Truly, this is the Age of Zombies.
Age of Zombies’ life on Android as an exclusive download for the Sony Xperia Play, which is rather appropriate as it originally started as a Sony PSP downloadable game early last year. Now Age of Zombies has been modified to work without the physical controls of the Xperia and instead take the controls to the screen, like other Android dual joystick shooters. The on screen controls work exceptionally well, with large areas for your thumbs to move around in that re-position when you press your thumbs back on the screen.  Having tight controls is always a huge bonus of course, but in Age of Zombies it can be hard to fire a gun without hitting a target.
The story behind Age of Zombies is a thin excuse to have your character, Barry Steakfries, travel through time to rid the world of zombies in five different time periods. Each level is introduced and sent off with a few groan worthy lines from Barry which are rarely amusing and wouldn’t sound out of place coming out the mouth of a somehow less funny Duke Nukem. But story and bad one liners isn’t the reason you’d come to a zombie game and I’m happy to report that the zombie killing stays fun throughout the couple of hours or so that the main story lasts for.
There’s no shortage of zombies to kill in Age of Zombies and often your screen will become filled with meaty targets to fire one of the half a dozen or so available weapons at. Each weapon spawns randomly on the map and replaces your primary pistol for only the short while it has ammo. You’ll want to be constantly on the lookout for weapons as when using the single shot, single kill pistol you won’t be able to kill the zombies as fast as they appear. There are also additional pickups to collect such as grenades and sentry turrets which you’ll want to keep around to get out of a tight spot. The AI of the zombies is practically non existent, so by running around the level you can build up quite a zombie train as long as you stay out of the way of the zombie spawning portals until you find a good gun and then you’ll trim back the zombie hoard until your ammo runs dry. This almost Pacman style to and fro is the way that most of the levels play out over and over, but thanks to the different weapons, areas and zombies it doesn’t get a dull as quickly as it would seem.
They sure do Barry, they sure do
Once the main story is over you can play through eight survival maps based off areas in the main story, the purpose of which is to amass the highest score you can before you fall to the zombie hoard. Scores are compared over OpenFeint and Barry will chime in to let you know when you’ve beaten a friends top score for a level. Having the scores show up while playing gives a great incentive to score a little higher as long as you have friends on the system, although it would have been far nicer if you and a friend could team up to brave the zombies together.
It’s a short ride but Age of Zombies is a well put together product with a great soundtrack and a fun, but mindless, zombie slaughter experience.
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