Name: Zombie Infection HD

Developer: Gameloft

Price: $6.99 (Appstore)

Overall Rating: 

As most of us know, Resident Evil is a popular horror video game. Even though Capcom has ported a version of Resident Evil 4 to iPad, most players weren’t satisfied with the under-par experience. Gameloft has now ported their critically acclaimed clone of Resident Evil 5 to iPad, Zombie Infection HD.

In Zombie Infection HD, you are one of two on-site reporters, Damien Sharpe and Alex Rayne. You’re building a story about terrible working conditions at Auricorp, a company in South America. When you arrive, you discover that the workers and some civilians have been turned into various types of zombies.

A quest to write a story on Auricorp and find your missing brother quickly turns into a desperate fight for your life, with tidbits of the story unveiled at every corner. Work your way through 12 levels, looking over the shoulder of your character, similar to the Resident Evil series. After your complete the story levels in any of the three difficulty modes, you unlock Survival mode. In this mode, you are situated in a junkyard venue and must survive as long as possible. The two characters from Story mode are available for play, as well as a bonus character. Zombie Infection also features Gameloft Live integration, and includes tons of achievements and leaderboards for Survival.

Firstly, the main improvement to Zombie Infection HD over its iPhone counterpart is the graphics. Zombie Infection HD is truly stunning. Everything looks bright, crisp, and incredibly detailed. Because of the screen’s size and proximity to your face, it takes up a large part of your field of view. This makes Zombie Infection extremely immersive, and brings you into the game. Especially with the sound turned up, you flinch when a zombie turns up behind your character. This is definitely one of the games you want to show off to your friends.

To control your character through the zombie-killing madness, use a “V-Stick” on the left side of the screen. Look around the South American scenery by sliding your finger on the screen, similar to other Gameloft 3rd person shooters. To control the four guns you acquire through story mode, press the big button on the right side of the screen.

This brings you into a laser sight mode, which allows for extra precision and great headshots. To get out of this mode, press a button located near the V-Stick on the left. Additionally, buttons appear when needed, such as a button for picking up items and interacting with the environment. The melee button is located above the fire button. Also located on-screen are your health gauge, health recharge button, and weapon swap slider. While the controls are located in awkward places by default, the game features Gameloft’s genius system for virtual buttons, movable controls. In the pause menu, you can move the buttons and analog sticks are for your liking. For this reason, the controls in Zombie Infection HD are flawless.

The levels in Zombie Infection will last you about eight hours in one play-through, but Survival mode, alternate difficulty levels, and achievements lengthen that time. The leveled are mostly situated in different environments, with fitting bosses. In the first level, in the slums of South America, you face a zombie butcher who throws knives at you.

In a level at a zoo, you face various creatures such as zombie dogs, lions, and crocodiles. Unlike Gameloft’s other gamesman, these boss fights aren’t just comprised of you shooting at an enemy. You have to dodge and make your way around the level and wait for opportunities to fire. While the game is incredibly fun, it sometimes can get tedious because of the extremely linear level format and repetitive sequences. While the voice acting and story are much vpbetter than the average Gameloft clone, you still can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t a completely new game, it’s a rehashed version of something you might have already played.

To summarize, Zombie Infection HD is a blatant rip-off of the Resident Evil series. But who says rip-offs can’t be great games? Having these zombies infest your iPad would be a very worthy $6.99 investment.

blog comments powered by Disqus