The Single Button Joystick

3. Zombi (1990)

Before anything else, the good points.

1. I got this game for free with some cover disk.

2. Based on the George A. Romero movie, Dawn of the Dead.

3. ?

What was I even doing with this game! It was a little like what Eye of the Beholder would be. You control four characters who have landed their helicopter on top of shopping mall, apparently in search of fuel.

Get used to this...

Of course there are zombies all over the place, thousands are surrounding the mall with several dozen inside the complex. The perspective is first person, with characters able to split up and do their own thing. While first person, the game has no freedom of movement, so you’re moving a fixed camera from scene to scene.  There’s no turning around, only walking forwards, backwards and left/right.

It is not a very atmospheric way to explore the world.

Then there’s your opponents, the Zombiedudes. They walk across the screen in some of the scenes, right to left and then back again. Your characters can pick up guns, and if you have good aim, you can shoot them in the head, killing them before they attack you. Fighting them hand to hand, which you start by clicking on them or missing with the gun, caused you to die in quick order.

I would play with the doors, there’s a video player in one of the shops and I’d try to figure out what needed doing. It couldn’t be done… not having the magazine that the disk came with OR the instructions I was doomed to wander aimlessly through this ugly, Ubisoft promoting mall.

Don't cross the road!

I watched a LongPlay of it today, and only now do I know how to finish the game. Moving trucks to block entrances, killing all the zombies and putting them in the freezer in the basement, then killing the thugs that arrive and TAKING THEIR PETROL. I think you can guess what to do next.

The whole thing seemed to take about 40 minutes, much of that is the moving of zombie bodies into the freezer underground. Monotony.

What kept me playing this game, was its gritty look and definitely European origins. It was cheap and boring, but it did have at least a little indie charm. Catch the LP here.