Zombi, for xbox one
Rating: 7.0/10; Good
Played: 2020
Good enough to recommend if you want a slower survival horror, but nothing special
Zombi is a 1st person survival horror with the main feature being permadeath. There is a hardcore mode where you only get a single life while the normal game gives you a new random survivor each time you die. These survivors are given names and professions that affect their clothing, but there is no practical difference; cops and soldiers are just as bad with guns as everybody else. There are proficiency ranks for various types of guns that go up as you get kills, the loss of which is the only real penalty for death. You do have to kill the zombie version of your previous character to get your stuff back. Despite the relative lack of death penalty, the frailty of the characters and possible attachment to them creates a very tense atmosphere. Your character can only take a few hits, and being grabbed and bitten is a one hit death.
The game encourages use of melee, explosives and lures due to the benefits of not alterting nearby zombies with gunshots, the scarcity of ammo, and the clunkiness of the shooting. When I said the characters are not good at shooting I meant it. Scoped weapons are very accurate but you cannot move while aiming through the scope. Normal aiming gives a crosshair with significant space in the middle, making it more like hip fire in first person shooters, and thus difficult to shoot at range. On top of this are the long reloads and low turn sensitivity. Shooting without aiming does a shove to knock enemies back. Melee requires holding aim to ready a strike and gives a dot for aiming; seems like damage is higher if you strike the head. Melee combat does not alert additional enemies, despite all the smacks and screaming, but is risky when there are multiple enemies. There is no stamina to limit your attacks though so as long as you can keep enough distance, such as by holding a bottleneck, you can defeat a surprising amount of zombies. Special zombies can be extremely dangerous, especially when mixed with others that you are trying to melee. From the swat ones that are protected by armor and the ones with flammable tanks that explode even if you hit them with a wooden bat, to the weird paranormal ones that emit electricity and teleport.
You are given a few gadgets to help in your quest. The flashlight comes with batteries that automatically recharge when not in use and is pretty much needed to have on at all times because of how ridiculously dark the environments are. You can turn on a high beam light that drains the battery faster. Both lights suck because they do not illuminate anywhere near as well as a real light. They instead provide a circle of illumination straight ahead while not really helping with the edges of the screen. Navigating pitch black narrow corridors is far more difficult than it needs to be and you will likely spend a significant portion of the game just standing around waiting for the batteries to recharge. The high beam is good for alerting 1 zombie at a time to lure it away from others. There is a black light scanning device that is used to tag objects and enemies as well as solve puzzles. It gives excellent illumination but has short range and you can't move while using it. There is also a motion tracker that pings movement on your minimap, including rats and crows. At the beginning you have to press a button manually while later it is automatic. The minimap only shows the layout of the area when you scan the local CCTV box but I found the map far more difficult to read than necessary because the rooms are black and do not contrast well against the dark environments. There is a paper map in the menus but it is not useful other than to determine which zone connects to which, and is pretty much only used for fast traveling. Accessing the menu does not pause the game as your character squats down rummaging through the backpack; this is very bad if you press the menu button with enemies nearby! So going into your inventory to equip weapons or use items during combat is a no go. Instead you use the D pad to swap between stuff. Up is for melee and down cycles between everything. This leaves only left and right for you to bind your stuff to for quick swapping; 4 slots in total for single and double pressing. My problem is that there are not enough quick slots. Why can't I double press up and down as well? Why can't I change up if I don't want to use melee. I don't really need that button to swap between everything. And what about that motion sensor button that becomes useless later on? The worst part of the game though is the limited inventory and entire way loot works. You have to take the basic pistol and cricket bat, even if you are out of ammo and have a better melee weapon. The stash at the safehouse is not infinite and it did not take long before it was full and I was juggling stuff between it, my pack and the floor. Dropped items vanish when you leave the zone, enemy corpses with loot can vanish after you walk away, and anything you partially pick up is considered dropped. You can't stash things to come back for later but you can come back for fixed loot that you did not pick up. Enemies and loot even randomly respawn so you can farm for supplies. I hated losing supplies and not being able to hoard everything at base, like in old school Resident Evil, and I think having potentially infinite supplies hurts the core survival horror.
The playable areas consist of alleys, interiors and underground, in a game world that is not very big. The world seems quiet and inactive with relatively small numbers of zombies and the sense that there is nothing going on outside the playable area; no distant gunfire that might indicate other survivors, or moans that might indicate that the places you can't go are swarming with zombies. The story is linear and takes you through each zone. Story missions come with preset enemies and loot as well as scripted events; jump scares, ambushes, hordes, cinematics and more action oriented sequences. The story missions like to throw curve balls at you by putting you in unexpected situations where you have to think fast or possibly die. This comes to a head in the late game when you are captured by other survivors and forced to fight in an arena. They take away all of your stuff leaving only a gun and some explosives. The inventory, custom quick slots, melee weapon and scanner are disabled during this event. Instead you are expected to do run and gun shooting without enough bullets to directly kill the zombies and without being able to scan for loot. Up until this point the game has been teaching you to go slow and quiet, fighting with melee as much as possible and scanning everything to identify loot and enemies. The arena throws away all of this and is a terrible part of the game. After you finish a story mission you can return to any area to get loot you missed, fight random respawns and likely find some newly spawned loot. There are also multiple new things you can get that allow access to previously blocked areas, such as lock picks, hacking and C4; metroidvania style.
Zombi certainly does a good job of making you feel weak, but goes into the realm of obnoxiousness with the difficulty in simple navigation, visualization of the environment/enemies, and audiolocation. Not sure if it was my sound set up but the game did not seem to have directional sound. I do think the game would have been better with a fixed number of enemies and loot, and loot that can't despawn, but the overall atmosphere and gameplay make the game compelling enough to be worth a romp.
Pro
- Good atmosphere and setting
- Crossbow bolts can be reused if you hit flesh
- Interesting death mechanic
- CCTV list in the safehouse shows loot you missed
- Return to previous areas with new gadgets to unlock new areas
- Fast travel
Con
- Limited inventory and stash
- Loot despawns
- Save points
- Very dark environments with a flashlight that needs time to recharge
- Hard to tell what direction sounds come from
- Less than optimal button layout
- Minor graphics glitches
- Gas tank zombies that explode when hit in melee
- Minimap can be hard to read, overview map is largely useless
- Terrible arena mission that throws most gameplay out the window
