I still remember playing Duck Hunt for the first time on the original Nintendo and thinking how cool it was to fire a fake gun at the TV screen and have the shot affect what occurred in the game.
Since then, countless games like Time Crisis and House of the Dead have stolen more of my quarters in an arcade than I can remember. But part of what made those games fun, other than the feeling of firing a gun to play them, was that they presented a different kind of challenge.
Firing a gun was completely different from manipulating a controller or a joystick to play a game. The need to visually aim up your target added a new challenge to the game. Playing Zombie Crisis 3D on an iPhone hits solid nostalgia chords, but it’s still missing that important element.
The Zombie Crisis 3D app might as well be called “Totally Not House of the Dead, We Swear” because the on-rails shooter where you go around blasting zombies in the head is how I remember the SEGA arcade classic. And that’s fine, zombie games aren’t exactly a unique property, but tapping the zombies in the head with your finger is akin to standing an inch from your TV screen and pushing your light gun up against those flying ducks. It’s pretty boring.
The on-rails shooter is just not a genre that translates to mobile devices very well. The only difficulty in the game comes when the flood of zombies is greater than the speed at which you can reload your gun.
With this glaring problem, it would benefit Zombie Crisis 3D if there were some additional elements of strategy that help the app stand out a bit more, like Time Crisis‘ use of cover. But not so much. You shoot at zombies in various dark, drab environments, and eventually you come upon a boss whom you shoot for what seems like an eternity until he’s dead, and you move on and keep shooting.
The visuals aren’t great, but they’re not terrible, either. The gray color palette works for a zombie game, anyway, and the little remnants of body parts you’ve blown off that scatter on the ground are a nice, gross touch.
But there’s no hook here. Zombie Crisis 3D is like drinking flat soda pop. Sure it sort of tastes like it should, but there’s something missing, and you probably should’ve just had water. Until there’s a way to aim your phone at another screen to fake-shoot things, we should just have some water and leave this flat soda alone.
