Just stay dead.
I was asked to review Rock Zombie. I had no idea what Rock Zombie was, but as I say in many of my reviews, I’m willing to give anything the old college try. I booted it up and immediately knew what I was in for. Right away the lifeless, Second Life-looking characters mixed with the simplistic game design was a dead giveaway – this was going to be either so bad it’s good, or just plain bad. Sadly, there is little to no good I can tell you that.
Rock Zombie is a side scrolling beat ‘em up featuring three members of a rock band. During a show one night, a zombie outbreak occurs and the trio must bash their way through the zombie hoard using their guitars in order to survive. Most of the story, which all comes in the form of comic book scenes, was uninteresting and had no bearing on anything, so after about three of them I began to skip them.
Platforms: XB1, Wii U
MSRP: $7.99
Price I’d pay: I wouldn’t buy it.
There is somewhat of a combo system in the game utilizing the horizontal slash and the vertical slash along with magic attacks that are mapped to the face buttons. Magic can be built up by killing enemies or pickups scattered throughout the levels. Certain enemies can only be hit with vertical attacks, but the targeting is so sporadic, I could never tell if I was either close enough to hit them, or at the right angle. The 2.5D perspective doesn’t help things.
There are a few different sections featuring boss fights or using a motorcycle that break up some of the monotony, but those then get momentous. I never found it to be a very difficult game, but one that was rather bland and uninspired.
While many would think since I can choose one of the three band members to play as it would offer up some kind of co-op mode, either locally or online. Well, that would be a false assumption. The only thing that changing a band member does is offer up different stats that I honestly couldn’t tell the difference in. Collecting coins in the game will allow players to purchase new guitars and outfits for the characters as well as a gallery of sorts for seeing the character models.
The issues there is the character models look to be some kind of stock assets found in a strange DeviantArt section. Along with a shoddy level design and rather boring look of it all, this looks like a game that was in development for Steam and was to be sold for $5 in hopes that the developer could made a small profit off of cheap assets. How this got approved on the Xbox store is beyond me.
If there was any redeeming quality to Rock Zombie, I will have to give them the music. While it repeats far too often, I didn’t mind the generic “butt rock” that was accompanied by the boring game play. It at least fit the tone of the game.
Even for comedic value, I would still not suggest the $8 price tag. While not broken, the game is boring, uninspired, and plain ugly. Offering no co-op at all means even if you wanted to Mystery Science Theater the game, it would be a boring mess. Steer clear of Rock Zombie. It’s not undead. It’s just dead altogether.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
