Alien Zombie Death PSP/PS3 Review

               I'm going to try to only do reviews of games that I am done with or mostly done with, and I am done with Alien Zombie Death, and that is because I have gotten 100% completion and loved every minute of it. There are 112 medals (which are like in-game trophies or achievements) to earn, and I just finished getting the last one. It's a blast, and if you are anything like me, you will love it too (and if you don't love it, you will only be out .99 cents!).

               Alien Zombie Death is a PSN Mini that is playable on PSP and PS3. Like many Mini's, you buy it once and can then download it on either PSP or PS3. You can easily transfer save files between the two with a USB cord so that you can play on both with the same save data, which is pretty cool.

In the game, you control a spaceman on a space platform who is attacked by alien zombies. In each level, you fight hordes of aliens as they attack you from all sides. Your goals are to achieve a high score and to earn medals by achieving certain goals within the level. The level continues until you die after taking three hits. Let's get into the meat of the game; it's gameplay and graphics.

             Each of the 14 levels takes place on a mining platform that is orbiting a planet or its moon. Levels are 2d fields made up of a metal structure with multiple vertical levels and some of the surrounding space. In the background you can see the planet or moon that you are orbiting floating around. Each planet or moon is different looking, which is a nice little detail. The platforms in each level differ quite a bit too. Some are narrow and tall, others are longer.

            You can move around in four directions on the platform. You use the directional buttons to move right or left, the triangle or up button to jump up a level, and the cross or down button to drop down a level. You press square to fire to the left and circle to fire to the right side of the screen, so you can move in one direction and fire in the other direction. A note on the controls: I found it most effective to use triangle and cross to go up and down, and I used my index finger to press triangle so that I could continue to press the fire buttons with my thumb (kind of a reverse Monster Hunter Freedom claw technique). Some people might not like this technique. I personally have no problem with it, but I thought I would mention it.

            You have unlimited ammo with your main rapid-fire weapon, but if you pick up one of the three weapon power-ups, you will have a few seconds to use them before you are switched back to the normal gun. There is a missile power-up that chases enemies down, a laser power-up that cuts through tougher enemies like butter, and a triple-shot that is great at taking out big crowds. And what will you be shooting with these guns? Many, many aliens. There are the standard aliens that run at you in droves, flying bat-like aliens that hunt in big packs, slow amoeba like creatures that shoot at you, and giant flying aliens that fire waves of bullets at you, along with a few other interesting varieties. Each of the seven different types of aliens are unique and require different techniques to defeat. The basic green guys that attack you just need to be mowed down by the dozen, while some of the bigger varieties will need to be shot many times before they go down. Each enemy or group of enemies react to being shot at. Groups scatter to avoid being wiped out, and bigger enemies attempt to get out of the line of fire. Each enemy has their own little well-done AI that they use to dodge your attacks while trying to get at you themselves, and it makes for a dynamic experience.

There are also hazards to watch out for, such as spinning blades and bands of electricity. Each level combines all of these elements in a different way to create a unique challenge. Some levels are bigger and throw hordes of aliens at you. Some are smaller and try to box you into corners with multiple hazards as bigger aliens shoot at you. In each level, radar icons show you where aliens and power-ups are located if they are out of your field of vision. This system works great as you can keep a rough idea of where everything and everyone is and make a mad dash when you see a health pick-up or weapon power-up icon suddenly appear across the level.

              Killing aliens fills up a meter that constantly drains itself. If you kill enough enemies in a row to fill this meter up, your multiplier permanently goes up by one, so you are encouraged to kill enemies in groups to exponentially increase your score. The points start to really rack up when your multiplier is x30 or more!

Each level gives you medals for killing certain amounts of certain types of enemies, collecting a certain amount of coins that appear for a limited time as you play, reaching a certain score, or blowing up the UFO's (Unidentified Flying Objects) that occasionally fly by on the outer edges of the screen. Trying to get coins or hunt UFO's gives you a nice incentive to play the game with a different agenda other than just getting points and killing aliens, and popping a new medal is very satisfying, especially if it is a difficult one that you have been trying to get for hours!

             The game is pretty challenging. Most gamers can probably earn enough medals to unlock all of the levels, but earning every medal available is going to take some time and dedication as you will be diving deep into the most difficult sections of each level to obtain the scores and coins needed to get some of the harder ones. I'm estimating that it took me approximately 15-20 hours to earn all 112 badges.

              And I had a blast doing it. This game challenges you like a 2d spaceship-shooter would. I recently played Ikaruga, and it's hard not to compare the two, as AZD also has you dodging bullets and enemies at a frantic pace and just barely surviving one wave of enemies only to be confronted with another more dangerous wave. Sometimes you will sit back and marvel and how you just survived some seemingly impossible combination of dozens of aliens, bullets, and hazards on the screen by slipping through the tiniest open space, grabbing a weapon power-up, and wiping out the enemies chasing you. The game feels perfectly balanced to me, as the difficulty in each level ramps up from easy to crazy to you-will-die. Yet I never felt like I was the victim of a cheap death. When you die, you will think to yourself, “Oh, I shouldn't have jumped,” or “I should have gone for the power-up first, then the coin.” You almost always die because you made a mistake. Because each level ends in your death, the game allows itself to go over the top with the number of enemies and bullets on-screen, and it's thrilling to survive a few moments longer on your next run-through and finally snag that medal you were after.

                 The visuals are very nicely done too. The design of each alien and the spaceman are all awesome and very well done, as is the animation. It is the new AZD player's joy to discover what each new alien looks like and how it tries to kill you (and how you should try to kill it). While the planets and space in the background of the levels look cool, they are a little pixelated. This is more noticeable on the PS3 version than the PSP version. The lettering and some menu icons also look pixelated on the PS3 version. As a trade-off, the character models (which look great on the PSP) look sharper on the PS3. There really isn't much in the way of music during the levels, but there are tons of sound effects that sound cool and work really well. Each monster has its own sound effect for when it enters the level and when it dies or shoots at you, so listening will help you a lot.

              Unfortunately, this game has two glitches that I experienced. The first is that the music on the level select screen sometimes stops playing when you come back to it from a level. The music will return if you exit to the title screen and then go back to level select. The other glitch is that the game crashes quite often when you quit a level to go back to the level select screen. Fortunately it auto-saves your game first, so your progress is kept, but your PSP will be shutting itself down. I believe this happened to me once on the PS3 as well, but it happened many times on the PSP.
            And those two things are the only really bad things I have to say about this game. I totally loved it and am very excited to play the sequel, Alien Zombie Megadeath, sometime in the near future. I can't believe that such a high quality and well done gameplay experience only cost me $0.99!

This game is a Tier 2 great game. Patch the glitches and it's instantly bumped up to Tier 1. Highly recommended.