Zombies. You love them; I love them, more importantly we love killing them. Here’s a great idea: let’s set them on fire and THEN kill them. That sums up Burn Zombie Burn perfectly.
You play as survivor Bruce, a greaser-looking zombie killer that’s out to kill as many zombies as he can. He’ll use any and all methods of destruction including baseball bats, shotguns, chainsaws, and even a dance gun. Yep, A dance gun.
The game is an arena based isometric shooter where Bruce runs around collecting bombs, weapons, and, of course, kills zombies. The game is based around a point system where you gain points through killing zombies. You can light them on fire with your torch to create a multiplier depending on how many zombies are on fire. Killing zombies that are on fire makes your multiplayer go back down. Zombies will drop certain items depending on if they are ablaze or not. Fire zombies are faster and deal more damage to Bruce, so there is a sort of strategy involved. There are health pick-ups, bomb upgrades, and speed boosters.
You must complete a certain score milestone to unlock new areas of play. There are four game modes: Free-play, Challenge, Defense, and Timed. Free-play is just what it is: play until you lose all your lives. Challenge mode is where the game gives you 1 of 10 objectives and you must complete them all the while killing the zombie hoard. In Defense mode, you have to protect Bruce’s girlfriend, Daisy while she’s locked in their car. Timed mode gives you five minutes to kill as much as possible. Burning zombies will drop time bonuses so you can continue playing.
Along with burning zombie combos, there are weapon combos. If you kill a certain amount of zombies with a weapon, a bar will fill up. When you fill a bar up three times, you activate the Big Red Button. When you hit the button on the map a special event happens depending on what stage you are playing on.
Some of the weapons are actually really as helpful as they are comical. Like I said earlier, the dance gun will stop zombies in their tracks and force them to dance Thriller-style giving you time to blow their heads off. There’s also a brain gun. Shooting this will suck the brains out of zombies and then throw the brain onto the field, and everyone knows what zombies crave, right? That’s right, brains. All the zombies in the area rush to the brain, this gives you a good advantage to get out of a corner and toss a bomb in the crowd.
The game features a cartoony art style that goes along well with the whole 1950’s greaser theme. The music has the creepy sounding ambiance with hard rock guitar that can get you pumped up to kill some undead. I say in a lot of my reviews that the music gets old after a while. I can honestly say Burn Zombie Burn has a very catchy soundtrack.
The game supports controllers which is great for a keyboard and mouse handicapped gamer like myself. It runs really smooth even when there are over 100 flaming zombies on screen. The only problem I had with the game is that it defaults to window mode instead of full screen. I don’t know why, but it does. Also, for some reason, every time I boot it up in Steam, it starts a first time setup even though I have played the game multiple times for many hours. Other than that, the game is solid.
For ten bucks, Burn Zombie Burn will keep you busy for a while. The game can become addicting especially after one of two good runs with a high score. It’s mindless fun that will keep you playing for a good six hours if not more. It’s a really great pick-up-and-play game. I’d say drop the money on it. You’ll have a blast with the crazy weapons, fast-paced game play, and easy accessibility.
Review copy provided by publisher.
