The PlayStation Minis line of games are all small in size and in price, but that doesn't necessarily mean small in content or fun. Unfortunately, Zombie Racers is far from the best example of the Minis library: with its terrible AI, high difficulty, and wonky controls, the game manages to justify its super-low-budget title.
At first glance Zombie Racers looks, and even sounds promising. A top-down racing game in the style of classics like Off-Road and RC Pro Am, Zombie Racers gives players two simple tasks: beat your opponents, and kill zombies. The concept is a simple one, but the game presents it well, and the first race is a pleasant blend of the two, though the game quickly loses its fun factor as the difficulty spikes.
Let's look at what Zombie Racers does right first. The visual presentation of the game is quite nice, with colorful 2D sprites for all on-screen action that give a good, clear indication of where you can and cannot drive, and never get too muddy whether playing on the PSP's screen or a TV (for the purposes of this review all gameplay was on the PSP.) The game has a good, if small, selection of punk music backing up your time running over zombies, and the controls are responsive for a top-down racer. The game even offers multiple game modes including arena-style combat with weaponry where your goal is not to beat your opponents in a race but instead to slay more zombies than them in a given amount of time, or reach a kill goal first. With eight core tracks, at least three arena tracks, and a collection of about 12 cars to choose from (all with a selection of speed, handling, and acceleration upgrades that can be purchased) there is a lot of game here for your dollar.
It really is a pity that playing the game just isn't fun.
What starts out promising quickly escalates into an exercise in abject frustration as the game's difficulty is unforgiving in the extreme. Players will likely have little trouble at all coming in first on the first course of the racing mode, but without the right upgrades the second race is near impossible, with each race afterward jumping the difficulty substantially and requiring a steady pace of new upgrades and, soon, new cars, to keep up with your opponents. Money is gained at the end of a race based on how many zombies you killed on your trip around the track, but money is ONLY earned from races you come in first on, with no other way to earn money outside of races. What this means is that each trip around the track is not only a race against opponents who are almost inevitably faster and more maneuverable than you, but that you are forced into having to veer constantly to take out as many zombies as possible just to secure what funding you can, and if you don't manage to excel at either one then the game quickly becomes next to impossible. Every race requires incremental increases to your vehicle's capabilities, but vehicles also have caps to their maximum capabilities. Combining these limitations with exorbitant pricing on new vehicles and upgrade costs that rise every race and you have a game that can easily bring your progress to a grinding halt on the grounds of inflation alone.
Next is the enemy AI. Racing games are not known for their excellence in the AI department on general principle (with a few exceptions, like Forza or Gran Turismo,) but Zombie Racers' AI is nothing if not a joke. Rather than giving each opponent a semblance of autonomy the game relies on the classic tactics of rubber banding and the AI working together to create its difficulty. Call it a personal quirk, but one of the things that has always gotten my goat in racing games is AI that doesn't actually treat its indiviual racers as competitors but, instead, as a team whose sole goal is to prevent you from winning, yet this is what Zombie Racers relies on. This would be a little more balanced if the rubber banding the game applies worked both ways, giving players a chance to catch up when they fall behind, but it seems to only apply to the AI racers, making every race either a barely-squeaked-by victory or a defeat that leaves you laps behind your opponents. Opponents will never make mistakes, never compete or jockey for position with one another, and even in the arena battles will always know exactly where the biggest groups of zombies and power-ups are, rendering any sense of fair play or balance that might have remained after the upgrade issues moot.
This difficulty is only made that much more frustrating by the game's un-intuitive controls. Gas is square and brake is triangle, with no options to change these controls and no tutorial to teach them to you. During the combat stages X fires your vehicle's picked up weapons. Why the developers chose to implement a control scheme so completely counter-intuitive is anyone's guess, but it hardly helps to curb the game's difficulty.
Final Rating: 3 out of 10
Despite a promising first impression with its solid collection of content and rock-bottom pricing, Zombie Racers quickly destroys any sense of fun with its terrible AI and difficulty balancing. With a little work the game could be something truly special, namely lower cost for upgrades/cars and a more shallow difficulty curve, but as it stands the game forsakes fun in the name of punishing difficulty and controls. Fans of super-hardcore racing games or gluttons for punishment may find some worthwhile gameplay here, but for anyone else the return on time invested is negligible, and with the price of PSP games right now there are other, better racing games available for not too terribly much more than this will run you.
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