The Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys! review

Teenage Zombies is a simplistic DS platformer, where the titular trio of zombies have been awakened by an invasion of alien brains, and since they are the only humans who are immune to the aliens mind controlling shenanigans, they are the last hope for survival. Good thing the planet wasnt invaded by alien livers or wed be in real trouble. The three zombies all have their own abilities, the only female zombie, Lefty Lopez, is great for scaling high ledges with her extendable arm, while he tubby friend Fins has three tentacles growing from his back for some reason, allowing him to climb walls. Meanwhile, Half-Pipe is missing everything from below his waste but gets around on his skateboard meaning hes able to pass through narrow gaps and jump over ramps. As you can probably tell by now, this game is far from serious. The graphics look like a Saturday morning cartoon, and stories are told in comic book format. It also tries to be funny, but most of the jokes fall flat due to rather hackneyed writing. Still, not every game can be as funny as Phoenix Wright. The visuals would be better if the animation matched the cartoon-esque quality of the graphics, but sadly most are rather stiff, though thats somewhat appropriate in a game about shambling corpses. Some run smoothly like when Fins eats the brains of enemies (or rather, the enemy brains) to regain health, but by comparison, Leftys is stiff with far fewer frames.There is more consistency with the gameplay, as its all quite simple. While the game does have you running around killing enemies while trying to get to the end of the level. The majority is made up of swapping between your zombies and using their abilities to solve the puzzles. All of which involve getting a zombie specific power up so they can pass through a wall, fall down a hole without hurting themselves, or traverse some terrain. Oh sure, sometimes theres some enemies to circumvent or a specific type of enemy to defeat, but thats all there is to it at the end of the day. The only other aspect to the game there is to comment on are the mini-games that turn up every now and then, such as collecting a zombies dismembered corpse and assembling him again buy dragging the various parts on to the torso, or Half-Pipes half-pipe, which has the undead skater performing stunts to kill alien brains for no other reason than to extend the games lifespan. Moving on, theres nothing else to really comment on with the game aside from the audio. The zombies are mostly silent apart from the odd grunt when taking damage or trying to pick up a power-up they cant use and enemies only make a sound when they fire or meet a terrible end. The game's music fares better, with each world having it's own but in some cases quite similar.Teenage zombies isnt a terrible game, its just lazy. Theres barely anything to it, and what does exist on the DS cart isnt spectacular. Its almost as if the developers phoned in most of the team whilst working on something more important, in the full knowledge that this game wasnt going to set the world alight. A gaming non-event if there ever was one.