Review: OMG-Z (PSN)

The zombie apocalypse is upon us once again and it’s time to pick up your gun and slaughter the undead in Laughing Jackal’s OMG-Z. OMG-Z is a fun game, but not what I was expecting, especially since the game is about zombie killing. I was thinking side scrolling shooter, something similar to contra. Instead, I got a stationary character that sniped the walking dead from the tops of overturned trucks. Not saying it’s a bad thing, just unexpected. Another thing I want to mention is the game doesn’t really fit the zombie survival motif. It actually feels like the developers had this great puzzle game and needed some way to sell it. So they dressed the game up in a zombie costume hoping that people would give it a chance. I guess it worked because I played it.

The game works like this, you are given limited ammo (you start off with only 3 bullets) and you need to take out the hordes of zombies that want to turn you into dinner. Sounds impossible, I know, but there’s a twist. The game features five different types of zombies and each type dies in their own special way. When killed, some zombies blow up destroying the undead around them, while others fire bullets that ricochet and can potentially kill other zombies from the other side of the screen. Once you figure out which zombies do what, the game gets really interesting because you can set off massive chain reactions that can clear a stage. And once the bodies start dropping, it’s fun to sit back and watch the carnage.

At the end of each stage you are awarded money based on the number of zombies you’ve killed. You can use that money to buy upgrades like more ammo or you can upgrade the zombies. Yep, I said it right, you can upgrade the zombies so their deaths can do more damage or add more zombies to make an even bigger chain reaction of death.

The game has it’s own unique look. The game’s opening starts off like a black and white comic strip with a little red coloring the bloody bits, unfortunately, the whole game continues with the black, white and red color scheme. Hmmmm I thought to myself, maybe they’re just going for the artsy style of using monochromatic colors to make some greater point…NOPE! Since everything is one of three colors it gets kind of difficult figuring out which zombie is which. No worries, the developers came up with a solution to this problem. Each zombie type is color coded and by pressing and holding R1 you can see each zombie in a different color. That’s great, but I ended up holding R1 the entire time. Why couldn’t the zombies be rainbow colored to begin with? It would have saved my index finger from some carpal tunnel.

Oh and I forgot to mention, this game requires a degree of patience. You can’t just shoot zombies in the face and expect to pass the stage. I had to wait until my undead victim moved exactly where I wanted him before I could splatter him and his friends all over the pavement. It’s also a short game. You can probably make it to the helicopter of safety (because it’s always a helicopter) in probably 10 minutes, but there are a ton of extra stages to play though if you like this particular puzzle game.

Overall OMG-Z is a good game if you get past some of it’s minor problems. If you’re into tactical/strategy games that rewards patience with big pay offs then you might want to check this game out. If you’re looking for some running and gunning zombie killing mayhem then you’ll probably want to look somewhere else.