Systems: Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, HTC Vive, Steam VR
Release Date: May 25, 2021
Publisher: Sony Pictures Virtual Reality & XR Games
Developer: XR Games
I am a fan of the first Zombieland movie although I have not seen the sequel yet so I cannot comment on the longevity of the franchise and/or how this game and its concepts fit into that larger infected world; although the outfits the characters are wearing the look to be based on those from the second movie, Zombieland: Double Tap. The basic premise in the game is that you have befriended the group from the Zombieland films, Columbus, Wichita, Tallahassee, and Little Rock, and are held up in the mansion of your generic rich bald totally-not-Jeff Bezos-boss who started an event called the Zombieland Invitational where you run an obstacle course filled with zombies. As you progress through each stage, kill zombies of various types (typical video game types such as Screamers that attract other zombies and Sports Fan Zombies that buff nearby zombies), you collect toilet paper which is the in-game currency and used to upgrade your guns (it's movie/video game logic, it's not supposed to make sense).
The gameplay is pretty simple and semi-on-rails. You have your primary weapon equipped and you move with the world by auto-jumping to predetermined points to engage with zombies who you have to clear to go to the next point. You will not often see zombies up ahead of you that you will engage when you jump to new spots, usually because they are behind closed doors, behind fences, under tables, you get the idea. After a couple of stages, you gain access to a secondary weapon, the first being a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun and later a light submachine gun that makes the Klobb feel accurate. Something I did not realize until putting this article together was that while your handgun has infinite ammo, you never find ammunition for your special weapon lying around or picked up from zombies, and I kind of like that; which is probably also why I like to use the Ammo Sack Perk which gives you additional special ammo at the start. I told the game that I am left-handed, as I am left eye dominant so I end up holding the handgun in my left hand and the secondary weapon in my right. Since your special weapon is by default attached to your hip, I just hold it in my hand before starting the level while holding my left hand up to stabilize it, as I would if I were only holding one gun.
Not including the demo for SUPERHOT VR, this was my first shooter in VR so I do not know the mechanics that a lot of other shooters use, but two of the key mechanics that Zombieland uses are that headshots and headshots kill to slow the world down (explained as an adrenaline rush) and reloading, which you perform by flicking down the joystick on the controller of the gun you are reloading, then bringing the gun down on a clip that is hovering in front of you; your primary handgun has infinite ammo, but your secondary weapon has limited ammo and yes you do lose ammo if you reload before using all the bullets in a clip. This hesitation to reload early and potentially waste coveted ammunition has led me many times to run out of ammunition while trying to shoot a fast-moving zombie and die while trying to reload under pressure. Also, the reloading action is different depending on the gun you are holding. For the handgun and submachine guns, you just have to move the gun onto the new clip, but for the sawed-off shotgun, you have to move the back-end of the barrel of the gun to where the two shells are hovering, which takes a little more time; I have not yet unlocked the RCP-90 or whatever it is called in this game or the revolver.
Each stage is pretty short lasting only a few minutes (or tens of seconds if you are equipped to the gills and going for a spot on the leaderboard), although when you first play through it can take longer because you may not know where all the zombies spawn from, which zombies to take out first, where the explosive barrels are and when to shoot them, and your weapons may be underpowered. Or like me, you might just totally suck. There is a time-based leaderboard presented to you before you start each stage where you can see the loadout and speed that other players have beaten levels and on one hand, it can be interesting to see how other people approached a stage, and on the other, it can be discouraging seeing that Debouye has gone through the Junkyard 14.001 seconds when you are still struggling to make it to the end.
There is a shooting range that offers challenges of varying difficulties with gun skin cosmetics as a reward for completing progressively difficult goals such as increased accuracy or higher scores. Sadly you are only able to use guns that you have and I found that using the shooting range never made me feel like I was actually getting any better and improving to earn only a cosmetic gun skin never felt overly productive when I could just be playing an actual level and earning toilet paper and improving my runs (huh).
