Game Review: Z-Run (PS Vita) Review by Jason Bonnar

taretmakeup Haziran 02, 2022

Game Review: Z-Run (PS Vita)

Z-Run is an apocalyptic action runner game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS Vita. Z-Run is an action runner game with a significant twist as the city streets are full of mutated humans that now crave human brains as a virus has saw them become zombies and you have the rather unenviable task of trying to evade them in an attempt to make it to safety.

There are two game modes including: campaign and survival with the campaign seeing you thrust into city streets that are overrun by blood thirsty zombies, which you have to overcome across three areas each consisting of twelve levels in order to make it out of the city and to safety. Meanwhile, the survival mode tasks you to survive for as long as you possibly can, which is easier said than done considering the amount of obstacles and zombies in your way.

There are two characters including a male character called Alex and a female character called Claire. Both characters have melee attacks, such as slide-kicks that can be performed when you are in a tight spot with plenty of zombies in a quite confined space, while the special melee attacks that are specific to each character naturally expends a greater amount of stamina, but packs one hell of a punch to an undead brain!

The weapons range from blunt weapons to firearms and blades with the blunt weapons consisting of

baseball bats, tubes, planks, a guitar and much more besides, although they are categorised as blunt weapons as they will degrade and breakdown into an unusable state after they have been used a few times and will consume stamina. The firearms consist of handguns, rifles, shotguns and a crossbow and are a great tactic for instantly dispensing of zombies that will use very little stamina, although the firearms do require ammo which can be collected during levels, while reloading will be performed automatically depending upon if you have any ammo left after the clip has run dry. Blades consist of swords, knives and stabbing weapons, which are far more durable than the blunt weapons resulting in a larger period of time before the bladed weapon degrades into an unusable state.

Stamina provides a strategical element to the gameplay as you need to balance between the effectiveness of a weapon, melee attack or movement and how much stamina that will expend; as you do not want to expend all of your stamina too early and find yourself lacking when surrounded by obstacles and zombies further into the level. However, you do not want to be too conservative with your stamina and find yourself having enough stamina remaining to be able to kill some more zombies when you have completed the level, so striking an appropriate balance is always important for not only the wellbeing of your character, but also the progression of your character regarding XP, levelling up and upgrades.

You can earn points by killing zombies, surviving for another 100 metres and surviving for the entire level with the points representing XP. You will level up automatically as soon as you have earned the required amount of XP with each level up allowing you to upgrade one of your abilities. The upgradeable abilities cover a variety of important components of your character’s required skills that you will need to hone in order to survive the hordes of zombies and make it out of the city streets alive and in one piece with the upgradeable abilities including: five vitality upgrades to increase maximum health; three toughness upgrades to decrease damage from zombies and obstacles; five stamina upgrades to increase maximum stamina; three endurance upgrades to decrease stamina consumption; three agility upgrades to increase the duration of jumping and sliding; alongside another five sets of upgrades that are capable of really changing the game up by providing you with more realistic options in regards to how you approach the next zombie or obstacle.

The controls are well mapped to the Vita’s face buttons and touch screen. The control scheme consists of pressing square to perform an attack with the use of a weapon, such as firing a gun or swinging a baseball bat; pressing O to perform a melee attack; pressing X to slide along the ground to evade zombies, manoeuvre underneath obstacles and even trip up zombies; pressing triangle to jump; pressing R to sprint; changing the direction of the left analogue stick to move your character; changing the direction of the right analogue stick to dodge from left to right or right to left to evade obstacles and zombies; pressing left on the d-pad to use a health recovery item; pressing right on the d-pad to use a stamina recovery item; pressing down on the d-pad to select a weapon; and pressing start to display the pause menu, while the touch screen controls consists of rubbing one of your fingers against the touch screen to wipe away the blood splatters in order to clear your vision of the obstacles and zombies that lay in wait up ahead of your character.

The graphics have some good lighting and blood splatter effects, while there are plenty of well rendered

environments with obstacles, such as cars; trucks; road blocks; signs; telephone boxes; bins; and zombies, while the performance of the frame rate is always consistent no matter how many zombies and obstacles are on screen at any given time and there are instances were there are dozens of zombies and obstacles scattered rather closely to each other.

