REVIEW: Zombie Driver: Ultimate Edition

Zombie Driver started life as a PC game, developed and published by Exor Studios. The popular title has since drifted its way on to Xbox 360, PS3 and Ouya.

Under the ID@Xbox program, Exor Studios have been able to bring Zombie Driver to Xbox One. By utilizing the extra horse power, Exor were able to create an experience more appropriate for 8th gen consoles, leaving previous versions in the dust. The “Ultimate Edition” of Zombie Driver contains all DLC and tweaks from previous versions, as well as some hefty technical improvements for the Xbox One.

I’ve spent a ton of time with this game, and here is my blood spattered analysis.

Indie games can’t really be held to the same scrutiny as a big budget title. A game can have all the money in the world poured into it, and still yield a poor experience. Conversely, a game can be obviously low budget, and still provide a great experience, but does this describes Zombie Driver?

Gameplay

The game puts you behind the wheels of various vehicles, and then has you drive into zombies. On that basis Zombie Driver may have the most concise and accurate title in video game history. In the game’s story mode, you perform various tasks for an unknown military outfit. This mainly involves driving around the sizable and detailed city map rescuing survivors, destroying zombie lairs and other standard “go here, and do this” quests. There are alternative game modes such as “Blood Racing” which has you race against and destroy A.I. vehicles and a Survival Mode, where you defend against waves of zombies in specifically crafted arenas.

Each car has multiple skins and comes with upgradable stats. The city is littered with weaponry which you can magically attach to your vehicle simply by driving over them. You can also upgrade weapon damage and effect, but you can only have one weapon type equipped at any one time. I think it would’ve been less cumbersome to just let you attach every weapon to your car, collecting ammo instead, but the design seems to be in-keeping with Zombie Driver’s unashamed arcade focus. The upgrade system is limited by some of the design decisions made by Exor Studios. Many of the upgrades have gated requirements, as in you can only unlock them once you’ve hit a certain level – making the games monetary system completely arbitrary. You obtain cash by completing objectives and racking up zombie kill combos. You’ll always have enough cash but you’ll more than likely be disappointed when it comes to purchasing an upgrade, as you’ll have to wait until a later stage to unlock them.

Zombie Driver uses a ‘retro’ style camera reminiscent of the first Grand Theft Auto. The camera angle can be modified in the options slightly, but its still very much a top-down affair. The decision to lock the camera this way was no doubt wilful, in keeping with the throwback sensibilities of the game — but I found it to be restrictive. The right stick is completely un-used in the game, and I would’ve liked to be able to pan around using it, maybe even zoom in to get a better look at the carnage I was wreaking on the bonnet of my zombie murder machine.

Now with some of the negatives out of the way, lets talk positives. Zombie Driver is fun.

Exor Studios utilised the Xbox One horse power to up the count of nasties on screen, delivering an experience that would make Dead Rising 3 blush. There are literally thousands of zombies all begging to be churned into meaty chunks, allowing the less civilized of us to fully realise the guilty pleasure of running people over in GTA. The vehicular slaughter is gloriously enhanced with PhysX. Meaty chunks of flesh explode and vaporise against your car in glorious plumes of crimson gore, accentuated with raining limbs. Its a thing of beauty, enough to bring a tear to one’s eye, well– if you have some kind of anti-social personality disorder.

Despite the array of high powered weaponry at your disposal, Zombie Driver presents a solid challenge. Driving into zombies with poor momentum can see you grind to a halt, right in the middle of a crowd. Depending on your vehicle type, your vehicle condition can deplete fast in those situations resulting in an unceremoniously fiery death.

Whilst generally I found the difficulty to be well balanced, there were instances where I became incredibly frustrated. In one instance I had been tasked with driving a slow, weaponless truck around the map, collecting supplies for the army. The poor acceleration, combined with lack of weapons resulted for a poor experience that made me wonder if the game had been retuned for the increased amount of zombies. Furthermore, cutscenes are unskippable, and are marred with awful voice acting. Having to re-live the same cutscenes over and over when you’re stuck is quite annoying, particularly when the story is a blatant afterthought.

To overcome the truck level I had to more carefully plan my route – avoiding side streets and instead going for freeways where I could maintain my vehicles momentum. This allowed me to avoid presenting zombies with the vulnerable sides of my vehicle by slowing manoeuvring around side streets.

Beyond standard walkers, the game also has exploding zombies and projectile-throwing zombies, both of which force you to think more carefully about where you’re driving. Some objectives require you to clear the area of zombies before initiating a cutscene or objective. Combined with an engine that seems to respawns zombies infinitely, indiscriminately, this presents an obvious problem. These mechanics sometimes cost me side objectives, forcing me to again wonder whether or not the game had been retuned for the larger population of zombies found in the Xbox One Ultimate Edition.

Every level is essentially the same, but the game does an admirable job of changing it up just before monotony sinks in. Every time the game began to feel repetitive, Exor Studios thoughtfully thrust me behind the wheels of a tank with infinite ammo, or a high powered bulldozer. The flavour levels keep the game ticking over, but more variety in the environments, missions or enemies would’ve been a welcome.

Graphics & Sound

Independent titles are often judged on art style rather than graphical fidelity, but Zombie Driver delivers on both counts. Zombie games often have a lot of emphasis on gore, so bringing an engine to compliment that is paramount. PhysX does a great job of providing awesome feeling physics. Ploughing through crowds never felt this good, chunks of flesh realistically rolling over the hood of your vehicle as you plunge through a sea of shambling corpses. Explosions and weapon effects compliment the game well, exploding with realistic motion blurring and some impressive lighting.

The amount of zombies on screen is quite a feat, even in their miniature state. The monsters are well designed and varied in their own right. The game crashed on me a couple of times and suffered from screen tearing during some of the more chaotic sequences, but was mostly solid.

I’d say the games biggest let down is probably sound. Zombies by their very nature have a limited vocabulary, but Zombie Driver takes this lack in diction to new levels. The same groans and utterances loop over and over like someone hitting repeat on a shovelware soundboard. The sound effect for combo rank ups is equally as annoying, sounding as if it was ripped straight from a free_game_sounds.zip file. Finally, as mentioned previously, the voice acting is bad, really bad. Whilst its to be expected in a title independent of big publisher money, I feel that some of these things could’ve been polished with minimum spend.

Conclusion

How to describe Zombie Driver? Well, the clue is in the title. Despite some of the frustrations, I found myself returning to it time and time again — not because I had to write this review, but because I found the core of a fun game, decorated in a mountain of festering severed zombie bits.

There is a wealth of content to justify the game’s price tag, but only if you really love vehicular slaughter, as the gameplay offers little beyond this. I find the studios insistence on ‘retro’ and arcade style of play limited the games potential, but that’s largely due to my own tastes. I would have liked upgrades to have been a little more meaningful, perhaps being able to take your car into a workshop to kit it out with death devices before hand. Exor Studios has crafted a wonderful playground, but it feels like a missed an opportunity to have created something truly great.

Zombie Driver Ultimate is available on Xbox One for $15