Zombie Shooter

In Brief

A top down shooter saving humanity from zombies. 'An old favorite of mine'

Suggestions:

If you win a key for Zombie Shooter, please give some feedback about your opinion of the game, for example, what you liked or disliked about it, or how it could be improved from your point of view . If you don't like this genre at all, please explain why. What, improvements, if any, would change your opinion? There are thousands of subscribers to the game giveaway of the day every weekend which makes this an ideal forum for giving developers ideas as to what their consumers (i.e you) would like to see in a game. For example, you could suggest extra content such as better or more original mini games, or a level editor that you would like to see that would make it more appealing to you. Maybe you think the graphics are a little dated and are in need of re skinning, or maybe you've just had enough of the genre and want to see something different or something with more originality?

If you don't win a key, don't mind playing games via Steam or miss the offer totally you can get the game 24/7 via Steam HERE. It costs £3.99/$4.99. Zombie Shooter 2 is also available on Steam for £6.99 as are most of the other games in this series, such as Alien Shooter, Alien Shooter 2: Reloaded, Alien Shooter: Revisited and Dungeon Shooter 2.

Introduction:

Where is the line between life and death? How far can human science go trying to understand this?

Take part in the great battle to rescue humanity and find out what's happening! The human race is in danger again. This time scientists could not cope the imminent threat and became monsters themselves. Crowds of zombie people filled the secret research base. The dreadful contagion is about to spread earth wide. Use the last chance to save the humanity from total annihilation!

Find the answer to the main question - what caused the catastrophe? Who knows, maybe on the final stage you'll face something terrible?

Try your monster fighting skills in two additional game modes - Survive and Gun Stand. Only these modes will really show how good you've become.

Edited and amended reference accessed HERE. 24th Oct 2016

Installation:

Assuming you win a Steam key for Zombie Shooter, once you've found it (should be sent to the email you used to enter the giveaway) you have to activate the game via your Steam client. Once activated it will be permanently tied to your Steam profile and you'll be able to install the game at any time, anywhere on any computer, so long as you can validate who you are (usually via emails etc). If you don't have a Steam account you will first have to download and install the Steam client HERE

Then create a Steam profile/account. Once that has been completed you can input the Steam code that you've received (after completing the form filling) via the game button along the top of the Steam client, (located between friends and Help). From the drop down menu select 'Activate a product on Steam'. This opens a product activation window. Just follow the prompts to complete activation. Once the Steam code has been accepted, the game will be permanently associated with your Steam account and can be installed any time you wish.

If you have a problem installing or activating or getting Zombie Shooter to work, please visit the problems section over in the Game Discussion forums, which I've now incorporated into the FAQ's thread, and which you can find HERE

The Game:

Key Features:

Fight your way through contaminated hordes

Use 10 types of weapons

Improve the character's skills

Upgrade available arms with the money earned

About 1,000 zombies on each map, showing up to 100 zombies simultaneously on one playing screen

3 game modes: Campaign, Survive and Gun Stand

Full-on-action male or female character

Character upgrade facility

9 upgradeable weapons of mass destruction

Red or Green blood selection

Highly imaginative selection of zombies

Reactive music which helps to drive the action

Useful gadgets - flash lights, medkits, battle drones and radar.

Back in the mid to late 2000’s the zombie phenomenon was starting to make a return in video games. With the success of titles like Dead Rising and Left for Dead, it wasn’t long before other developers wanted a slice of zombie cake. Of course, Sigma-Team couldn’t miss out on the opportunity. A change from killing tons of aliens to zombies was only natural and Zombie Shooter was born.

Zombie Shooter is an isometric shooter developed and published by Russian developer Sigma-Team. It is a spin-off of the company's original title Alien Shooter. Zombie Shooter released in 2007, and has a few improvements on the original Alien Shooter and is typical fun over the top action. It's rushed development resulted in glitches, bugs, uninspired design and practically reusing the Alien Shooter plot. As usual with Sigma-Team's games, the plot is secondary and barely exists. Of what little plot there is to be found, it is essentially the same as Alien Shooter. This time, the Magma Corporation decide to create a biologically engineered virus that goes wrong resulting in zombies as opposed to teleportation and aliens.

After several military assaults fail, you are sent in to investigate. You find that the facility is overrun with zombies and you must stop it. That means slaughter them all. While the plot is almost non-existent and used three times in previous incarnations of this game, it does the job it is designed to. It creates a setting and a reason for the protagonist and zombies to be there. Aside from that, there is nothing else to be found in it. If a good plot is a must, Zombie Shooter isn’t for you. You make your way through ten levels, each with an objective that must be completed. At the beginning, you deal with only the most basic of enemies, zombies, zombie dogs, and rats. As you progress through the levels, they become harder to kill with the addition of new and more powerful enemies.

As the enemies become more powerful so do you. At the beginning of a level, you may buy new equipment, weapons, weapon upgrades, armor and increase your stats. You gain experience for killing enemies. For each level up you gain a stat point you can distribute at the start of the new level. The level up system and weapon upgrades are a nice addition. Money is obtained from secrets, destructible objects, completing levels and sometimes it is dropped by enemies. Enemies also drop ammunition and health pickups as well as power-ups such as mega health and temporary invulnerability.

Overall the gameplay has only changed in the very slightest in comparison to the original Alien Shooter. As opposed to implants you have the level up system and stats along with weapon upgrades. Then you have the better graphics due to using the Alien Shooter 2 engine to develop the game.

Starting with the weapons, most of them are the same as Alien Shooter but redesigned and slightly adjusted. Some of the weapons fire slightly faster, especially when upgraded and give a bit more of an impact, all of which is welcome. The only new weapon is the disc thrower that replaces Alien Shooter’s Freeze Ray. I really wish they just kept the Freeze Ray as the disc thrower is a rather useless weapon. It’s slow firing and only slices through a few enemies. It’s fine for weak enemies but not the tougher ones you face when you obtain it.

