Teenage Zombies

Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys, which was released in April, is a video game designed to look like a comic book, with scenes shown as comic frames with text bubbles for speech.

It plays like a standard 2D platformer, Zombies are the heroes battling villains in the form of alien brains that have come to invade Earth.

Gamers play as three zombies, each with his or her own skills and talents as well as unique super powers. The toughest thing about how to play the game is figuring all the moves each character has.

The first zombie, Finnigan “Fins” Magee has several tentacles on his back, which allow him to climb up the side of a wall, or to hang from ropes crossing the area. A typical “Fins” move is to duck down and shoot tentacles in the three directions up, left and right, attacking anything it hits — useful for getting brains that fly above him. His super power is the ability to vomit burning acid after ingesting spicy food, which can melt through metal grates and light objects on fire.

The second character Lori “Lefty” Lopez, can extend her arm to reach areas that are too far for a normal character to jump. This ability allows her to climb stair-like areas and grab ledges when she falls. Her supper power is a Rivot gun, which is limited in that it will only shoot forward or backward and at the same height.

The last Teenage Zombie is Zack “Half-Pipe” Boyd, who moves around on his skate board and attacks enemies by flinging his board out. His mode of transportation allows him to move down inclines really fast and jump over ramps, and also to squeeze through tight holes the others wouldn’t fit into. His super power is big wheels for his skateboard, which allow him to roll over otherwise deadly traps, and mow down the enemies as he goes along.

The game lets players switch between the zombies at nearly any time as long as they are in a non-action state. This means you can’t be hanging from a wall as Fins and switch to Lefty to reach something.

The super powers come in the form of items that you pick up and get one use out of.

Teenage Zombies also contains mini-games throughout, which can be played for as long as you want. Ths mini-games use the touch features of the DS more than the regular game. They allow the player to move logs around to free brains for the zombies to eat or click on bombs and icons to perform manuvers.

Overall, Teenage Zombies is a fun little platformer. The zombies and the comic book style
are interesting, but it gets old after a while.

Quick hits:

Publisher: Ignition Entertainment
Developer: InLight Entertainment
Platform: Nintendo DS
Genre: Adventure
Players: Single player
Launch Date: April 15, 2008

Playability: [rating:4/5]
Learning Curve: [rating:3.5]
Sound: [rating:4/5]
Graphics: [rating:3/5]
Overall: [rating:3.5]