Everything is trying to kill you in today’s Fresh Games — in Pro Zombie Soccer, your only defense is your mad kicking skills against the relentless undead; Super Crazy Wars has you shooting maniacal video game characters out for blood; and Grim Joggers charges you with saving as many of your misguided jogging team members from a grisly demise. It’s almost the end of the week, and if you’re like me, you could use a little near-death pick-me-up in your gaming, so get the details below.
Pro Zombie Soccer (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
There’s a veritable horde of zombie games in the App Store at any given moment, but even with their huge numbers, Pro Zombie Soccer manages to rise above the rest with a great art style, simple but addictive twitch play and tense action. Oh, and soccer. Tons of it.
With zombies invading and some kind of superhuman soccer abilities, you’ve got to take out the advancing throng of the undead by nailing them with powerful soccer kicks. Headshots rack up more points, and putting together lots of kills lets you access one of three powered-up balls, like a rapid version, a zombie-shredding piercing ball, and an orbital satellite-fired laser beam. Zombie types vary as well, forcing you to act fast and change up your strategy.
Super Crazy Wars (iPhone) $0.99
What makes Super Crazy Wars worth checking out is its huge amount of customization. For a two-stick shooter, the action elements are pretty standard: you move around a 2D space, firing either left or right at different kinds of enemies that carry different weapons. But as you earn more abilities and money, you can buy extra characters who carry different kinds of weapons; buy extra weapons; and upgrade them all. Earning better equipment will keep you fighting.
Super Crazy Wars also has a fun premise and art style — you’ve been sucked into an iPhone game, and the world is populated by recognizable versions of popular video game characters, like Halo’s Master Chief, Link from The Legend of Zelda, and assassin Altair of Assassin’s Creed. Of course, they’re all out to kill you, so you have to kill them first.
Grim Joggers (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
What’s better than guiding a character through side-scrolling running game? Guiding a whole team of characters — that’s what goes on in Grim Joggers, which isn’t especially different from other games except that you’re guiding a whole jogging team through hazardous levels. Like other running games, you tap to jump over deadly obstacles and your speed increases over time, but Grim Joggers requires an adjustment of strategy to help guide as many members as possible of the team to the end of the stage.
Jumping triggers the lead jogger to hop into the air (or double-jump, if you choose), and he’s followed shortly by the rest of the joggers, as if he really was leading the team. This means that in order to get everyone across gaps or past spikes, you’ll need to time your jumps to get everyone clear of the obstacle. Add in deadly traps and joggers getting impaled, squashed or slammed to their deaths (which, morbidly, is kind of funny), and Grim Joggers finds a way to endear itself despite being part of a very crowded genre.
