Ancient Death

Zombies! A word to get your chainsaw-wielding, katana-swinging heart pumping. Zombies powered by an ancient alien MacGuffin, even better. This game does not take itself seriously, or perhaps it's just that I didn't. Either way the result is the same, you get to kill zombies whilst searching for a hidden alien experiment that is a conspiracy theorist's erotic dream.

However before you can get on the zombie killing wagon you need to get out the cell in which you find yourself as the game opens. Luckily, you're a handy MacGyver type with excellent impromptu crafting skills, as long as you've got access to a blueprint and some fortuitously on-hand rudimentary resources.


So you're locked in a cell that just happens to have the plans to build a lock pick. Yeah, that's not contrived at all.

Right, ok. It's a zombie game, logic is not required here.

After getting yourself out of the as yet unexplained jail cell and wandering around in your underwear for a moment of two you are soon confronted with wandering zombies, and unlike the shambling moaning variety, these are runners and will chase you down and attack you. Combat is side view using classic turn based with a few little additions to make combat more informative. The most obvious of these is a handy HP bar for the undead to let you know how close you are to sending them to their grave for the second time. There is also a TP gauge which fills over the course of the battle though you don't have any skills available to you until you go up a level.

The battlers in the game are all custom, and they are great with each different zombie type given its own unique animated battler. These animations have three stages, normal speed, targeted which speeds up the animation and badly wounded where the zombie droops and flails slowly. There are also a variety of different zombie sprites running around the complex, though most of them are luckily locked up behind security lasers. The remainder of the graphical elements look to be from the futuristic tile-set and are used fairly well with only a couple of passage errors. Another thing that has been used fairly well is the music; it's in the industrial rock end of the spectrum for the most part and suits the survivalist vibe that the game is attempting to convey.

It's pretty obvious that something has gone wrong in this complex with the bodies of police officers lying on the ground and zombies running around the corridors, so after a quick episode of pilfering our hero Jason has equipped himself with a gun and finally put on some clothes and he's ready to take on the undead.


I just know this isn't going to end well.

Soon after fashioning a security access pass with a duct tape and a piece of string, you run into the next potential member of your party, if she doesn't gun you down first. Actually Kit's reaction is perfectly understandable, in a complex overrun by zombies shoot anything that comes through the door seems a good survival strategy. Though as you later discover she's a police officer herself, so you'd expect her to be a better shot, perhaps in this near future cops are sent to the Stormtrooper School of marksmanship. Kit is also at a loss as to what is going on and like Jason woke up on a strange contraption in a cell and has been fighting to survive ever since and find her way out. Seems like a match made in Romero heaven.

Kit also has had the good sense to be holed up in a zombie free zone which also doubles as the shop, inn and training ground. By training ground, I mean holodeck. The developer has catered to people who like to engage in combat by including this option as none of on screen enemies respawn; the holodeck provides you with a range of enemies to fight, increasing the difficulty as you grow in levels. For those who don't want to engage in unnecessary battles you can just proceed, but I would suggest taking on a few, at least until your party members have gone up a level or two so they have access to some skills. Though given the TP gauge is numberless it does make the use of those skills a little more hit and miss than is necessary. This section is a little slow, since you do need to grind a bit, monster drops and EXP are fairly low so it does get to be a bit of a button mash for a while, which is never fun. I would suggest that when you do get a bit of gold under your belt you look more towards the crafting items for the use of your hard earned cash. Jason's ability to fashion useful items from medical all the way to weapons is mission critical, and some of the better weapons and armour in the game can only be sourced via the crafting menu.


Aren't you glad you took the time to craft that Lascannon?

Once you've reached a level you're comfortable with it's time to move on. The complex isn't, in fact it's quite simple and linear in its layout with only one place where you need to make a choice in regard to a fork in the road, and even then you have to backtrack and choose the other path in order to proceed. Depending on which way you go you'll run into your final party member either early enough to make something of her naturally, or just in time for the final sequence. In the spirit of learning from others, go left when you get to the central wing and you'll soon find Melody, your healer, and the only one with access to MP. MP in this instance stands for medical points as Melody is a nurse and from her you learn a little more about the nature of the complex, or at least the parts of it she knew. Though she does point you towards the office of the director where more information and conspiracy theories galore are revealed as well as unfortunately quite a lot of spelling errors. There is also a small problem in progression here as a number of skills that both Jason and Kit are stated as learning as they advance in levels do not show up in their battle options, most notably Dual and Triple attack.

After dispatching the rogue zombies of all shapes and sizes, and there are a plethora of those and raiding the armoury for useful items and blueprints to make even more you move on to the last sequence in the game, and the MacGuffin that has been powering the entire enterprise. The developer threw in a couple of kinks into the last sequence that weren't completely expected, but that still worked within the flow of the narrative and did tie in quite nicely with the overwhelming conspiracy vibe that has been woven through the rest of the game, think 28 Days Later meets X-files.

In the end, this game is pretty much all about blowing away the undead and making it out alive, with a little save the world action thrown in for good measure. It's fun and whilst the minimal plot isn't anything new it's not handled any worse than the majority of zombie related media out there. The game does need a bit of polish especially in regard to spelling and grammar, and a look at the missing skills and the subsequent difficulty spike in the final area but all of that is easy to fix or overcome.