Gun Zombie 2

Watch out! Here comes Glu's SEO-friendly Gun Zombie 2.

It's a game with a name so pale and tired and bereft of thought that you might mistake it for being one of the game's eponymous enemies.

As it lurches into the pale light of the Pocket Gamer offices we see that it delivers not only on its promise of zombies, but also on its promise of guns. The screens in the App Store denote that you probably fire said guns at the aforementioned zombies, apparently from a first person perspective.

Want to see me survive seven days against Gun Zombie 2's undead masses? Then you can join me on my nightmarish journey below.

Gun Zombie 2 looks a little bit like Dead Trigger 2, but unlike that game you don't have control over your movement. You position is fixed in place, only advancing once a wave of zombies has been cleared.

It's a gallery shooter, essentially.

You aim the reticle by sliding your thumb around the left-hand side of the screen, and shoot with a tap on the right. You can throw grenades to clear the screen, but they're very limited in quantity. You'll need to keep an eye on how many bullets are left in your magazine too, as you'll need to ensure your weapon remains loaded with bullets.

Weapons seem like the big upgrade path from the outset, and you can increase the rate of fire, the power behind each shot, and so on on a variety of different weapons. You start with small fire arms, such as pistols, and can then purchase high-end military-grade weapons like the P90.

So far the game is fine, for a gallery shooter. The shooting is accurate, my gun feels slightly underpowered but I still feel in control of combat situations.

My one issue so far is that I'm shooting a lot of women. A disproportionately large number of women.

Apart from a handful of dudes with shields, so far I've killed hundreds of female zombies, but no males. I'm wondering why this is, and I'm hoping it's a glitch, because at the moment I feel uncomfortable with the game's current offering of firing guns at dead ladies in a disturbing shooty shooty macho fantasy.

Don't worry, gang - I'm now shooting spider things, and goblins, and men that explode, and vampire bats, as well as zombie women. Phew!

Creature design is fairly good actually, with a particularly nasty enemy who can teleport being a highlight. This poor soul is clearly tormented and appears to be wrapped in fleshy cloth, clutching his head in agony just before he teleports in front of you and starts taking chunks off your life bar.

If only the engine rendering him were able to do it in 3D, or with more than a handful of frames of animation in his 2D model, because then Gun Zombie 2 might be approaching scary.

But, as it stands, the game barely manages to make the creatures of the darkness look like anything other than cardboard cutouts.

The gun I have does sound good though, as guns go.

Which is a good thing, I suppose, as I absolutely cannot afford another one, and will have to wait until I beat another large chunk of the game before I unlock one for free, as buying one is prohibitively expensive. This will take me a while, since there's an energy system in place, and the lacklustre shooting hasn't exactly gripped me to the point that I'm coming back at every opportunity to continue.

Because, yes, the gameplay is largely unchanged from when you and I last conversed.

There are a couple of additional elements to the gallery shooter formula. A Frenzy ability allows you to kill things much more quickly and damage any enemies within a blast radius at the moment it activates, and the paid-for Boost Items allow you to shoot longer and theoretically get through tougher missions unscathed.

I've even fought a boss or two, picking my moment to shoot their glowing weak spots, all the while destroying the smaller minions that accompany them.

But it's otherwise a very plain title so far, and one that I simply don't see changing that much.

I checked out the Blitz mode over the last couple of days. It's a game of survival, where you try to get as many points as you can until you run out of health. Your life bar slowly depletes over time, and to top it up you'll need to kill lots of baddies in exactly the same manner as you've been doing for the rest of the game.

However, you are slowly walking forwards in Blitz rather than standing still, so I suppose that's kind of an innovation.

I'm not doing very well at this mode, though, as the weaponry I have just isn't good enough to take on the hordes effectively.

The reason is simple: upgrading the guns you have - in the areas of damage, rate of fire, total ammo, and reload speed - costs a lot of GP. You can either buy GP or earn it slowly through regular play, but the game makes it very clear that it would like you to dig deep into your wallet. Your gun is consistently underpowered against enemies if you decide to play frugally.

What's worse is that as you're saving up for the next upgrade you'll occasionally run out of ammo in the middle of a mission and be asked whether or not you want to pay for more. If you don't, you die. If you do, it costs you a stack of cash.

If you can't tell already, then let me be very clear: after a full week with the game, I'm extremely bored with Gun Zombie 2's gameplay, and irked by its temerity in expecting me to pay handsomely for the privilege of playing it.