Rock Zombie brings back the much-missed feeling of classic arcade brawlers, as you fight to survive a horde of zombies that have invaded the concert of an all-female rock band. The side-scrolling action is most reminiscent of Double Dragon and TMNT: Turtles in Time, so basically a bad 80s or 90s B-movie in video game format. It’s at this point that I am required by gaming law to brag that I beat Double Dragon on a single quarter. Anyway, onwards with the review.
As far as backstory is concerned, Rock Zombie is an intriguing concept. Zoe, Sasha and Crystal are three witches that moonlight as members of an all-female rock band. I know, right? During one of their shows, a mysterious green smoke is emitted into the atmosphere which causes the entire audience to be morphed into zombies. In order to survive, the girls need to use their magic guitars and spells in order to locate the source of the green smoke and eliminate it.
You fight your way through 20 levels with plenty of bosses scattered throughout. There are two different types of attacks; magic and melee. The melee attacks are either horizontal or vertical, with the horizontal attacks being “get away from me” type shots and the verticals being for enemies directly in front of you, such as *gulp* spiders. As far as the magic is concerned, all three of the girls use the same attacks, but you get to choose from Magic Ball, Magic Thunder and Magic Rain.
You earn magic power by using melee attacks to charge up your meter. The Magic Ball shoots a ball of light toward an area of enemies. Thunder shoots a straight light beam which turns all enemies in its path into dust. Magic Rain, the most powerful attack in the game, sees three beams of light come down from the sky in a circle around you.
Although I usually tend to gravitate more toward magic attacks in games, I found myself using the melee attacks more in Rock Zombie. This wasn’t for variety reasons, as for all intents and purposes Rock Zombie has extremely little of that. I was more compelled to use melee purely as a means to an end – to recharge the magic meter – and get to use the cool magic abilities more often. I really wanted to use Magic Rain as much as I could.
Each kind zombie you fight will determine the attack you will need to use. Figuring out the appropriate attack for any one of the six individual zombie types is easy. You have a mix of dog zombies (yup, dogs), exploding fire zombies and acid spitting zombies, as well as zombies that walk, run or crawl.
A bad thing about Rock Zombie is there are absolutely no weapons or power-ups for your attacks. In games of its type, like Turtles in Time, at least you were able to slam garbage cans or street parking meters into enemies. I was hopeful for a few seconds when one of the marines dropped their gun on the ground but I just walked over it and nothing happened. My excitement quickly dwindled as I realised there wasn’t going to be anything else to this. At the very least I would have liked to see my magic guitar shoot bullets or something, but alas, there was to be no magic guitar bullets for this poor soul.
Because of this, although the game was fun at first, as time went on it did get repetitive. Out of 20 levels, 18 of them are pretty much the same. Go from left to right in standard arcade format when the blinking arrow saying “GO” pops up. The other two are driving levels with a car and motorcycle. They are a nice variation from the standard levels and add an interesting mechanic. If you’re looking for over the top zombie killing like Dead Rising than you’re going to be disappointed. On the other hand, if you appreciate Rock Zombie for what it is – in the realm of 90s arcade type side to side brawlers – then you’ll get a kick out of the driving levels as I did.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a brawler without the level based traps. You’ll encounter a few different types like land mines, poison, octopus pools on the ground, for instance. Unfortunately, you’ll be disappointed to find out that these traps aren’t as much traps as they are blocks, as in they block only your progress and not the zombies. So when you walk through a spider web and get slowed down or an octopus grabs you to hold you in place, you’re pretty much zombie food in the making.
I would have liked to see the puddles slow the zombies down and traps impact their progression as well because it would have added strategy. It would’ve been cool to let them line up in front of the traps, get caught and kick their zombie butts. It’s not a total killer, just something that would have added a benefit to the overall gameplay.
There are different difficulty modes to add a bit of extra spice though. Remember going into an arcade and finding a game with the flashing “press start” on the screen instead of “insert coin”? Well two of the game’s difficulty modes are like that in a sense. Unlimited continues allow you start at the beginning of the level you die in. That’s a bit easy for hardcore players who remember trying to beat all the games at the arcade like I did. For us lot, there’s the hard mode arcade 1990 difficulty.
Once you are out of lives, you are back at the main menu and wondering where you went wrong with your life. I could see how this might be frustrating to some people, but personally I loved this mode so much that it’s become my favourite difficulty setting from any game. It reminds me of when I was younger, with a style of gameplay that’s not really around much anymore. These memories warmed my heart and brought a smile to my face, so I thank the creators for that.
Another prominent feature in classic arcade games was the character design, with most being quite downplayed and wooden. Rock Zombie holds true to this to perfection. Sasha, Crystal and Zoe have the same attacks differing only in color, with their attacks yellow, blue and red respectively. They don’t talk and they don’t change expression. In fact, they look like porcelain dolls with a grunge rock makeover to be honest. The short hair and skimpy, leather outfits scream punk rock and the accompanying music adds to the overall feel of the game as well.
While the imitation of older brawlers is mostly very faithful, they do make some subtle improvements. At certain points in the game it will be raining and you’ll see water droplets on the screen. This usually wasn’t possible in old arcade games and these little touches definitely improve the game’s presentation without spoiling the retro vibes.
Summary
Taking into account the comic book-esque cutscenes, choppy maneuvering, retro music and simplistic attacks, Rock Zombie gives you the prototypical arcade brawler experience reimagined for modern consoles. What some might call flaws, I call accurate recreations of the genre. All in all, Rock Zombie is a great homage to a specific era and genre of gaming that will absolutely have you reminiscing about the good old days and smiling as you let nostalgia wash over you.
Will was a regular ICXM contributor in 2015, publishing 31 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One’s first full year of post-launch coverage, including the early days of Backwards Compatibility and Windows 10 gaming.