Do not ask why Little Mexico has a zoo containing hundreds of elephants. Do not ask why the only people fighting the animal victims of a zombie plague are a pair of small Mexican children. Do not ask how a Roman candle can take down a full-grown pachyderm brought back from the dead via evil forces. Don't ask questions and you might enjoy the hell out of High Voltage Software's Zoombies: Animales de la Muerte!
When they aren't busy having their Wii shooters ported to mobile devices, High Voltage Software is creating what looks like a series of original iOS titles that take popular movie monsters and place them in cultural-specific settings. For instance, last month's Le Vamp was French vampires. Now we've got Mexican zombies. I'm betting the next one is an Italian werewolf with a pompadour.
Not just Mexican zombies, but Mexican animal zombies, or Zoombies. High Voltage travels into territory normally reserved for boss fights or tension building in traditional zombie games, and they bring a couple of kids along for the ride — a fact that would be disturbing if the adorable cartoon visual style weren't just asking for it. These kids need to be eaten by zombie monkeys.
They can try and fight, of course. Each of Zoombies!' places the child of your choice on the left side of the screen, armed with a silly weapon (throwing axe, Roman candle, Chupacabra). Zombies are defeated by tracing the path of your weapon on the screen, adjusting for the forward momentum of the undead critters. Live animals flee in terror from the shambling dead, and should a flesh-hungry abomination reach them before your child kills them, there's be more than one flesh-hungry abomination.
I've been a big proponent of tracing games since the original Nintendo DS came out. The moment I experienced my first gaming touch screen I wanted to trace the tragectory of weapons with my fingertips. Zoombies gives me that pleasure.
It also gives me level-after-level of coin-collecting, weapon and especiales upgrades, and a pair of lovable killing machines I can dress up as ninja, pirates or robots. Plus, it's amazing how much better I feel about killing non-human zombies, or maybe I just really hate monkeys and elephants. Either way, awesome. You just can't put a price tag on that much goodness.
Okay, you can. It's $2.99. It says so right down here. You'd think I would have scrolled.
Zoombies: Animales de la Muerte!
- Genre:Trace Shooter
- Developer: High Voltage Software
- Platform: iOS
- Price: $2.99
Get Zoombies: Animales de la Muerte! in iTunes
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