Zombie AR: Defend your Home is yet another zombie ARKit first-person shooter. The game is rated 17+ on the App Store, To be honest, I am kind of fed up playing those type of zombie FPS games. It’s like everyone is just playing it safe. This game is similar to so many other games that I’ve played that it becomes boring. I’ve already played so many other zombie shooters, I’ve played Santa vs Zombies, Angry Zombies, Dead Lands AR Zombies, Zombie Gunship Revenant AR, W.AR Augmented Reality, zombies! ARgh!, ARZombi and Color BlastAR just to name a few. Tell me, seriously, how many more zombie AR shooters do we need?
Anyways, it looked like a nice game and because I love FPS games, I’ve decided to give it a try.
Zombie AR Gameplay
Zombie AR: Defend your Home is similar to games like Santa vs Zombies, Dead Lands, and ARZombie. You shoot from the hip, as you cannot aim down the site in this game. There are five different levels, ins one of them you’ll need to protect survivors, another with a boss fight and the last one offers an endless survival mode where you need to try to survive as long as possible.
You start the game with an assault rifle and you can purchase new
weapons from the armory as you gain more money as you complete missions. There aren’t many weapons in this game, just an Assault rifle, RPG, Sniper rifle and a Shotgun. The problem is that those weapons cost a lot of money (over $10,000) which means that you need to grind for them. There is also an option to upgrade your skills which improve your health and damage output. Those are cheaper though and you’ll be able to upgrade them fully after like 20 minutes of gameplay, more or less. The only reason for me to buy those weapons is for the survival mode, so I can survive longer or just if I want to have fun and shoot zombies with other types of weapon. The armory presentation is nice, I liked it.
In order to play a new stage, you’ll have to reach a certain level, but it’s really not a problem as you’ll be leveling up very fast and you won’t find this thing stopping you from progressing fast. This is why I actually think this leveling option is redundant and could have been left out of the game without affecting it negatively.
One cool feature that I really liked about the gameplay is the power-ups. As you play the game will frequently drop power-ups around the gameplay area. Some will give you health, other armor and there is one cool one that releases a drone that attacks enemies for you. To obtain a power-up, you’ll need to stand inside a green circular area, very simple and straightforward.
AR Zombie plays more like zombies! ARgh! in a way that you don’t need to tap the screen to shoot. The gun will shoot automatically once the gun is pointed at a zombie. I haven’t tried the RPG yet, so it might work differently with this weapon (let me know if you’ve already tried it). In some ways, it feels quite artificial and lessens the excitement of the shooting experience. Some of you will like it, others probably won’t.
By the way, at the end of each stage, you can see some statistics like how many headshots you have landed successfully, your max combo streak, your score, and your highest score.
AR EXperience
You can play the game in your home or outdoors. I personally think it fits an outdoor environment better. The gameplay area can be adjusted using knobs to create a rectangular area that best fits the place you play the game. It still requires a minimum game area of around 2mx2m if I am not mistaken. I think to enjoy the game well, you’ll need an area of about 9.2 x 8.2 feet (2.5.x2.5 meters).
The game plays nicely in AR. Zombies will spawn 360-degrees all around you in the designated gameplay area. The movement is not fast, but they can easily close up to you if you miss some shots.
You have your health bar, which once it reaches zero you lose the game. You can deal more damage by shooting the zombie’s head rather than its body.
I found this game to be much more comfortable to play in AR than ARZombi. I actually really hated the initialization process of the game. Players already need to deal with a very annoying scanning process before starting any ARKit game, so everything else you add to it just becomes a burden and annoys the user. In Zombie AR you really don’t need to do anything after the initial scanning, unless (and it’s optional) you want to adjust the size of the game area.Having said that, I do appreciate the developer of ARZombi for trying to innovate and create a unique FPS experience, this hasn’t gone unnoticed.
I still miss the aiming down the sight option from AR Zombie. Shooting a gun from the hip all the time isn’t fun. I felt much more powerful and badass when I shot a pistol and the M16 while aiming down the sight in ARZombi. I could still shoot from the hip, but at least ARZombi gave me the option to do that.
The zombies look very similar to ARZombie. I think maybe they were using the same 3D assets bought from an online website that sell 3D assets.
The shooting experience still very much lacking
Still, I think that there are so many ways that this game could be improved. For example, the weapon is static on the right with no movement when standing still, the UI looks like a game from the 90s, the laser pointer is opaque, etc.
The sound effects are not good and I felt like am shooting with a toy gun. On the other hand, I appreciate the developer’s effort in creating a radar that shows the player where the zombies are located, so I won’t get dizzy turning around like crazy searching for them.
One of my favorite features is the notifications for making kill streaks and head hosts. It is borrowed straight from games like Call of Duty and other arcade-style game where the player gets a feedback from performing admirably on the battlefield. It feels really good and make the game much more exciting and fun to play.,
I still think the overall shooting experience is very much lacking, although it’s not too bad either. I’m sure if you are going to enjoy it if this is your first FPS game that you’ve played in Augmented Reality. I’ve played quite a few, and this is why I am not impressed and still waiting for the AR FPS game that will blow my mind.
Conclusion
Zombie AR: Defend your Home is yet another Augmented Reality (AR) shooter for iOS. It brings some new things to the table like power-ups, nice arcade-style visual feedback, hud, boss fight, and the option of leveling up your character. However, this is not enough to make the game incredibly more fun to play than all the other shooters that I’ve played.
If you haven’t played an FPS ARKit game yet or this is one of your favorite genres, you might want to give it a try. For me, this is just another unexciting shooter and I’m still waiting for the developer who will innovate in this genre and bring us something different that we al FPS fans will be excited about. Next.
You can download the game from the App Store here.