The Haunted Hoard: Zombie Skape (DSi)

Zombie Skape feels like its concept is on the precipice of a good pun that just can’t quite materialize. This DSiWare game is about escaping from zombies on your skateboard, but something like Zombie Eskate doesn’t sound right, and the name they went with, Zombie Skape, feels like it is just a misspelling or shortening of a term. Zombie Skate could have been a perfectly fine title that tells you exactly what you’re in for, but having an idea that doesn’t quite come together well extends beyond just the title and into the actual zombie escaping as well.

 

Ethan is the hero of Zombie Skape, his night out skateboarding interrupted when undead hordes appear all around the city. While he skates off to save his own life though, a surprising number of women have fallen to the ground, Ethan able to swoop over and save them while he’s making his escape to build up his score and earn extra lives. The score will only be saved on a fully completed run of the game’s small selection of eight sequentially tackled stages though, but having the extra lives as an incentive does mean you have a focus beyond just skating around all the undead creatures and unusual hazards that show up in this arcadey action game.

Zombie Skape’s action takes place across both of the DSi’s screens, Ethan shown skating on the bottom screen on a road that stretches all the way to the top of the top screen. At its most basic, Zombie Skape is just about surviving to the end of a stage, Ethan needing to weave around the zombies who shamble towards him as he goes, but beyond a bit of forward movement they’re more like barriers you need to skate your way around than active threats. Other hazards and enemies are trickier, hopping pumpkins move back and forth, runaway cars careen down the road in different hectic ways, and sets of green arms will emerge from the ground when otherwise most hazards can be seen coming thanks to the top screen’s helpful preview of what’s ahead. The stages you progress through do all have a different danger at their heart, the early stages using simple things like the zombies and walls of fire but later levels throw in some special hazards that cover more space and require you to be a bit cleaner with how you make Ethan move around on his skateboard.

 

Ethan’s skateboard moves forward on its own but requires you to lean into direction shifts in order to actually avoid hazards, this making the controls a bit different than simply sliding the character back and forth to avoid the oncoming dangers. You can brake and lean into turns more to slow down as well if you need a little more time to adjust your direction, but a wall of zombie arms is always chasing behind you and slowing down too much will lead to them reaching out to hurt you. Once an understanding of the controls is acquired though the hand wall likely won’t be as much of a concern, especially since Zombie Skape’s levels often leave the far right and far left of the path rather safe so sticking close to them ends up eliminating some of the concerns with constant adjustments. It doesn’t completely leave those sides as safe spots at least so it’s not a guaranteed method to win, but Zombie Skape generally doesn’t seem to have the best understanding of what makes its hazards difficult. One level has you skating forward into darkness with zombies you can only see by their glowing red eyes… until they are halfway down the top screen, which would be more than enough time to react to and weave around these barely clustered enemies. It ends up perhaps the easiest stage despite being later into the adventure because it underestimates how barely limiting visual information might impede your play, but the later stages at least start to cram things together more so that you are worried you might be hit by the new hazards and enemies at play.

Zombie Skape does sometimes have issues, but they can end up helping you a bit. In later levels the abundant enemies cause some slowdown, but that gives you more time to see danger coming and adjust even though that doesn’t make those moments any nicer to play. However, the later stages start to have odd moments where what looks like a clear collision won’t actually deal damage. What appear to be swinging blades despite their chunky white 3D models might swing right through you without hurting you one bit, and the spinning coffins of a late game level sometimes dance right on through you. You have a jump that can be used to get over certain obstacles but rarely works on enemies, except sometimes you can leap over a little pumpkin while other times it will decide you should take some damage for trying. As long as you don’t take the unnecessary risks then you’ll just be pleasantly surprised when what looked like a brush with danger instead become a painless encounter, but it’s not like such mercy is needed because Zombie Skape isn’t a particularly challenging game once you understand your movement.

 

Zombie Skape does offer three difficulty levels, but the main thing differentiating them is how they approach the lives system. Each life in Zombie Skape grants you three hearts to represent three hits before you die and need to start from the level’s beginning, but depending on your difficulty, you also start the game with a different amount of lives: 4 for Easy, 3 for Normal, and 2 for Hard. The levels are exactly the same across every difficulty and there are no real reactive elements so you can just memorize the stages in Easy and handle Hard fairly well afterward, but there is one more bit of difference to consider. The girls who are laying out in the road shouting for help will grant you an extra life once you’ve gathered enough of them, doing so at regular amounts determined by the difficulty level. Less girls are required for extra lives on easy but you’ll need to put in a lot of work to earn one on Hard, but the girls are generally spaced well to have ones that are practically freebies while others will pull you away from the sides of the road to go near danger if you want some extra insurance. You will probably take some hits here and there so getting extra lives does feel important enough to justify grabbing the girls who aren’t lost causes, but it doesn’t quite inject enough life into the action to make up for it’s generally plain and unengaging stage design. Once you have a handle on the controls, only the surprise of new content really feels like it will catch you in a bind, and even then you’ll know that enemy or obstacle afterwards and can likely get around it easily enough as it reappears. Had it kept going for much longer maybe it could start to apply some pressure or do some good mixing of hazards, but as it stands it ends too soon and it is conquered too easily for it to come into its own.

THE VERDICT: Once you know the basics of how Zombie Skape controls, you’ll have probably enough knowledge to beat it on every difficulty without too much trouble. The hazards are mostly too simple to provide good opposition even when they’re moving and aren’t spaced the best, and the moments where hits don’t register properly further rob them of any teeth they might have had. Grabbing girls for extra lives does incentivize a little risk taking, but stages often just scatter the level’s main hazard and some complementary zombies around rather than trying to find some harmonious setups that would really test your ability to dodge quickly and carefully. You might get a little out of the very early learning period of what lies ahead in its small set of levels, but Zombie Skape mostly just provides a few mindless minutes of play rather than something that will draw you back to earn high scores.

 

And so, I give Zombie Skape for Nintendo DSi…

A BAD rating. With its technical issues never harming your ability to play well and even potentially cushioning a mistake or two, Zombie Skape avoids ever dipping into irritation, but it still feels like it has a poor handle on how to place enemies and hazards to make its dodging-focused skateboarding compelling. The far sides of the road are often a little too safe, it seems to think things like the dark level are more challenging than they actually are, and the girls you can rescue for extra lives will only push the player to veer near danger so much. Having the difficulty levels mostly differ in how extra lives are dished out isn’t a bad way of setting them apart, but it also means the skills needed in Easy transfer too well to the higher difficulties and with the levels being exactly the same throughout, you’re neither getting much new for swapping between difficulties nor are you really going to feel like the higher settings match their name because of your acquired foreknowledge. Better enemy mixes, reactive hazards, or maybe a small degree of randomization like the order you face zombie hordes in could spice things up a bit so it doesn’t end up a game that is so short you can basically memorize all you need to do, not that it’s so hard you really need to in order to succeed. It’s not awful to play though because it is so simple and so easily finished once you have the basics down, but having something to push against the player once they understand a game’s fundamentals is pretty standard game design approach that Zombie Skape doesn’t really achieve.

 

Zombie Skape’s main idea is skateboarding to avoid zombies, but there’s not as much put into that concept to bring it to life. Introducing new gimmicks and enemies with each stage was a smart move even if they don’t pack the needed punch to keep things exciting, but other ideas like maybe doing skate tricks to earn points could give you something to do besides weave around familiar creepy creatures. Zombie Skape is just too shallow to really hold your attention, but at least Ethan can take comfort in knowing his flight from the undead likely won’t end in his untimely demise too often if you do end up playing this game.