Zombie games come a dime a dozen on the App Store, but most take form as some sort of shooter, so it’s refreshing to see somebody trying something new in The Raging Dead, developed by GhostBird Software. Using either bombs or a machine gun players of this fresh zombie game are tasked with quickly eliminating a zombie threat in over 22 different areas of a metropolitan city from a bird’s eye view. With agressive zombie A.I. that will hunt down civilians and convert them to their undead army in only seconds, The Raging Dead will require a quick eye and an even faster finger to find success.
Each level in The Raging Dead consists of a single screen with hundreds of dots that represent people milling about. Blue dots are humans, and red dots are zombies. At the start of a level there will only be a few red dots (or more, depending on how far into the game you’ve made it) but that quickly changes as the evil little red dots begin quickly catching the little blue people, pausing only for a second or two to convert the former human into another red zombie dot, which will then join in with its attacker to catch even more humans.
As you might imagine, entire cities can be completely overrun with zombies unless the undead are stopped quickly, and that’s where the player comes in. Tapping on the screen will drop a bomb (or fire the machine gun, if that’s your preference), killing all zombies in the impact area. That impact area is painfully small at first, and that combined with the extremely zoomed out view in each level makes precision a bit difficult. Luckily, weapons can be upgraded with money earned at the end of each level to allow for a more forgiving blast radius, so players will be able to eliminate the zombie threat quickly and efficiently.
The interesting part of the game becomes apparent when you realize that your weapon has limitations like reload speed time, and you must sacrifice some civilians in order to prevent the infection from hitting everywhere in the city at once. The strategy is to quickly eliminate all the scattered zombies at the start of the level, and by the time you’ve done that it’s likely that the one or two that you missed have created a small army around their locations. That’s just the sacrifice that you’ll have to make if you want to be successful, because the only way to win is the eventually get all the zombies in a corner where they have no more civilian targets to infect and wipe them out all at once.
Bombs are great for killing many zombies at once, but you’ll run the risk of killing humans and damaging the city if you spam them. The machine gun can only kill one zombie at once but its very useful once you decide to start going for “A" rankings by avoiding avoiding city damage and keeping more civilians “unzombified."
There are four different rankings that can be awarded at the end of each completed level, and more money is distributed to the player for higher rankings. Levels can and will likely have to be replayed to farm money (especially towards the beginning of the game, where everything is just a tad too hard), but it’s likely that you won’t mind, as levels can be completed in only seconds if you’re good enough and you’ll want to improve your level rankings anyway.
GhostBird Software has stated in our forums that multiple profiles, more levels, more weapons, more behaviors, and different modes like challenge and survival will be added in the future.
The Raging Dead is an interesting game, especially if you remember the Zombie Infection Simulator java applets that made the rounds online quite a few years ago. The strategy the game forces you to use in choosing which humans to sacrifice to save the rest of the population from the zombie infection is a unique gameplay element that we enjoyed.
App Store Link: The Raging Dead, $2.99
Will Megan Fox's breasts feature in this game?
More like will there be updated graphics, since the Iphone can handle so much more. I'll probably get it either way, since I'm a big TF fan.
Day 1 purchase for me! I haven't played the original mobile game so is unicron in the game as a villain? I sure hope so!
I REALLY want a new beast wars game (any platform) beast wars was my favorite in the transformers series followed by g1
I hope the game is better than the movies!
Pros:
turn based strategy game
Cons:
Transformers game
Pros:
turn based strategy game
PROS:
Transformers game!!
:P
You've got that backwards.
Too bad it isn't an action game.
At least it's the original Transformers!
Yes way Ted- G1 Transformers meets Advance Wars. WIN.
I will buy this the second after I see it's out! I love Transformers, and I cant believe there's a G1 game coming out! Squee!
I'm looking forward to it. I liked Rogue Planet a lot at first, but then got early bored by it's ridiculously stupid AI. If it's a smartly made turn based strategy game it may or may not be a Transformers frainchise, I couldn't care less about that fact.
responding to LS650
it's not based on the movies (which SUCK BALLS!) it's based on the original tv series from the 80s which has bassically NOTHING to the shit movies
Love those crispy-clean primary-colours graphics. That is how The Transformers are supposed to look; not that dark and pointy rubbish from the live-action films.
War For Cybertron on consoles and now this for iPhone - could this be the year of not-shit Transformers games? O_O
Was thinking the other day about how awesome this would be if ported to the iphone , Very awesome game :D
I've played the mobile game and it's really good. It's pretty much Advance Wars with robots, and that's a good thing :)
I can recommend it to anyone who are into strategy games and especially Transformers. Since the original game had a demo version available, I wouldn't be surprised if Glu releases a Lite for everyone to try out.
And I advice that you _do_ try it out.
SOLD!!!!!!
Thank god it's not based on the appalling Bayformers.
Not to be too off topic, but why is everyone bashing the movies. I was a huge fan of the original (who didn't look up to Prime?), and though that Bay did a pretty good job of modernizing it. Really, the source material is pretty hard to pull off, considering it was created to sell toys. A robot planet, and alien robots that just happen to look like human vehicles? Come on. The stories and dialog were god awful on the show. As kids we didn't care - it made us buy toys, but if you watched it now, jeez.
I went to the movies to see it modernized, to hear Prime again, and to see giant realistic robots kicking ass and blowing stuff up. Oh, and Megan fox is hot, so score on all accounts ;)
woohoo!
oldskool TF strategy game. instapurchasebuy :D
Looks like a significant boost in the visuals if you compare the CU shots in the video to the screenshot.
I like the description of the game quite a bit. Spent a little time on a project with a similar summary in a class I was teaching.
Day one purchase for me, no question. :)
It reminds me of that Voltron game for the iphone. I wish the battle sequences were better animated.
They actually transform into other things on Cybertron but on earth they took the form of earth vehicles to blend in :P
Everyones bashing the movies because they werent as good as they could have been and that the original show is still better then the movies.
More like the source material had far more potential for a good film than the "Childhood Rape: Breasts and Explosions" franchise that Bay turned it into.
At least the first film was mostly inoffensive, even if it missed the mark on the fundamental stuff. The second film was basically the poorest fan-fiction dredged from the net made real.
yeah, awesome!
I can't wait for this game on my iphone!!