Year: 2011
Genre: Arcade, Action, First-Person Shooter
Website: http://www.limbic.com/
Lee:
- Platform: Android
- Hours logged: 17.0
- Playthroughs: 1
- Rating: 9/10
Shane:
- Platform: Android
- Hours logged: 4.0
- Playthroughs: 0
- Rating: --/10
Notes and Discussions:
- Lee (5/7/2014): Holy crap! This game is ridiculously cool. Initially, I was unsure what to think about it as I learned the controls and the capabilities of the three available guns, started upgrading my gear, and began completing objectives. I enjoyed mindlessly slaughtering the lumbering zombies on their way through the desert to the bunker entrance, but I found it to be quite challenging to avoid shooting the humans. Wait...I don’t mean that I was compelled to shoot the humans... (Actually, there is one objective that required you to lose within the first 10 seconds of the round, and the only way to do that was to quickly slaughter three humans. Hmm... This is vaguely reminiscent of the “optional,” controversial level in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II where you are tasked with walking around an airport killing civilians to gain the trust of the terrorist cell. Or any of the Grand Theft Auto games.) As a bonus, I quickly discovered that one of the beautiful things about Zombie Gunship is that you can knock out a few rounds while sitting on the can at work. Yup.
The premise of the game is that you are a gunner for an aircraft circling one of four key locations. You must switch between three guns of varying sizes to take out waves of zombies approaching the selected map’s bunker. But care must be taken to not kill the civilians that are also making their way to the bunker. After killing a couple hundred zombies, the big zombies start showing up. Then the zombies start moving a little faster. Each round is over when either: 1) a zombie enters the bunker, or 2) you gun down three civilians. You gain money for each zombie killed and for each civilian rescued. This money can be spent on equipment upgrades or to unlock new maps. The goal is to complete a list of objectives, which will enable you to move up the military ranks. When you reach the rank of Captain, you win!
One feature of the game that kind of annoyed me was the ability to watch a short video advertisement to gain in-game money. On the first playthrough attempt, I clicked that button more times than I care to admit, and each time, a little bit of what’s left of my soul disappeared. So I started over!
After starting again from scratch, I was able to utilize one very important strategy that I learned somewhere on the intarweb: DO NOT upgrade the damage radius of the 25mm Gatling gun. This allows you to more easily snipe the zombies that are fighting the humans without accidentally murdering civilians. Several objectives put this ability to the test. Other objectives involved taking out many zombies with a signal shot. Upgrading the damage radius of the 105mm Howitzer cannon helped a lot with these. Another incredibly useful strategy that I read somewhere was to use the 25mm gun on the big zombies. My instincts told me to nuke those bitches with the 105mm, but it’s true, they actually go down much faster if you put a shitload of 25mm bullets into them.
As I played, I didn't really have any indication how much further I had to go, so I kept working at knocking down objectives and moving up the ranks. Zombie Gunship gives you three objectives to work on at a time, so when I found one that I thought would be impossible for me to complete (given that I'm not a particularly skilled gamer), I focused on one of the other two. Much to my surprise, I was eventually able to work through almost all of the objectives! There were two or three near the end that completely stumped me, but the game awesomely allows you to spend some of your hard-earned money to buy your way out of completing any given mission. Fantastic!
This is game joins Kingdom Rush in the category of my all-time favorite Android games. Somehow Zombie Gunship managed to extract 17 immensely satisfying hours from my life. Nice work, Limbic Software!
- Shane (5/7/2014): I also played this game. In fact, I think it was the first game from this Humble Bundle pack that I loaded. Back before I did my stint in the Air Guard I had learned of the existence of the AC-130 gunship. A pair of videos had been released showing them in action in the middle east. (I would link them here but they carry an emotional charge for some folks. The fact that they show the little white lights of people go dark after an odd puff of mono-tone shadow covered their silhouettes had an effect on even me, and I embraced violence back then. Those little lights probably didn't even hear the plane that made them invisible to the infrared camera... Huh... even now it makes me pause for a moment. The death you can't see coming.) So when this game popped up I thought of those videos.
Lee talked about a scene in Modern Warfare 2. The Airport scene. Interesting that he didn't pick the Gunship mini-game. That was also firmly on my mind as I loaded the game up for the first time. The fact that I was hunting Zombies was a fine diversion from the swirl of memories I was juggling.
When the game loaded up... well... it was fun. All of that history faded away and I was chasing small dots and big dots and switching which puff of shadow I sent down. I was the collector of Zombie bounty. I was that death from above and I liked it.
If you have a couple bucks to spend and a couple minutes to kill, give it a whack. Just... don't think too hard about it.
