I love zombies. I love all the zombie movies I’ve seen, I got the full Marvel Zombies collection, I’ve been in a couple of zombie walks across town and I even did my final project in college on zombies. Safe to say, if you want me to pay attention, just mention zombies. The ferocity and relentlessness of these creatures as well as their personification of a living virus or conformist society or whatever metaphor you want just makes them all around interesting. And then, there are times where the point is utterly missed. Today’s subject is sadly one of those cases: enter Zombie Revenge (the name is even kind of boring), originally for the Arcades, but I’ll be playing the Dreamcast version.
One of the first things you’ll notice about this game (and may have just noticed with the clip I played) is that this voice acting is BAAAAAD. I know I said Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days had bad voice acting, but while they at least had talented voice actors; nothing saves THESE cut scenes. The voice actors portray the wrong emotions or are emotionless, they have awkward timing and just emphasis some WORDS oddly. I don’t know if it all stems from being translated, but to me, that’s never been an excuse, especially for a game produced and developed by Sega. As a matter of fact, the quality of the voice acting might actually be considered “so bad its good” for those of you into that.
The bad voice acting (mixed with the sub-par Dreamcast graphics) all made it so I just wasn’t able to concentrate on the plot, but from what I was able to get, it was pretty stupid. The hero characters are members of a government agency sent to track down “Zed” *clip from Power Ranger’s Zed*. Sadly, not related to Lord Zed. He’s been making zombies rise and challenging our heroes with tasks. We later learn that his parents died and this has to do with the zombies somehow. Really I just wasn’t emotionally interested in the plot at all since it was all just done with horrible dialog.
Zombie Revenge is described as many as a mix of two Sega series: House of the Dead and Streets of Rage. While it gets most of its story and setting elements from being a planned House of the Dead spin-off (to the point where it contains a level called “House of the Dead” with scenes directly lifted from it), most of the game play would be Streets of Rage inspired. For those of you who don’t remember my review of Streets of Rage 2, it was your basic brawler game, where you walk around and punch enemies, and you could occasionally use weapons. Zombie Revenge also gives you the ability to dash (having removed jumping) and use a gun. The gun automatically aims for nearby enemies and if you wait for it to fully target it does more damage. You also have an “infection” meter that can kill you of you’re bitten too many times without acquiring an “herb”.
Now all of this sounds fine, except that you’re character moves so freakin slow. Unless you’re dashing, the only thing some of the characters can do rapidly is punch (and shoot if you want weak shots and to waste bullets). This wouldn’t be bad in another game, but this is a 3D zombie game; you will be constantly surrounded and outnumbered. Most of the time, you’ll be reliant on a dash punch to knock them down over and over again.
Zombie Revenge is full of good intentions met with poor executions. The game play should be classic by concept, but is poorly pulled off because the characters are way too slow for the situation they’re in. This makes trying to use items (something normally fun) a handicap, quick enemies seem cheap and the game play just feels repetitive. The occasional boss fights were fun however, as the creature would always look interesting and presented challenge. The atmosphere and references to House of the Dead were also pretty cool and the secrets were fun to find. But the nail in this game’s coffin was the poor voice acting making me completely uninterested in what was going on. The extra Dreamcast features also did nothing for me. I didn’t completely hate this game though: in short burst it can be fun and I did want to see it through to the end, but it’s more frustrating than anything. This is one zombie title that kind of bites. I give Zombie Revenge for the Sega Dreamcast 5 levels out of 10.
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