When I stopped by the Konami booth at E3, I saw a game entitled Zombie Apocalypse and knew immediately that I had to play it. Zombies and video games make a great team, especially considering recent hits Left 4 Dead and Resident Evil 5. Zombie Apocalypse isn’t a big-budget retail game, but a downloadable title coming to Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network later this summer. The game takes some obvious cues from well-known zombie shooters, but still manages to be a lot of fun in its simplicity.

Zombie Apocalypse is a two-stick shooter with zombies. That should pretty much tell you all you need to know about the game, but I’ll continue anyway. When starting, you can choose from four characters that seem very inspired by Left 4 Dead (I chose the only chick, and later referred to her as “fake Zoe”). Also like Left 4 Dead, Zombie Apocalypse features four-player online co-op, which is something that makes most games better automatically. This is the case with Zombie Apocalypse, since developer Nihilistic understands that the zombie apocalypse is always better with a friend or three.



Aside from relentlessly gunning down the undead, there are certain innocent people scattered around each board in Zombie Apocalypse that you will have to protect until they can escape by helicopter. If you do not save them, these people will turn into super zombies. There are a few different types of zombies roaming each level, and multiple weapons to pick up as well. The controls are simple, as with most two-stick shooters: one thumbstick moves your character, the other shoots. It’s reminiscent of recent PSN game Burn Zombie Burn, with slightly different controls and a lot less fire.

It can be said that there are already plenty of two-stick shooters and zombie games on the market, but I don’t feel that either of these genres have jumped the shark quite yet. Combining the two concepts, throwing in co-op, and adding a handful of different game modes (most of which we didn’t get to see) should make this a worthwhile downloadable game when it comes out this summer.