Review: Zombie Driver HD PSN

Fight your way through the streets of a zombie infested city to save the survivors of a disastrous chemical accident that changed most of the city’s population into mindless brain hungry monsters. Time is the enemy and your car is a weapon as you race through the streets smashing everything on your way including fences, phone booths, street lamps and hordes of zombies.

Pros:

• Graphics have some good detail and hold up well with the fast paced mayhem of the game.
• Three modes to pick from:

1. Story: Go around rescuing people in your taxi, mowing down zombies and destroying nests. Collect money to unlock upgrades for your car or even buy a new car. Cars can be unlocked to buy by performing and completing side missions. These vary and are optional. Being as you get free reign of the map, you can attack scenarios as you see fit in most cases. Some times you may be on a time limit so priorities change.
2. Blood Race: A really fun mode as it is street racing with zombies. Collect pick ups, use your tuned cars and destroy the other racers. Different types of races exist, ranging from straight up racing laps. To more intense events such as eliminator  a frag mode where to win you have to destroy the most cars etc. With all the racing going on, zombies still appear and look to mess you up. You can select a single race or take part in a tournament. Tournaments unlock new levels and cars.
3. Slaughter Mode: This is your wave based, survival as long as you can with one life game type. Pick ups are made available upon hitting a new wave level. Pick ups are random and require you to strategically think before you collect. The game type is fast and fun and requires quite a bit of skill to climb the leader-boards. A good mode if you just want to blow off some steam.

• Earn cash by killing zombies, rack up combos to increase the multiplier, or hit zombies with hand brake turns or with the side of your car for bonus points. Destroying boxes and scenery yields money bonuses but not a lot.
• Loads of pick ups to collect and find. Your obvious ones such as money bundles, weapons and repair pick ups are in game. You cant miss them, each one has its own huge colored ring around it and easily identifies what is what. Once picked up they do re spawn but can take a while. The key is to only take what you need.
• The weapons are cool and range from machine guns strapped to the side of your car to rocket launchers on the roof. Each weapon is lovingly attached to your car and can be seen quite clearly. Weapons are either picked up for a short time or can be bought from the shop.
• Upgrades to your car include overall speed of your vehicle, the durability of the car when smashing into zombies etc. Pay close attention to these stats and pick the right car for the right mission.
• Online leader-boards are available for all game modes and will suit score chasers.
• Controls are easy to learn and can easily be configured to personal taste.

Cons:

• Despite the detailed graphics, the game overall lacks any real color  Yes blood is red and the taxi is yellow etc but, looking at the scenery its a few patchy greens then its all just grey, browns and blacks. It gives a dull impression and even zombies look dull and bland.
• The mini map in the corner displaying mission locations is too small. Yes you can bring up the big map but even that has its own issues. For the level of default zoom on it make it just as hard to read as the small one.
• Camera mode is too loose. You get two options to change it, smart or standard. Both play fine in general until you have to do fast turns or j turns. It either moves too fast or too slow. It can almost make you feel sea sick with all this sudden movement.
• Loads of pick ups, but sods law, the repair one is sparse and is never placed anywhere near the mission location. This causes you to go on a frantic scavenger mission. Not cool when your on a time limit.
• The first few cars are weak and even with a few upgrade buffs don’t last long. Hence the repair pick up problem.
• Story mode may have a weak story behind it, but to be honest its just a series of collect and return missions. Every now and then a boss will be introduced. This just turns into collecting a weapon shooting until empty then rinse and repeat.

In summary, its a decent game if you can look past a few minor issues. Its a zombie game and dares to be different, so for that I applaud it. To be honest with a game type like this there is only so far you can take it before it gets repetitive. The other game modes do a great job of bringing variety to the table. The racing in particular is excellent and has a real arcade feel, could be even better with online multi-player. The game does the basics well and so this game is best played in short blasts rather a long marathon session. With the non HD version of this game on Steam and always available at a lot lower admission price, gamer’s may get put off by the price tag. Trophy hunters will like that it has a Platinum Trophy and is generally easy to play.