As for the level design, they are pretty much the same as you would find in previous incarnations of this game such as Alien Shooter and today's games sequel Zombie Shooter 2. There is nothing new to experience. It is lacking new and original environmental assets that would otherwise separate the levels from previous games. The redesign is welcome but the fact that it only has one new weapon makes its arsenal stale. Anyone who has played the Resident Evil series will also see the resemblance in enemies. Basically the level design is nothing more than the same old assets from previous games. If you played Sigma-Team's previous games you will have seen it all before, that said, if you just want some mindless 'fun' shooting zombies, this will certainly sate your appetite.

There are two survival modes in Zombie Shooter. The first is Stand Firm, which is the same as in Alien Shooter and the second is Gun Stand. The idea behind Stand Firm is to survive as long as you can while killing as many zombies and scoring as many points as possible. It starts off quite slowly with only small groups of weaker enemies appearing, but as you progress tougher enemies begin to make an appearance and multiply. At the end of each wave, there is a boss variation of a monster to defeat that will drop a more powerful weapon. Each enemy has a chance of dropping items, upgrades, and power-ups just like in the campaign. While the same as Alien Shooter, it is still quite addictive and fun to play as you attempt to keep bettering your score.

Gun stand is something that was completely new with the release of Zombie Shooter and became a regular addition to later Shooter titles. You control a turret in the middle of a map. Zombies start rushing from all directions. You must survive as long as possible while killing as many zombies as you can. After killing a certain amount of zombies you will be able to set off a nuke, killing any that are near you. While there isn’t much to it, it is still a new addition to the game that is fun and one of its few original aspects.

There is no denying that the development of Zombie Shooter was very half-hearted. It released the same year as Alien Shooter 2 and that took four years to develop. The weapons have become rather stale, the enemies uninspired and the levels are nothing more than old design and assets. The only original thing to be found in the game is its soundtrack, which really fits into the zombie theme, and the new survival mode Gun Stand. It feels like it was developed as more of a cash grab while the zombie phenomenon was building and sure enough, it worked.

There is a bug where sometimes the game won’t trigger enemies making it impossible to progress and requiring you to restart the level. It is also possible to get stuck in the environment, forcing you to either die or restart the level.

There is fun to be found with the game with its action and massacring tons of zombies. If you look past its very unimaginative design, occasional bugs and play solely for the action, you will have fun.

Edited reference accessed HERE. Original review posted by Damien Smith several years ago, edited and added to by Whiterabbit-uk 24th Oct 2016

Other Reviews, Videos and a Slideshow of images showing the How to Play pages:

You can see Steam community reviews of Zombie Shooter HERE, and if you want to see some game-play you can see some videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE (Spanish), HERE, HERE and HERE

. you can play a version of this game online for free HERE or HERE.

Conclusion:

Although virtually the same as previous incarnations, this is still a decent game to play, especially if all you're looking for is some mindless fun. It's a good stress reliever, and for me great distraction therapy for my pain management. I have all of the various incarnations of this game released by Sigma, i.e. the Alien Shooter series, all of the Zombie Shooters as well as others released years ago such as Theseus Return of the Hero, which was given away here way back in 2007.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the developer Sigma Team for giving away 100 keys for this excellent Top down shooter game and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games, in this case a Steam key.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

The problems section that used to be posted here in the Game review is now included in the Game Discussion FAQ's thread; which you can find HERE.

I've updated the games section that used to be posted with the review. The thread is now called 'Weekly round up of game deals', formerly the games section of the weekly reviews. You can find the new thread (which I've posted in the sticky section of the game discussion forums to make it easier to find if you are perusing the game discussion forums) HERE.

If today's game was not to your liking, you may find other games either free or for less than the price of a cup of coffee (from your favorite coffee house) via the 'Weekly Roundup of Game Deals' thread which I've posted a link to above, or HERE.

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The latest free game over on Origin has now changed to the excellent (though now dated) RPG Dungeon Keeper. You can get it HERE. Please note that you do require the Origin game platform to be able to download and install the game.

Also available via Failmid's site is a Steam key for Masked Shooter 2 which you'll find HERE. the deal ends Monday afternoon (UK time) and Ubisoft has been celebrating 30 years in the buisness by giving away games every month since June. Octobers game is the excellent Beyond Good and Evil. You do need a Ubisoft account which is free and the ubisoft uPlay client, both opf which are free. You just have to sign into your uPlay account and look for the Ubisoft turning 30 link HERE, or if you don't have a uPlay account create an account HERE. Click on the green Join the Club button, get your free account, then get your free copy of Beyond Good and Evil. There will be other games coming next month and beyond

The Indie Gala store has some fantastic deals on at the moment, for example you can buy all three of the Sniper: Ghost Warrior games for only $1.99, plus you get a surprise gift. Other games for example buying CT Special forces (for less than a dollar gives you a surprise gift plus a second game called Horizon shift for free. There are loads of games with 90% off and it seems there are hidden deals for example the Daedalic Armageddon Bundle worth almost $150 for under $16, depending on which games you purchase. You can find them all Angel Express

DIG are still offering free Steam keys for Hacker Evolution Time Dimensions and Crystals of time, though you cannot access the deals directly from the main site anymore, but they are still live via the following links:
To get keys for these two games you will have to do similar activities as you do for those Steam games that have been offered for the past several months over on the game giveaway site. You can find those free Steam key deals HERE (Hacker Evolution: Time Dimensions and HERE (Crystals of Time).