Also On: PSN, PS3
Publisher: Frima Studios
Developer: Frima Studios
Medium: Digital
Players: 1-2
Online: Yes
ESRB: T
At first I thought I disliked Zombie Tycoon 2 because of its level of difficulty. After all, it starts off kind of hard, and the controls are a little tough to figure out at first. But then you get the hang of what youโre supposed to be doing, and you realize that thatโs pretty much all there is to it, and by the second level or so โ some random (and frustrating) difficulty spikes throughout the game notwithstanding โ thatโs no longer a concern.
So then I thought maybe I my problem was with the genre. After all, itโs a real-time strategy game, and Iโve never been a big RTS fan. But then I realized that 1) there are some RTS games I enjoy โ the first Zombie Tycoon among them โ and 2) even when I havenโt liked certain strategy games, I was still able to appreciate their good points and see why some people like them so much (X-COM, Iโm looking in your direction). So it wasnโt genre holding me back from enjoying Zombie Tycoon 2.
Then I figured it might be the platform. I mean, sure, theoretically its status as a cross-buy game means that it should work just as well on the Vita as it does on the PS3, but surely the developers had one of the two in mind as they were creating the game. So I tried it on one, and tried it on the otherโฆand found, ultimately, that while there are probably some differences between the two versions, theyโre too inconsequential to make a difference.
Then I decided it had to be the bugs. I mean, the freezing, the slow-downs โ a few issues here and there, and suddenly all the good things a game might do go out the window. And yetโฆwhile the bugs are hardly a mark in Zombie Tycoonโs favour, I canโt say that they had a huge impact on my enjoyment of the game one way or another. Heck, at a few points freezing actually helped, since when I turned my console back on, I was suddenly advanced to the next checkpoint. Iโm not going to complain about being pushed forward during a game that bores me half to deโ
And there it is. Thatโs why I donโt like Zombie Tycoon 2: because, above all else, itโs boring. More than the frustrating spikes in difficulty or the bugs, the whole game is just a neverending slog. It feels like youโre doing the same thing over and over and over: you spawn some zombie hordes, you direct them to move very slowly in the direction of a target, they hit it for a few minutes until it dies/you take control of it, andโฆrepeat. Not even the presence of boss fights or stealth levels can break the feeling of monotony that sets it incredibly quickly. I know that some level of patience is required for RTS games, but this โ this is something else entirely. Itโs just dull, and no amount of excuses can hide that fact.
The dullness isnโt confined to the single-player mode, either. The gameโs multiplayer consists of a single map and one-on-one deathmatch. Itโs a little more challenging, I guess, since youโre dealing with an actual person instead of AI, but the extra challenge doesnโt make it any more fun. Iโm not going to pretend I played multiplayer very much, but Iโll say this: in both of my matches, it took me about ten minutes to find the opposing player. By that point, I was so bored with the match that I sent my sideโs leader straight into the line of fire, just so that I could get the thing over with. Iโll admit that Iโm not big into online multiplayer, but I have a feeling that โembracing the sweet release of deathโ usually isnโt the reaction developers are aiming for.
So, if youโre an RTS-loving Vita owner, bad news: Zombie Tycoon 2 is most definitely not the game youโre looking for. But there is a sliver of hope โ the original Zombie Tycoon is available as a PSP Mini for about one-third the price, and itโs significantly better in almost every way. If you absolutely must have a strategy game on your Vita, then โ at least for now (until/unless History Legends of War: Patton gets released on this side of the Atlantic) โ that is a much better option by far.