Zombies are all the rage these days. Tons of games are coming out about the apparently impending zombie apocalypse (meanwhile vampires are taking over film and TV, maybe it’s a conspiracy). Dead Panic is no exception, but it gives you a slightly different view of the War on Zombies, a top down one.

In Dead Panic you take control of any number of Marines armed with machine guns in a top down tactical strategy. Your Marines aren’t the smartest people in the world and so you have to move their line-of-sight around for them to sense an enemy and begin blasting away. Yes, even if the zombie is gnawing on their shoulder at times. The game contains three modes - Training (tutorial), Campaign (level-by-level progression) and Survival (non-stop onslaught).

Each level forces you to strategically place your soldiers to the highest tactical advantage. In the Campaign mode you can’t move your troops after initial placement while in Survival mode you can earn cash that allows you to do just that along with healing your team, utilizing zombie nets, hiring more soldiers and doubling damage for a short time.

This game is great, but at times extremely difficult (on normal). I haven’t had massive amounts of success fighting off the zombie hordes and I have yet to unlock the second level in Survival (1000 points is ridiculous as my best is 600). There’s also a training mode to help you sort out your initial tactics and learn the basics. But the training mode isn’t a sandbox it’s just a tutorial. So that means endless replays to try and figure out a workable strategy.

I’ve managed to finish all of five or six levels so I can’t tell you how many levels there are in the game. I can tell you that it takes A LOT of bullets to bring down a zombie. This is not the head exploding Left 4 Dead type zombie. This is the pump them full of so much lead they aren’t strong enough to stand up zombie. Then, on top of that, there are these super zombies who it seems, no matter how much lead you pump into them, you cannot and will not defeat. Sound frustrating? Well it is a bit. Does it make you want to stop playing? Yes, sometimes, but it also makes you want to blow those frickin zombies to little itsy bitsy pieces as well. And there is your replay value right there.

The controls are sometimes frustrating as you have little way to control your men and if you put them all in a group aiming outward it becomes difficult to choose one to move his aim. That’s about the only problem with the controls really.

The graphics on the game aren’t astounding. Spiders look like they have four legs (or they are zombie crabs?), there are only a few types of zombies and all the marines look the same, use the same weapon and fire at the same rate. What I wouldn’t give for an area effect shotgun blast from time to time to help level the playing field.

That reminds me, the game has a serious lack of weapon variety. You have one weapon, the machine gun. You have zombie nets in Survival mode but those only stall the zombies. Some grenades, shotguns, chainsaws or even a flamethrower would be a welcome addition to your arsenal. If you could choose from multiple types of marines, that would be ideal and definitely add more strategy to the game.

This is one of those games that makes sure you know, when the zombie apocalypse happens, you’re dead. So just give up already because you will never, ever win against them. Of course, until the zombie apocalypse does happen, try out this game and maybe you’ll have some idea of how best to stave off the horde long enough to kiss your buttocks goodbye.

NOTE: The storyline has a lot of vulgarity and makes the game inappropriate for children.