Each stage also offers optional challenges that are only required to unlock the final stage, the Zombieland Invitational, which you gain access to after completing 15 challenges and after completing challenges five and 10, you earn guns (more on that below). Not all challenges are optional as most stages simply have a "Survive" challenge which you complete simply by beating the level however you want. Other challenges are more difficult such as completing Smartek Industries in 1 minute 5 seconds or faster, which likely will not happen until you have made a few runs. Probably because I was not paying attention, I did not realize that you could actually hover over each challenge Icon depicting a particular character and see what the reward is for completing that specific challenge. Such as gaining access to the Vanilli M4 Special combat shotgun from beating the Trent's Store level in fewer than 0:59 seconds, which would be hard enough on its own, but for every head you explode, you enter an adrenaline-fueld slow-mo phase that also decreases your final run time at the end. So while you might have taken 1:47 seconds to complete a level, you could have earned a -0.25 second modifier from your slo-mo headshot kills giving you a final run-time of 1:22.
The point is, because I was not paying attention to being able to see what you could earn, I was not focusing on what you needed to do to earn additional guns thinking that there must be something to occur in the end-game because I was not earning any more guns that could help me get through difficult areas, so I ended up going through most of the game with two handguns, the sawed-off double barrel shotgun, and the submachine gun. So when I completed the Zombieland Invitational, my loadout was the following:
- B250-MOT (Handgun)
- Ladyjane Special (Sub-Machinegun)
- Perk 1: Ammo Sack (Additional Special Weapon Ammo)
- Perk 2: Rock Steady (Enhanced/Steady Aiming)
Tooting my own horn, I did manage to beat the Zombieland Invitational on my second try. The first time around I made it about 2/3rds of the way through before being caught off-guard by a Sprinter. What I liked about this course in particular compared to the other levels was that after each group of zombies you killed, you were given the choice of two directions you could go, presumably with slightly different types and numbers of zombies that would attack you. This could lead to a lot of different variations on the same level so it was a little sad that this was only implemented in this one level.
All-in-all, there are nine primary levels in the game, although this version of the game, probably after a number of updates after its initial release there were an additional six additional levels added to themed headers titled "Deleted Scenes" which are all new areas and "Extended Cut" which are areas that you have previously gone through but with a new skin a la different zombies and different set dressings. I was a little surprised by some of the levels in that they included storylines about having to kill friends and family who had been turned into zombies, but I know that that works in the context of the Zombieland universe. And I probably should not have been surprised by the end of the game either considering that in one stage you specifically go to your ex-girlfriend's apartment to kill her and your final goal for the game is to kill your boss. I also just realized that your former boss is the final boss fight. I can be slow sometimes.
There is a decent amount of content here, or at least what I have come to expect from the handful of VR-centric games that I have played, for people who are actively trying to get faster and faster times and when you get to the point that levels take you less than a minute to complete, you can do quite a bit while only playing for 30 minutes. And if you are the kind of person that likes to hunt achievements, there are plenty of those to go around too. All of the achievements I earned were just by regularly playing, which is my preferred way to get achievements. Maybe that is not actually a lot of content, but I am also pretty early in my VR gaming career so at least right now, it is nice that there is some additional post-story content to play through. That being said, I am glad that I picked up the VR games bundle over at Fanatical because I do not know if I would have paid $29.99 for this game, partly because again, while I am a and of Zombieland, it was not on my watchlist while first browsing the store and despite my previous comment, I do not know if I would say that there is $30 worth of content. The game is fun though, and I probably will play more after having beaten the game, mainly to unlock the rest of the guns to give some variety in how to approach the levels, but I do not know if it will be my go-to game just to play.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
P.S. To give you a better idea of how a level goes, here is "Exit 34" stage that took me the longest time to get through and this video I filmed was actually my first (and only) time getting through this stage, but it is a good example of the varied types of zombies and how each level progresses.
I also just realized that I really should be shooting with my primary handgun while shooting with the secondary/sub-machinegun. The things you learn by analyzing your playthroughs. The more you know.
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