Desert Zombie Last Stand

Zombies are now as prevalent in video games as underwater levels were in the '90s and slippy-slidey ice worlds were in the '80s.

Be they cutesy cartoon sprites or polygon-drenched hi-res flesh-munchers, if you're playing a game then there are probably some zombies in it somewhere.

This ubiquity has led us inevitably to Desert Zombie Last Stand, a new Unreal-powered slaughterfest for iOS devices that attempts to drown you in waves of reanimated corpses.

You play a buzzcut soldier who's crashed behind enemy lines in a nondescript desert that's been taken over by the undead. It's your job to repel wave after wave of flesh-hungry meat sacks, upgrading your weaponry as you go.

You control your beefy army chap with virtual joysticks on the left and right of the screen, blasting away by double-tapping anywhere on the right. It's a clumsy solution, and hardly fits with the game's fast-paced action.

Quite often you'll find yourself cornered and surrounded, being battered to death by corpses as you flail around, trying to fire and failing miserably. With the autoaim turned up to its highest setting the controls become a little more bearable, but they're still not perfect, and they can lead to some rather sticky endings.

There are two different arenas to play through - the ruins of a village and the ruins of a freeway. The Unreal Engine chugs away nicely under the bonnet, and Desert Zombie is an game to behold.

The zombies in particular are gruesomely detailed, losing limbs and falling to pieces as you riddle them with hot lead. But despite this visual sparkle, the game lacks any real character.

Sure, you're fighting zombies in the desert, but these zombies have guns and rocket launchers, so you may as well be fighting terrorists, gang members, or disgruntled customers of your buzz cutting hair salon.

The bosses, huge mutant zombies that can crush you into little human chunks, are riffs on huge mutant zombies from Left 4 Dead and Resident Evil, and the coverless gunplay feels like any number of Gameloft's mobile titles.

Originality isn't the be-all-and-end-all of gaming, though, and Desert Zombie does have its panicked, heart-pounding moments. When you're cowering in a corner, trying to load your pistol while the zombie horde bears down on you, things do get a little bit tense.

If you can look past the control frustrations and some occasionally unfair spikes in difficulty, you'll find a lot to like about Desert Zombie: Last Stand.

It's not nuanced or subtle, there's no hidden message in your endless undead slaughter, and it's about as original as a photocopy of the VHS cover to Day of The Dead. But you could do a lot worse.

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