Welcome Time Wasters!
This week’s Time Waster is a little different from the normal. I didn’t search around and try to find something to play, but instead had something sent to me. What truly makes this Time Waster different though is that the game I’m reviewing is an OUYA release; except I played it on the PC!
This week I played Washington vs. Zombies. The game was sent to me for review by the people over at Jump or Fall. The developers wanted me to review this for them, but they didn’t know if I owned an OUYA or not (I don’t) so they sent me a PC build of the game. So first things first, thank you to Jump or Fall for sending me this game!
Washington vs. Zombies is a side-scrolling shooter that has President George Washington fighting off hordes of zombies. The basic idea behind the game is that the redcoats started turning into zombies during the war and Washington took it upon himself to stop the apocalypse.
Player’s will control Washington as he slashes and shoots his way through various levels. Washington has three different types of weapon available to him: his sword, rifle and pistol. Players can buy better versions of each of these weapons with coins that are dropped by the enemies in the game.
This is where I had a problem with Washington vs. Zombies. At first each of these weapons appears to have it own special purpose in the game, but as they are upgraded, this changes. The pistol starts off as being a weapon with low damage but a quick reload and the rifle has high damage and a long reload. This makes for two unique types of weapons. However, after reaching the third rank of these weapons they simply become machine guns with the same rate of fire, but the rifle does more damage. This makes it useless to upgrade the pistol as it loses its unique purpose and becomes a weaker rifle. Also, I didn’t use the sword very much because it felt weak when compared to guns. This makes it so that the rifle is the only weapon that should ever be upgraded.
Washington vs. Zombies has three different stages and each stage has 10 levels. This gives the game about three to four hours of play depending on if players grind for better weapons. Players will encounter two different types of enemies in these levels: normal zombies and flying zombies (there are also mummies in later levels, but as far as I could tell they were just normal zombies with a different skin). Normal zombies attack the player by getting close to them and scratching them. This makes them fairly easy to defeat and they really only become a problem when a lot of them collect together, which is normal for zombies. The flying zombies are what gave me real trouble. Flying zombies attack the player with a type of breath attack that is very difficult to dodge. I had more problems with a single flying zombie than I did with a horde of normal ones.
Boss battles in Washington vs. Zombies weren’t really a challenge. Unfortunately, all of the bosses in the game have really limited AI that makes them really easy to defeat. The only one that even gave me slight trouble was the second one, and that was only because I had one hit left before I died when I started fighting him and had to play it really safe.
Graphics in Washington vs. Zombies aren’t bad. The characters have a charm to them with their strangely proportioned bodies and disconnected feet. It kind of reminded me of this old flash game series I use to play called Thing Thing. One thing that I noticed was that there was a blood splatter effect that would cover Washington if he killed a zombie that was really close to him. It was a small touch that felt cool to me
One thing that bugged me with the graphics was specific to the third area of the game. In the third area some of the floors are nothing but a thin black line hanging in the air. This wouldn’t really be all that bad, expect that multiple times in that area players are faced with navigating these floors with a black background. This left me dying a couple of times because I couldn’t’ tell what was part of the floor and what wasn’t.
Audio in Washington vs. Zombies isn’t anything special. There is some background music that plays throughout the game, but it is barely noticeable over the constant gunfire. The sound effects aren’t bad either, but I did notice that if a gun was fired for more than a few seconds that I could hear a clear stop as the audio track for the gun looped.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with Washington vs. Zombies. The game isn’t bad, but it does have some flaws and there is definitely room for improvement. My biggest complaint is that later versions of the weapons all blend together to the point that the rifle is really the only weapon that matters. But hey, the game is free and it isn’t a bad way to waste some time.
Washington vs. Zombies earns 3 GiN Gems out of 5!