RATINGS:

Graphics: 7
Gameplay: 7.5
Sound: 7

Overall: 7

Pros: Fast & fun gameplay, easy to get into and casual enough to pick up and play.

Cons: Particularly short levels, too many different graphic styles, though individually they’re all nice.

                                                                                                                   

Zombies Ate My Pizza (ZAMP) is the latest 3rd-person shooter MMO developed by Reality Squared Games (R2Games), a company also responsible for MMOs like Magic Barrage, Wartune or League of Angels. ZAMP recently entered its open beta phase, allowing us to give it a try and form an opinion. Completely browser-based, the title only requires a rapid registering to immediately jump straight into the action starting with the fundamental tutorial mode that provides players with all they need know and learn by tasking them with various "quests" to increase in level and get access to additional features.

Regarding the story, players are left entirely without any clue when starting out – even the official website maintains a stony silence, we’ve got some information from a press release, however. On post-apocalyptical Earth, humanity is infected by a lethal virus spread by wicked alien bugs and nearly brought to extinction. The virus affects the human brain, turning them into soulless, insatiable zombies who think of humans as slices of pizza ready to be eaten. All across the world, uninfected survivors rise to form militias to bring down the pizza devouring threat. Yes, you’ve got it right! It’s certainly a pretty strange backdrop but due to the MMO’s comical style and continuous pizza references it sort of works.

Zombies Ate My Pizza is quite fast-paced and gripping and all about eliminating enemies by constantly firing at them with your left mouse button while navigating the environment via WASD keys. The 3D side-scrolling visuals and straightforward controls seem to offer the opportunity to easily make the game available on mobile devices and tablets as well – it would therefore be kind of a surprise to us if this wasn’t to happen in the near future.

Players advance through the game’s various levels, using different attack skills and weapons to fight back enemies which gradually increase in strength and get access to new abilities, e.g. ranged opponents or packs of particularly swift doglike zombies and even bosses that possess their personal unique attacks.

Levels are instance-based and players are continually switching between actual combat levels and the quest hub where they are able to enhance their equipment and speak to NPCs to accept new quests. Combat is really fun but PARTICULARLY short though. Due to some attacks inflicting huge area damage and great explosions, you are able to complete certain levels in approximately a minute before being sent back to the quest hub. This was really pretty annoying and we would have preferred to be able to immediately enter the next zone. A few levels completed, you are faced with the zone boss that has to be defeated in order to get access to the subsequent zone and progress through the storyline, which most probably will eventually unveil just in the end what the heck is going on.

You can purchase new pieces of equipment, enhance and upgrade them in order to increase your battle rating, the entire meaning of which remained uncertain to us. Those who ever played any other R2Games title will surely be quite familiarised with the system; you will realise similar premium cash purchases, the same auto routing quests and daily reward pop-ups as well as the characteristic "grading" after completing a zone to inform players how well they performed.

Yet, the gameplay is entirely different in comparison to what the company has published earlier. ZAMP is indeed pretty fun without involving all the grind of some of R2Games’s other titles and therefore, at least in our opinion, maybe the company’s best MMO to date.

The visuals are rather strange with particularly cartoonish zombie characters, which to be honest strongly reminded us of Plants vs Zombies, and so are the level backdrops. Al this really worked well together, adding to the comical tone of the game. However, the NPC dialogue pop-up artwork actually doesn’t fit in there as they are of a significantly more manga style while player sprites/ human NPCs have a kind of Chibi appearance, which simply doesn’t fit very well together. It’s pretty much the same in regards to the music; while powerful and quite well done, it actually isn’t on the same wavelength with the comical nature emphasised by the continuous funny pizza references (the initial NPCs players meet all have different cheese sort names). This surely isn’t a game breaker and far from meaning the end of the world, still it does lack certain cohesion.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2014 at 9:14 pm and is filed under MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o un trackback desde tu sitio web.