Game review: Ubisoft’s Zombi lacks life

Zombi  – what a great title. It’s simple and effective, harking back to the grindhouse movies of  George A. Romero and Lucio Fulci, and the entire low-budget  horror genre they spawned. It’s the kind of title  casual gamers would  do a double-take at in a store and take a chance at a blind buy.

As opposed to, say, ZombiU,  this game’s original title on the Wii U. That sounds like some ridiculous  television show in which reanimated college kids get into all sorts of brain-eating antics while pulling all-nighters for that big Undead Biology 101 exam.

So, a better title, but still not such a great game, unfortunately. This port  to the PS4, Xbox One and PC – of a game that wasn’t exactly impressive when it was first released and is now three years old – is disappointing, to say the least. It can be fun and fear-filled at times, as many zombie games are, but the opportunity to rebuild the initial game – to reanimate it, if you will – has been missed.

There was a clever gimmick hyped about ZombiU when it first appeared on Nintendo’s console, and that’s still true of this new U-less incarnation, making the game stand out from the many undead horror releases that now populate consoles. There’s no real narrative to speak of and your only key goal is to survive. And when your character dies – and trust us, they will, many times – they become part of the zombie horde, with you respawning as an entirely new survivor.

Great idea, right? Just like a real-life zombie apocalypse, where there’s no goal or cure. Only a random survivor, a couple of melee weapons, the endless throngs of the living dead and the very real threat of becoming one of them. Except, a great idea in a video game doesn’t really mean anything without the mechanics to follow through.