Publisher: Xsyntax
Developer: Xsyntax
System requirements: DirectX 9.0c-compatible hardware, Microsoft XNA Framework 4.0
Genre: Action/Strategy
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Zombies have invaded pop culture, much the way a cannibalistic biological contamination might. Similarly, the tower-defense genre has grown like an invasive species, breeding with everything from RPGs to Assassin’s Creed. Uberzombie USA uses this popular genre mutation to let you turn the family farm into your dream zombie fortress and bring three other friends along for company. Does the hybrid gameplay become a beautiful specimen or degenerate into a feral beast, rejected by all?

Uberzombie is divided into two phases, each two minutes long. During the day, you build, upgrade and repair your defenses. When the sun sets, you have to hold off waves of zombies, leaping out of your fortifications only to grab dropped ammo and powerups. Make sure to remember where you place things such as barbed wire and claymores, because they can harm you as well.

Developer Xsyntax has packed a lot of game into the bloated, corrupted tissue of Uberzombie. You can pick from 10 characters, each with unique special attacks. As you play, you unlock nine weapons and 35 different fortifications, plants, baits and explosives. You also upgrade your farmhouse, arming your grandparents for the undead assault.

The term “tower defense” almost doesn’t apply here, as there are no true “towers.” During each 40-day mission, you have to think not just about how to survive today, but also about tomorrow. With more than a month ahead of you, there’s lots of planning to be done. A typical strategy is to fence yourself in with barbed wire and sandbags, which damage and slow down the zombies, giving you more time to properly serve shotgun sandwiches to your guests. Next, create nice explosive perimeters of claymores and frost spores to catch the ones that break through. While your initial toolbox is pretty bare, you soon have a wide variety of implements to make any wild strategy you want. Uberzombie’s brains come not just in strategy form, but also in the fine, liquid form that only occurs with the use of high-grade shaped explosives. The action quickly ramps up and soon you’ll be fighting swarms of attackers from all sides. Undead death arrives and is dispatched in many forms, the varieties of weapons and enemies keeping everything interesting. It’s like building a real zombie fortress, only without the whole “clean food and water” bit.

The art style makes good use of its limited graphical capabilities, with the 2D sprites looking like paper cutouts. The blood and gore look bright and coagulated, and zombies quickly become nasty quivering lumps caught in your barbed-wire mazes. However, the sound isn’t its highpoint, being made of repetitive music and low-quality sampling rates. While I expected Uberzombie to control better with an Xbox controller, I found the keyboard and mouse worked much better. While the menus look like easy-to-select radials, they work in a linear fashion, forcing you to repeatedly tap in a given direction to make a selection instead of simply pointing at it with a thumbstick. In addition, there’s no option to sell structures, only destroy them, meaning any mistakes you make result in lost cash. None of these complaints sink the game, but they’re needlessly rough edges that could be filed off.

Both the strategy of building your fort and the action of defending it are solid components that strengthen each other. Not only is the apocalypse fun by yourself, but Uberzombie USA also supports four-player local co-op, even on the PC, a feat as laudable as it is rare. Uberzombie USA is available on Desura for $2.99 or on Xbox Live Arcade for 240 Microsoft points. Remember, no one’s going to want dollars after the zombies come, so you might as well spend it now.

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