Challenge 8 - Second Assault

Zombie Karaoke Uncensored

For 1-2 Players

Platforms: XBox 360, Wii, Ps2, PS3

In Zombie Karaoke Uncensored, players design their zombie slaying/American Idol-esque badass and take to the stage to clear the audience of the zombie horde - that is, to say, everybody - by belting their hearts out and blasting their shotguns.

The game comes packed with a microphone and microphone stand, as the use of a controller is also necessary. While singing, the game plays similarly to Rock Band or Karaoke Revolution. The words scroll across the screen from right to left, as well as a line representing the pitch, and an arrow showing how your singing matches up to the song. There is also a thin vertical line near the left side of the screen which indicates where to sing a certain word or syllable.

As you sing, you gain damage multipliers for your attacks. Normally, you have a 1x multiplier, which means regular zombies need 4 hits to kill. That can be brought up to a 4x multiplier, which means regular zombies can be killed in 1 shot. The longer you sing consistantly, the fuller your Will-To-Live meter goes. If you get it full, your current multiplier is immediately multiplied by 4, so you can have up to a 16x multiplier, which causes major damage and, depending on your character, earns you different abilities. For example, a character can get Napalm Bullets which eat through zombies in a line, or Nitrogen Bullets which slow zombies down, faster fire and reload, etc. Players select their perk when they make their character, and unlock more perks as the game goes on.

Attacks are performed in two ways. One is while you are singing, which is done in a quick-time event fashion. A directional arrow and a trigger icon appears in an icon under a word, and if you hit that button combination when the word is sung, your character shoots a zombie with power equal to your current multiplier. On the Wii, the triggers display B or Z instead. The movement part is done by aiming the Wii remote in the indicated direction. The player does not have to aim the direction at the same time as they shoot. They can aim beforehand. If they do shoot before the word hits, though, their gun jams.

During instrumental sections of a song, the camera shifts to a behind-the-shoulder view, and the player must drag the cursor over approaching zombies, which the player's avatar then shoots on-beat, ala REZ. Depending on the player's weapon, they may be able to shoot many zombies or only a few per beat during this part. For example, automatics can hit many zombies at once, while the shotgun can only hit about one per beat. The more zombies shot during this part, the higher the player's multiplier goes, and kills can be racked up fairly quickly regardless of weapon.

There are also several boss battles which eliminate the fighting system in exchange for a regular scoring system. The player must reach a certain score in order to beat the boss. The boss is a smarter zombie that has retained the ability to sing. The winner kills the other.

The game has several modes of play. The mode described above is the basic Single and Multiplayer (called Face-Off). There is also Singing Shooter mode, where your character's shots are dependent solely on your singing capability. The better you sing, the more they shoot. Multipliers are added up the same way.

"Infected" Mode is an unlockable easter egg where you play as zombies. The fighting mechanics are eliminated for regular scoring, but the words in the songs are replaced with various moans and groans, and any word that rhymes with the word "brains" is replaced with such.

Single-player and Face-Off multiplayer is where everything is unlocked. You can unlock everything from outfits to dress up your character, to weapons which do more damage from the start or can hit multiple enemies, such as the Shotgun which does 3 damage instead of 1, and the Rocket Launcher which causes splash damage to other surrounding zombies.

As the game progresses, new kinds of zombies start appearing. The zombies at the start of the game are just the regular stumblers, but soon running zombies start appearing, as well as exploding zombies, zombies with guns, healer zombies that if left alive continuously heal any zombies you shoot, and necromancer zombies which can raise zombie attack dogs.

And now for the hopeful tracklist, in no particular order:

• Jonathan Coulton - Re: Your Brains
• B52's - Love Shack
• The Darkness - I Believe In a Thing Called Love
• The Cranberries - Zombie
• Rob Zombie - Living Dead Girl
• Michael Jackson - Thriller
• BJ Thomas - Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head
• Bobby Picket - Monster Mash
• Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear the Reaper
• Tom Petty - Zombie Zoo
• REM - It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
• Journey - Don't Stop Believin'
• Morris Day and the Time - Jungle Love
• Spinal Tap - Stonehenge
• Tokyo Police Club - Graves
• The Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive
• Our Lady Peace - Superman's Dead
• The Presidents of the United States - Lump
• GWAR - Sexecutioner
• Verix - Drop the Dodongo

Feel free to comment with suggestions for more songs.

Zombie Karaoke Uncensored, coming soon to an uninfected console near you.