Developer: Mozg Labs
Publisher: Mozg Labs
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Zombie City Defense 2 – Review
The best part of any tower defense game is the rush – the intense waves of enemies forcing you to throw out everything you’ve got. In Zombie City Defense 2, Mozg Labs takes this and give it a RTS twist that will have you grinding for resources and troops as more and more zombie hordes come smashing through your walls. Plan your defenses wisely in this zombie fueled strategy game, where there are always worse zombies to come.
Story
The world has been ravaged and left to ruin as civilization fell to a virus that turned most of the human population into zombies. One last line of defense stands – an army known as Iron Corps. These survivors must travel the world in search of survivors, resources and answers, forming bases and safe zones amongst the abandoned buildings. This story does not at all stray from the usual zombie themed formula, and is a rather small part of the gameplay of Zombie City Defense 2.
Graphics
There isn’t all that much to look at in Zombie City Defense 2. The visuals are a neon filter type of graphics that are set to look like you are viewing a tactical map from a drone, so everything displayed to you is basic shapes and shadows of an area, with certain things being lit up with different colours so you have control over things on the board. You don’t actually see any units deploy, or any thing that really even represents them. There’s not a whole lot to look at.
Sound
The game has only one track playing through the entire game, from menu to actual gameplay. The track mainly consist of synthetic sounds such as electronic base and beat, accompanied by the occasional electronic melodies. The electronic sounds contribute to the military aspect of the game. For the most part, only the bass and drum can be heard, which does contribute to the feeling of isolation, which is a feeling you expect from this gameplay subject. Added to this is an inconsistent piano melody, which feels rather eerie amongst the sounds. The track really reflect this game to its core. However, this is the only track that plays, so it becomes annoying and repetitive very quickly.
Gameplay
Zombie City Defense 2 is a strategy/defense game, following both the basic laws of RTS and tower defense. You build up your units and defenses while defending your main base, which contains your general, from waves of zombie hordes. If your general falls it’s game over. You can use this main base to produce engineers and militia units. Your engineer units are mainly for gathering resources, and do not possess any combat abilities. You build up these units and send them off to various locations to gather your resources. There are factories, which produce the resources you will need for building and upgrading, farms for food and hospitals that allow you to create medicine. You can upgrade your engineers so they are better at the tasks at hand, or you can deploy multiple units to the same resource to maximize output. Your other buildings are your barracks, used to create your infantry units that will serve as your zombie slaying army, and your depot. You can create vehicles and turrets at your depot, both of which prove useful in your fight. These in-game buildings have health and therefore can be destroyed by strong zombie hordes, or player units such as scouts and infantry. You also have abilities you can unlock and use, such as drones or airstrikes.
Each level has a timer that represents the time you have to prepare until the zombie waves will start. You use this time to scout and gather resources, and spend your in game currency to buy new units. There are four difficulty levels – with the first three (casual, hardcore and master) the rewards and objectives will increase with the difficulty level, and with the difficulty setting of Infinite, you just survive waves. Each map has spawn points for zombies to keep the challenges coming wave after wave.
In the right hand corner of your interface you have play, pause and fast forward buttons so that you can easily stop or speed up your game while you prepare. This part of the display also shows your date, time and weather. The weather is important because your groups and the zombie groups can be influenced by the weather in attack, speed and range. The top of your interface displays all your resources, and the bottom is your menu for building units.
The tutorial of Zombie City Defense 2 is very thorough and a fantastic way to learn your way around, especially if you aren’t overly familiar with strategy/defense games. Everything is explained to you well enough so that you don’t feel lost, but you don’t feel like it holds your hand either.
Conclusion
If you’re the kind of person who smashes out a whole game in one sitting, you may be disappointed with Zombie City Defense 2, as story wise and gameplay wise it is a little short, and possibly too repetitive to have a lot of replay value. However the enjoyment is certainly there. It really is fantastic to see a game in a style of a mash up of an RTS and tower defense be such an enjoyable little game, and it welcomes both veterans and beginners of these genres with open arms.It should also be noted that this game has VR support, which is nice to see and should be interesting to see how it all works through the Oculus Rift. This was a lot of fun, and with minimal bugs, this game gets a recommendation.
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