Game Reviews

Zombie Minesweeper

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Zombie Minesweeper

Here's a fun fact for you - if you were to add up all the man hours that have been wasted playing the version of Minesweeper that came bundled with Microsoft's Windows operating system you'd be able build a full-sized Eiffel Tower 50 times over. Out of rice.

Okay, that might not actually be true, but it's certainly the case that the preinstalled time-waster has sucked away more of mankind's time than it had any right to.

While the same doesn't apply to Zombie Minesweeper, it's a mildly diverting attempt at updating the concept for a new undead-obsessed generation.

Putting you in the shoes of a young girl trying to make her way to a romantic dinner date with her boyfriend, the game is part puzzler, part action title - and it's positively packed with shambling corpses of all shapes and sizes.

Undermined

Your character is able to move freely throughout the landscape, but you need to pay attention to numbers that appear on the ground. These denote how many mines are next to that particular square, so it's advisable to tread carefully.

Triggering a mine unsurprisingly causes death, although your only punishment for dying is being sent back to the start of the level - all other progress remains in place.

Your aim is to reach a detonator, which sets off all the remaining mines and concludes the level, but along the way you'll be accosted by various zombie animals. These range from snails to dogs and cats, and contact with them results in your character being torn limb-from-limb in a shower of blood and gore.

Thankfully, you're not entirely defenceless. You can pick up bombs which can be placed anywhere on the screen to eradicate several enemies at once, or you can be more direct and shoot things with a shotgun - providing you have enough ammo, of course.

It's also possible to tempt zombies over mines you've flagged, or coax them into position with fresh brains. Yum.

Braindead

Zombie Minesweeper looks and sounds great, thanks to some impressive 3D and lovely hand-drawn 2D sprites. The music is suitably eerie, and the noises which emanate from the various zombies are both chilling and amusing.

It's also jolly good fun - for a while. However, it doesn't take long for the appeal to wane. There's little variety in the gameplay and - besides trying for a better score - hardly any reason to replay previously beaten stages.

As such, this effort to fuse one of the world's most infamous puzzle titles with the walking dead isn't quite as successful as it possibly should have been, but it's worth a look if you simply can't get enough of video games that prominently feature zombies.

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Zombie Minesweeper

The concept behind Zombie Minesweeper looks better on paper than it is in practice. The action here is too repetitive and shallow to maintain your interest for very long
Score
Damien  McFerran
Damien McFerran
Damien's mum hoped he would grow out of playing silly video games and gain respectable employment. Perhaps become a teacher or a scientist, that kind of thing. Needless to say she now weeps openly whenever anyone asks how her son's getting on these days.