Jimmy VS Zombies is an Xbox Live Indie Game. It’s also a very fun retro arcade style side scrolling action game. The story follows two boys; Jimmy and Nathan. Nathan is jealous of Jimmy because he’s in a band. Nathan uses an evil spell to summon zombies to steal Jimmy’s guitar and attack the city. Therefore, Jimmy has to defeat all the zombies to save his town and get his guitar back. You can fight these zombies alone as either Jimmy or Angela, or you can play co-op or even versus. While the game-play might be a bit simple, it’s a challenging, fun game that you’ll spend hours playing.
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Gameplay Features:
In the Arcade mode of Jimmy Vs Zombies, you start out with three hearts and a basic laser gun. There are several stages with eight waves of zombies that will come at you from right to left. There are stages where you have to fight off the zombies, and there are stages where you have to defend a tower. Although in this game, the tower element is an old grandma sleeping in her chair in the middle of the road. There is actually a nice variety of zombies that you have to kill:
– Regular walking zombies that are easy to take down
– Crawling zombies that you have to kneel down to shoot at
– Riot shield zombies that take quite a few more shots to kill
– Zombies that shoot these green projectiles at you
– In the later stages, giant zombies that will run at you with no eyes, and no souls
In my opinion, it’s not even the zombies that are the hardest to defeat. There are green zombified bats that fly around the top of the screen, inching towards you. As they come nearer, they go into kamikaze mode and dive bomb you. They’re a fair bit smaller than the zombies, so they’re harder to shoot. Also, in later levels, these nasty black bats will start to shoot projectiles at you. Pair that with the waves of zombies coming at you from both sides, this game gets extremely challenging.
As you are killing wave after wave of zombies, different guns and health will appear. There are two other types of guns; ta fire gun, and a plasma cannon. The plasma gun is by far my favorite, because it has a wide shot radius. It can shoot the walking and crawling zombies at the same time. It’s also handy for taking out the bats flying above. If it doesn’t take out a foe in the first hit, it will knock them back, which is extremely useful as well. Along with your regular guns, there are also mines and turrets that you can place to help in your attack on the undead hoard. You get two of each for every stage and they can be of good use, too. I often found myself forgetting that I had turrets and mines though, because it’s hard to think when you’re surrounded. However, if you do find yourself taking a lot of hits from the bats or the zombies, burgers will appear (either in crates or they’ll just pop up in front of you) that will revive your health.
Another aspect of this game that I really liked was the upgrades shop. As you kill zombies, you collect gold that you can use to buy upgrades. You can buy an extra ‘continue’ and extra hearts. You can unlock a different character and an extra bonus mission. My favorite upgrade though, was being able to increase the auto-fire speed. Naturally, this makes your guns shoot faster, which does more damage. When you are stuck with your regular blue gun, this is extremely helpful, because regularly, it does not do a ton of damage.
Game Modes:
As I said you can play alone, co-op, or versus. The standard is the regular Arcade mode. After you beat the Arcade, Extreme Arcade becomes available, and is way harder than Arcade. I will say that if you play with a friend on Arcade, it will definitely not be as challenging. This is because you can just focus on one side of the screen and your friend can focus on the other. A lot of the fun comes from the frantic decision you have to make on what side to focus on and how to, well… not die, although it does get a bit too easy when playing cooperatively. However, Versus is an extremely fun mode where one player takes control of Jimmy, and one player controls the zombies. You can spawn all the different types of zombies and bats to defeat Jimmy, and whoever is left standing after two minutes, whether it’s Jimmy or the Zombies, wins. I thought this was a really fun addition to the game.
Summary:
Overall Jimmy Vs Zombies is a lot of fun. It’s a bit simple because it’s a side scrolling shooter with just a straight line of zombies coming at you. However, when you throw in the different zombies and the bats, it becomes a bit more challenging. I often find myself meaning to hop online to play a quick game, but end up playing for an hour or longer. If I could add anything to the game, I’d maybe add more types of zombies, and definitely more guns. But again, this is a fun arcade style game, if you’re looking for cheap, side scrolling action. It’s available on Xbox Live it’is only a dollar… so check it out!
Final Score: 4/5
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