Zombieville USA

This little iPhone game destroyed many a minute as I waited for Mary to count out at the café or waited for people late for meetings. It also made me late for work once.

It starts with a really good sample of a scream and dares you to tap the screen. When you do, you become a toothless redneck with a penchant for busting heads and robbing houses. You have to kill zombies and raid homes for money and ammo. The money buys you an extremely fun range of weapons from chainsaws to flamethrowers, from rocket launchers to magnums.

This is what it looks like when you kill a zombie:

The zombies get a little different, faster and stronger, and your weapons get increasingly more entertaining and difficult to use. The grenade launcher takes some getting used to, for example. Eventually there are so many zombies rising from the suburban sidewalks to eat your brains that it's impossible to continue. I wonder if there is an ending. I can't seem to come near to beating the Zombieville USA. But balancing the two commodities, money and bullets is interesting; which one is more important in a zombie apocalypse? It depends on what level you're on and how much life you have left.

This is what it looks like when the zombies kill you:

The animation is awesome, the soundtrack is quite good, the sound effects are pretty perfect, and the gameplay, as far as iPhone games, is nonpareil. The gore kind of reminds me of Metal Slug; remember that game? When you die, it tells you what level you got to and how many zombies you sent to hell. I've killed over 500 at level 20.

There's no saving your game and no continuing, which kind of blows, but the game's certainly worth a few bucks and a few hours of your life.