Zombie Town | PS4 Review

FunBox's "Zombie Town" is more or less a mobile game ported to console. It is a mission based brawler style zombie survival game in which selected survivors fight or survive against waves of zombies and zombie bosses on lane based streets. It's very much a rinse and repeat experience with several different mini-game types serving as missions with objectives in tow. 

You have accessible through a map a barricaded defense challenge, a run challenge, a hunt a target challenge, a fight a boss challenge, and a challenge set to a time limit. All encapsulated in a little block of street. As you complete each mission or challenge they will increase in difficulty with the zombie threat ramping up, and the need to upgrade becoming increasingly important. What carries you through is health power-up drops, ammo resupplies, and coins which can be spent later on hero and weapon upgrades.

As a chosen hero or survivor of the zombie apocalypse your offensive options come in the form of a melee weapon, and a single gun. You start off with a combat knife, and a hand gun free of charge. Later increasing ammo capacity, and overall damage stats for a price. Using coins collected thereafter on unlocking more powerful guns, and different gun types. 

As the guns level up so too can the heroes/survivors that you play as. As you unlock said heroes, and play as them or play as the initially available one you'll make bank by killing zombie hordes. They'll drop coins which you can pick up, and in turn spend on things like new survivors, health, defense, speed, and base stat upgrades. Eventually maxing out each upgrade category over a span of time. After that it's simply making the top of the leaderboard that matters. 

Achieving top score in 'Zombie Town' comes from sticking to the grind of the varied mission objectives laid out before you. Mission objectives that scale in difficulty as you, yourself, become more powerful. You'll face the same mobs, and bosses in the same locales over and over again to the tune of aggressively motivated combat to defensive measures, and even survival efforts. It's something that is a bit repetitive in nature, and varies little by design. The only reward for the continued grind is the top place on the global leaderboard if you have the patience to stick with it.

The Presentation ...

Visually the game is childlike with added gore, and blood effects to go along with the cartoonish zombie theme. It's very mobile-like in appearance, and harbors a brief onscreen button guide that looks like something you'd be utilizing on a smartphone or pad. There's nothing profoundly great about it, and even the gameplay feels a bit lackluster as there's little incentive to keep grinding through the same types mobs of copy and pasted zombie assets. Audibly, it is all played out to a loud rocking soundtrack that has no volume settings, and is also agonizingly repetitive. You can, however, mute the music if you like.

The Verdict ...

Mobile games are not particularly something I like as a console gamer, and seeing them on console is no more desirable for that reason. That being said, the game does function properly and provides a proper gaming experience if only by the lowest standards of the modern age. It's only true value, outside of the lack of pleasing aesthetics, being the attached leaderboard and the grind to be the best 'Zombie Town' player in the world. That, and some PSN trophies. Other than that it's a bog standard mobile game with minimal effort applied. Nothing truly innovative or overtly creative.