Stay Alive

If Stay Alive is anything to go by, being dead is an exhausting business.

Thanks to the near constant onslaught of zombie games, the dream of taking a well-deserved after-death dirt nap has been replaced by the gnawing certainty that our rotting corpses will be forced to aimlessly wander the earth for all eternity.

That is, of course, unless some gracious fellow decides to put a large crossbow bolt straight through the centre of our recently reanimated brains.

Stay Alive casts you as just such a fellow. Your mission is simple: kill as many zombies as you can by launching sharp projectiles at their skulls.

Thanks to some meaty visuals and a slightly restrictive control scheme, this gruesome gallery shooter does produce moments of tension, even if the suspense - and entertainment - factor is somewhat short-lived.

Playing out over a series of single-screen backdrops, Stay Alive is not a complex proposition. Zombies shamble across the screen on two separate planes: one in the foreground, one in the background.

You move the targeting reticle left and right to draw a bead on the rotting blighters, and switch between long range and short range shots with a button-tap.

As you might expect, the zombies on the nearer plane appear to move more quickly, meaning you have less time to react if you want to stop them in their tracks.

However, while the deadites in the background spend longer on the screen, you have to switch to 'long range' mode on your crossbow to stand a chance of hitting them.

But here's the rub: instead of letting you slide your reticule smoothly left and right, Stay Alive's aiming mechanic only lets you switch between four firing positions.

This restriction has two major effects on your marksmanship. Firstly, you have to contanstly jump ahead of your prospective targets, and shoot them as they stroll into your line of sight.

Secondly, you find yourself trying to gauge the best spot to hit the maximum number of zombies on both planes.

This becomes the key challenge of Stay Alive, and serves as both a strength and a weakness.

Having to wait for the next unwitting arrow sponge to drag his listless ass into your crosshairs does generate an air of anticipation - at least at first.

After a while, however, no amount of (admittedly well-drawn) backgrounds or ticking timers can distract from the nagging sensation that you're playing a gimped gallery shooter with a slightly defective gun.

That's not to say that there isn't any fun to be had from Stay Alive's brand of undead-puncturing violence. It's just that, unfortunately, as the stakes get higher the gag gets older.

Stay Alive isn't dead on arrival, but it does come with a limp and a nasty sounding cough.