Earth is being invaded by ‘Alien Brain Thingys’, the human race is doomed, the Big Brain is going to turn our lovely planet into a snow-globe for his collection, can no-one save us? Well, yes actually, 3 dead teenagers, well undead teenagers to be precise. And so begins this stylish game from Ignition.
Our unlikely heroes are:
Finnigan ‘Fins’ Magee - he can climb walls by sticking to them, grapple wires, ropes or pipes and his tentacle attack can kill three enemies at once. He likes to eat anything he can find and the resulting acid and fiery puke comes in very handy for dealing with impassable barriers or hordes of rats.
Lori ‘Lefty’ Lopez - she has a powerful swat-attack with her right arm, she can jump and pull herself up onto ledges above her and she can replace her missing left arm with various useful devices including a rivet gun and an umbrella.
Zack ‘Half-Pipe’ Boyd - has unfortunately lost the lower half of his body, but he makes up for it with a skateboard that can be upgraded with spray cans or monster wheels and can even become a hover board. He’s useful for squeezing into tight spaces and tunnels.
An assortment of Brains and baddies make up your enemy – Big Brain is the boss and he has various minions to do his bidding, under the watchful eye of No1. Soldier brains, tank brains and turret brains join with mutant rats and mutant crocodiles to thwart your progress, as well as humans whose brains have been enslaved by Controller brains – usually cops or security guards with guns. When you dispose of a brain enemy, it drops a Brainmeat, which your zombie can then eat to top up their shared Unhealth meter. During the adventure mode, body parts can be found scattered around the levels, which can then be reassembled using the touch screen to regain all your unhealth.
Switching between the Zombies is easy – you just touch your required hero on the lower DS Touch screen, where he or she rests peacefully in their coffin waiting to be raised, or scroll through them using the L or R buttons. Each Zombie brings their own special talents to the party, so you’ll need to decide which one would be most useful in any given situation.
Teenage Zombies plays well and the levels have some clever twists and turns – you’ll constantly have to use all three Zombies’ abilities to get to the end. The only gripe we’d have is that sometimes Lefty has to be fiddled into just the right position in order to grab a ledge, or made to run and grab it - a bit more leeway than ‘pixel perfect’ would have been appreciated in this area. Unlike some DS platformers you can also move the camera up and down a little to see what’s just off screen – a very neat idea. Some fun minigames break up the main platform action well, and the separate Big Brain Challenge is like an increasingly difficult, zombiefied version of Dr. Kawashima’s brain training. There’s a lot of speech in the game and the zombie background music suits the game well. If there isn’t a cartoon series in the making then there should be, the quality of this game justifies it.
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