--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                           "ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE" by STAX
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

system .. ST, STe, STeem, 1 MB RAM, RGB

genre ... "Operation Wolf" clone

release . 1o/2oo3

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quite unsuspected BOD of STAX brought  us some little game for the ST series and
since games are damn seldom nowadays on our machines, I got wet fingers untill I
was able to checked it out.



Woaaah... I'm in fear... bibber!

The title of the  game, "Zombie Apocalypse" as well as the game genre speaking a
clear language. It is a static shooter  where you just  have to  kill all things
that appear  on the screen. And what appears? Several  undead freaks, armed with
grenades, basebats or just their  claws and the  longer they  stay on the screen
the lower gets your lifeline... For that you have to shot at them and the wounds
you create remembering hard to some shotgun, dooooomie :)

You can collect grenades  that taking  over the  job of a  smartbomb and killing
everything on the screen. Very  essential is  it too, to collect  ammo, as it is
quite shitty to fight with undeads without a functional  weapon. Btw, isn't it a
bit paradox to kill something that is already dead?

The game plays in a zombie infested city and you have to escape from this place.
So you get every 3 levels a new scenery. The zombies appearing behind a wall and
you have to point the crosshair  using the mouse onto them and "blamm", give em'
a blast in  the head or body. They always need some shots to die and vanish from
the screen. There are  different  types of enemies  and not all seem to  be that
dangerous to you, but who cares, delete them all.



Grrrr... flesh, blood, bones...

Ok, let's  go for the tech specs. The  game comes  along with a small intro with
a Stax logo  and then  the title picture, along with some tracker music at quite
low replay frequency. After  pressing the  mouse buttons you enter the game. The
whole game  is controlled with the mouse, but there isn't much to control, point
and shot... The grafix  in the intro  and the game itself are on a very mediocre
level and so the  animations of the zombies are  as well. I'm interested to know
where the grafix are originally coming from as it seems as they weren't done for
this game in the first place.

In the game  itself you can listen  to some nice and  original chiptunes done by
the new Stax'er Schemantix.

A bit unclear is the way you're loosing  your life energy as well as there is no
display of the zombies still to  kill to reach the next  level nor a display for
the still available  number of ammo (except the grenades). So it's  some kind of
blind flight  as there seem to be  no extras as new life energy to survive a bit
longer.

If you have  lost your life you enter the highscores, that are, as so often, not
saveable. Not the best thing for the gamers motivation. Btw, your score consists
of the number of kills and your accuracy at the shots.

So what else? Not much... and so we're reaching the...

final words... "Zombie Apocalypse" isn't a  real  burner. The game  idea doesn't
               gives that much away and the realisation didn't  used all chances
               to make the game  more interesting. The grafix  aren't  real ass-
               kickers, the animations using just two or three frames or so on..
               The overall presentation isn't a  killer at all but does its job.
               The musix are ok, the chipsounds nice but some fx would have done
               little wonders, as you don't hear  any special fx... Overall it's
               just a game for the  coffeebreak and  since there are no saveable
               highscores there isn't that much interest in loading it again...

_________________________________________________________________moondog_11/2k3_