The presentation of the game is good with a great touch screen based user interface across various menus such as the main menu, campaign selection menu, survival selection menu, high scores menu, settings menu and various gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the right analogue stick and rear touch pad, although that is not an issue considering the other methods of navigation that are available. The background of the menu screens consists of a camera panning around the city streets you are currently attempting to make your way through, while the campaign selection menu has a detailed map of the city streets and surrounding layout that can be panned around to view your multiple maths through the city streets.

The audio consists of sound effects and music with the sound effects mostly including murmurings from zombies when you hit them with a weapon or melee attack, although some zombies can produce comical noises as though they have been possessed by the Crazy Cat Lady from The Simpsons, which is rather funny, while there incidental sound effects, such as when your character accidentally bumps into an obstacle, alongside music that revolves around the rock genre with a great theme called You Better Run by The Spin Wires, which is quite appropriate for a fast paced zombie game.

The trophy list includes eighteen trophies with fifteen bronze trophies and three silver trophies. Two of the easiest trophies would have to be the Determined bronze trophy for your character dying 100 times, but your perseverance to still return in an attempt to progress onwards through the game and the So It Begins bronze trophy for completing the first non-tutorial level. The majority of the trophy list is related to the amount of times you kill zombies and which weaponry you use to do so, such as the Zombies, Shmombies bronze trophy for killing over 1,000 zombies; the Boom bronze trophy for killing five or more zombies in one shot; the Brawler bronze trophy for killing twenty zombies consecutively using only melee attacks; the Kicker bronze trophy for killing twenty zombies consecutively using only slide kick attacks; the Gunslinger bronze trophy for killing fifty zombies consecutively using only firearms; and the Smasher bronze trophy for killing thirty zombies consecutively using only blunt weapons. There are some harder trophies, such as the Supernatural bronze trophy for upgrading all of the character’s abilities to maximum levels, which is purely difficult due to how long it would take; alongside the natural difficulty of the Real Survivor silver trophy for completing the game on the hard difficulty level. I would estimate depending upon skill and good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take around ten hours to 100% the trophy list.

There are three difficulty levels including: easy, normal and hard with the major differences between the easiest and hardest difficulty levels seemingly being a change in how much damage zombie attacks will do to your character and how much stamina will be used from each movement, although there seems to be exactly the same amount of zombies and obstacles on each and every level no matter which difficulty level you have chosen, therefore still producing a credible challenge.

There is no online multiplayer, although I could have saw a pass the Vita component to see who could have reached the end of each of the 36 levels and three areas in the quickest time with the most health remaining, however there are online leaderboards. The online leaderboards focuses on global ranking and each of the three survival rankings with each leaderboard containing each player’s rank; name (PSN ID); and score with the positioning of each player based upon their overall amount of points. While using the overall points totals is a great way of measuring the positions of the leaderboards; I thought there would have been separate sets of leaderboards with such variations of measuring the positioning of the leaderboards by the best times set by each player for each of the 36 levels, three areas and the overall game.

The replayability stems from a number of components, such as the campaign and survival game modes, alongside the XP and levelling up system, which combines perfectly with the extensive upgrades feature that provides addictive gameplay; not to mention the competitive online leaderboards that will have you coming back for quite some time.

Overall, Z-Run actually reminds me of one of my favourite PSP games called Infected with the biggest

difference involving the confinement of the city streets, rather than having a wider area to run into in order to evade incoming zombies, which certainly changes up the gameplay between the two and if anything; actually makes Z-Run more challenging. Z-Run provides a fun experience that is perfect for fans of the action runner genre, especially when you consider the XP and levelling up system working in harmony with the upgrades feature to create an addictive evolution to your character’s abilities, which in turn provides new methods of approaching each level to your character’s strengths and it is that sort of gameplay that makes the £7.39 price tag seem quite reasonable. I recommend that you take the test of your survival skills to survive the zombie apocalypse and mash some zombie brains along the way!

8 out of 10

Jason Bonnar

Analysis