14 DAY TRIAL // 
Everybody knows gamers love zombies and Doublesix, the developers behind Geometry Wars: Galaxies, have attempted to capitalize on this strange affection with Burn Zombie Burn!. This is a downloadable title available only on the PlayStation 3 through the PlayStation Network and on the PC through Steam.
It is a top down shooter that gets straight to business without resorting to any story or context. Players get to control a character called Bruce and kill thousands of zombies in four game modes and many challenges. While Bruce does remind me of the legedary Bruce Campbell, there is any background to him. All we knows is that he wants to kill lots of zombies and that we must help him achieve this purpose.
The design of the undead is a bit reminiscent of the cute look from Plants Versus Zombies, but Burn Zombie Burn! is a title that is clearly designed to bring a smile on an adult's face, with copious amounts of cartoonish blood constantly on the screen. The arenas in which Bruce wages his one man war are inspired by locales that are commonly encountered in zombie movies. There is a lone cabin in the woods, a graveyard and a military base among others. Unfortunately, there are only six of them, not that much, considering the ten dollar price tag of the title.
I have not noticed any difference in terms of visuals between the PC and the PlayStation 3 version and the game does not suffer and frame rate hick-ups no matter the crazy amounts of zombies and fire on screen. The sounds have nothing special, other than a few relatively funny one-liners from Bruce. The music does a good job initially of conveying the intended atmosphere, but gets quite tedious after awhile.
The gameplay involves Bruce getting the highest score possible in three lives through killing the biggest number of zombies that he can. There are four modes that offer some basic twists to this general objective. Free Play represents Burn Zombie Burn! in its purest form, as all the player has to do is rain down death on the zombies and increase their number of points. Timed mode adds a time limit to this, but keeps the target relatively the same. Defend Daisy tasks Bruce to defend his bubble gum chewing girlfriend who helplessly sits in a car from the rising undead. Survival is rather self-explanatory.There are also quite a lot of challenge modes with different objectives for the players to achieve.
Zombies become more aggressive and fast while on fire, but also the amount of points that can be earned increases exponentially. The player has to constantly control the zombie population to make sure that enough undead are on fire to get a high score, but not too many to become overwhelmed. It is interesting and fun, putting enough pressure to keep things interesting no matter how skilled one becomes at the game.
There is quite a wide selection of zombies and weapons. There are guns, chainguns, chainsaws, bats, some dynamite and even a flamethrower and a dance gun to replace the torch. The zombies are varied enough to warrant a use for all the killing tools available. For example, there are explosive zombies that have to be shot from a distance, but also armored zombies that have to battered to death in close quarters combat.
It is quite unfortunate then that it is quite a chore to progress through the game and unlock all that Burn Zombie Burn! has to offer. The only way that new levels and challenges are received is by meeting relatively difficult high score requirements. Given the fact that there is not quite that much content to begin with, the whole thing quickly becomes a tedious affair, managing even to overshadow the otherwise fun gameplay mechanics and cute art design.
The PlayStation 3 rendition of the game features a cooperative multiplayer option that is missing from the PC, but it is not fully realized using split-screen in way that does not help anyone and makes it hard for the two players to track each other down or avoid getting surrounded by the colorful undead. On the PC, the title has achievements, cloud saves and leaderboards provided through Steamworks.
There isn't much to do in Burn Zombie Burn! and some of the more frustrating design choices of the developers make this a hard title to recommend. While initially fun, the niggles I have just described turn this into a boring experience in the end, not quite worth your time. In the end, I would advise potential buyers to try the demo first and decide if the rather excellent risk versus reward mechanic is enough to justify the expenses.
