If Meridian’s Alive 4 Ever’s evokes memories of another zombie-blasting franchise, consider it a lovingly crafted homage more than an outright rip. Alive 4 Ever lets players select one of four highly skilled warriors (each with their own special skill sets) whose mission is to eradicate the undead menace that has arisen thanks to mechanics of evil science. The plot is standard fare, but the gameplay in this bird’s-eye-view shooter provides just the right amount of firepower and splatters to make it a fine mobile diversion for those that sit through long commutes or simply want to shoot stuff in short, non-demanding intervals.

Gameplay basically boils down to  pumping lead into everything that moves that was once dead. Each mission has a main goal (such as “Kill X amount of zombies”), and a secondary goal (such as extracting survivors to a safety zone) that adds a big bonus should you complete it. Cash and ability points gained allow you to buy new firepower and boost you health, critical hit chance, and more, thus allowing you to tweak the stats of the four default characters to your liking.

Alive 4 Ever, despite its overhead viewpoint,  manages to set the proper tone for the game. The graphics are suitably gloomy, and the legions of baddies that lumber and dash your way get blown away with nice level of bloody splash. The soundtrack is moody and the booms are nice and chunky.

Twin virtual analog sticks let you freely move in one direction and spit lead in another a la SmashTV, but in the heat of battling the hordes, it’s quite easy to move your character beneath one of your thumbs, obscuring the action.

In the upper-right portion of the screen is a gun icon that allows you to swap weapons, and a virtual button in the upper-left displays your objectives and pauses the game. Wedged between the two virtual joysticks is a reload button which also serves as a progress bar for the time left before you can fire again when you do reload, but when you’re near an object (such as a health pack) an additional button appears for picking up the item.

When you grow tired of blasting zombies alone, you can gather three other players for four player action via Bluetooth (if you’re running the 3.0 software on . Group play via Wi-Fi would’ve been a slick option, but it’s no big loss.

Priced at just 99-cents, Alive 4 Ever is surprisingly deep; many similarly-priced games in the App Store are glorified demos, but this one, thankfully, elevates above mediocrity. If you’re looking for fast-paced iPhone/iPod action this is one that you can not pass up.