essentially mocking itself, and we as gamers, GET THAT. Thank you, gam3 developer, for your slice of humble pie.

Because of the tone that is set from the onset, we tend to forgive the lack of cohesiveness and actually chalk it up to awesomeness. So all of sudden you're not just fighting zombies, but horribly unrelated smilyface worms, poorly designed asteroid diamond thingies, and weird 8-bit faces...okay, funny!! I likey because it's weird!! Really strange and sort of bland backgrounds, that include disco lighting, a checkerboard, and even the developer's logo? Ok, more awesome points! No story, no real ending, and about 15 minutes from start to finish? Whatever, it's crazytime!

Gam3's theme song (title track) is pretty hilarious and I found it really cool how enemies spawn to the beat of the music. And how can we not love the retro arcade style lettering contrasted with modern day Internet language? Thumbs up, tally up some more kickass.

So yes, this game indeed rocks. It's short, it's fun, it's one dollar (80MP). It's a fine example of what can be accomplished in the 80MP price range and make perfect sense to buyers. I played it for an hour and will play it again to see if I can get through without dying.

The only other point that I am trying to make is that this game might have sucked had it not taken the right tone with it's potential consumers. It sets expectations low by making fun of itself, and then over-delivers with solid gameplay and quirky touches. Very smart. Go try it.