Zombie Shooter 2

The Short

Pros

- Improved animations and graphics over the original...sort of

- Actually tries to have a story with voice acting and plot developments

- Car sections are fun

- Wider arsenal of purchasable guns and upgrades

- More RPG elements

Cons

- Fails in execution of nearly every new thing they implement

- While animations are better, the color pallet is very bland, even with "grayscale" mode turned off

- Gun balance with the new arsenal feels nonexistant; guns can range from overpowered to totally useless

- Two new stats are useless, and weird translation makes me wonder what they actually do 

- Story is also poorly translated and voiced over

- Honestly, just play the first game and ignore this one

Time to shoot more zombies. 

The Long

So after Zombie Shooter was weirdly good, I guess Sigma decided to try and up the stakes with the second game. Touting some rather radical changes to the formula, a new engine, and a new aesthetic, Zombie Shooter 2 on paper looks leagues above the original. Is it?

Nope. It's way worse, actually.

That's some quality writing. 

There's so many missteps it's hard to know where to begin. I guess we can start at the beginning: same title song as Alien Shooter and Zombie Shooter. Which...whatever, I guess that's fine. But then you get to the character select screen, and things get stupid.

They have a ton of characters now, each with a wide range of stats. In addition, you have two new stats: Wisdom and Intelligence (or something like that). One gives you more experience and one..."helps you learn skills faster?" What? What is the difference here? Either this is a bad translation or I don't get it (maybe the other gives you more skill points on level up? But I never got more than one, even though I pumped points in that stat...), but both seem redundant. Spending my level up on points to help me level up faster? Why not just balance your game better? 

Then you get into the game, and stuff gets worse. I will say that at least this game had widescreen support (finally), so it doesn't look stretched out constantly, but that's the worst of this messes graphical missteps.

Does this look bland to you? Or is it just me?

The lighting is better and the animations are improved, but man...the graphics are boring. Look at the original: it was cartoony and bright and vibrant. This one is dull and ugly to look at. Which actually is sort of a cool idea; it defaults to a film grain and black-and-white filter overlaying everything so it looks kind of like the original Dawn of the Dead or something. And while I think that's cool, it execution Zombie Shooter 2 looks grainy and dull. Even with all the filter overlays off the game is still bland, so the problem is the underlying art, not the filters they put over it all.

So anyway you get past it being hideous and start playing, and realize something else: there are a lot more guns in this game, and you have to equip them to slots and have a grid-based bag like Diablo II. Which would work if the guns were interesting. Upgrading individual weapons is gone again (like they learned nothing from Alien Shooter) and instead we just have a lot of them to keep swapping out. Except they didn't bother to balance anything, so the zombies take forever to kill and, unless you buy some super-powered weapon, you'll be fire peashooters the whole game. What?

You also fight naked winged demon chicks, which last I checked are NOT ZOMBIES. 

Ammo is scarce unless you are playing on easy, which makes me think that (with that and the art style) they were going "survival horror" over arcade. But you can't just use an old system, slap a few survival-horror tropes on it and hope it works. As an arcade shooter it fails completely, and as a survival horror game it fails too. So a double dose of suck. 

Oh, there's a story this time, in case you cared, further pushing the "We are a serious game now!" idea. Well, it sucks. Translations are poor at best, voice actors obviously not speaking English as their native language, and it's just a boring "go here, go there, damn zombies!" experience. Not enjoyable.

Tons of options, all of them boring and useless. 

I'm kind of mad. I liked Zombie Shooter for its stupid, arcade action and just general disregard to caring if it was good or not. Zombie Shooter 2 obviously tries, but fails completely. Sorry, Sigma, you aren't cut out for survival horror or games with any sort of story. Just...go back to making generic, repetitive arcade shooters with light RPG elements. It'll work out better that way for everybody.

Also, this game is $10? Yuck.

One out of Five Stars. 

Um...sure. Yeah, you do that.