There Will Be Brains (XBLIG): "Barricades, Zombies & A Wide Variety Of Weapons"

Sometimes I really look forward to a release of certain XBLIG titles, and 'There Will Be Brains' just so happened to be one of those games. The game takes a simple concept, and delivers it in a very artistic manner. As the gamer you will take control of Jackie, redheaded girl who has found herself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. To begin with you are given a gun, and a barricade of furniture to hide behind. With these tools, and weapons that you buy (from a merchant) you must stand your ground against wave after wave of the living dead. The game is mission based, and you must defeat zombies while gathering the right amount of gasoline in order to progess through different points/missions on the map. In a sort of 'Resident Evil 4' fashion the game provides the opportunity to purchase more/better weapons from a traveling merchant with the money that you loot from the undead denizens. If you survive long enough, and purchase the best protection you might just come out of this situation alive.

'There Will Be Brains' is all about the offense, and the defense. To begin with you start off with a handgun, and a furniture barracade to fend of theever-growing crowd of walking dead. After the first wave of zombies a mysterious merchent will make himself known offering you some weapons for sale. There are three categories of weapons available to wield at one given time. The first selection/row of weapons features guns (handgun, shotgun, tommy gun, sniper rifle ...). The next selection of features melee type weapons (gladius, cricket bat, axe ...) for fending of the zombies when they get too close. The last available selection of items are one use weapons (bombs, cannon, labotomizer ...) that will clear the screen of zombies.

The barricades in 'There Will Be Brains' actually represents your life. When you first start off the barricade will be at '100'. As zombies attack the barricade that number will decrease by '5' each time the barricade is hit. I found that taking out the quicker zombies first definitely helps in the preservation of your defense/barricade. Once to take care of the quicker/more difficult zombies the others will be easy considering that they move rather slowly. A good thing about the barricades in the game is that you can replenish them after you complete each wave of zombies, and enter the merchant/shopping mode. It is very necessary that you keep your barricades at '100', because once zombies start damaging it you can't repair them until the round is finished.

The graphics in 'There Will Be Brains' were quite impressive. Shotgun Aces, the developers behind this unique apocalyptic game added their own artistic look to it. I would have to say out of all the indie games I've reviewed that the art style in this one was one of the most impressive. The in-game soundtrack was also pretty cool, and featured a jazz-like sound to it. On the downside the game's dialogue was majorly flawed. I'm not sure what the cause of it was, but you cannot read all of the dialogue between the main character and support characters due to the size of the words. I couldn't find any screen adjustments to fix the problem either.

In the end I found 'There Will Be Brains' to be a game that had potential, but that fell short with a pretty serious flaw. The lack of options was also a bit of a letdown. I even noticed that the trailer of the game differs greatly from what is presented in the actual game. I didn't see any of that 3D animation that looked really cool which was definitely disappointing. The good points to the game were definitely the artwork, and the music. The gameplay wasn't bad either. I just wish I knew what was being said between the characters. With all of that in consideration I can't recommend this game as a worthy purchase.