TimeWasters highlights many of the excellent Web-based/lightweight downloadable titles that you can dive into within the space of a lunch break. This week, Chris Gampat explores Flaming Zombooka.
If you’re a fan of blowing up zombies, then you’ll probably love Flaming Zombooka. As a game that pays homage to both zombie games and a little bit of Duke Nukem, cubicle slaves will finally be able to take their rage out on zombies Shaun of the Dead-style–but this time with a bazooka!
Flaming Zombooka is a game that requires a bit of thinking, observation, estimation, and a love of OMGWTFBBQing zombies. As you may have suspected, the main point of the game is to kill zombies. At first, that task is fairly simple to accomplish, but steadily becomes more (and then extremely) complicated.
The game progresses in levels which will actually go by very quickly if players are persistent. Just when you think you’ve mastered the levels by launching rockets at zombies while screaming, “BOOM HEADSHOT!”, you’ll suddenly be forced to bounce rockets off different areas (and at exact angles) with enough firepower to hit their intended targets.
Flaming Zombookas only requires the mouse to operate. Moving it around the screen aims your soldier’s gun. Bringing the pointer closer to the solider lessens the strength of the rocket, and vice versa. While the concept has been done many times over and over again, it hasn’t been done effectively with zombies yet, or with a combination of puzzle tactics. On top of all this, one needs to kill all zombies with a limited number of rockets or else they fail the level. Don’t worry too much though, because you will get another try.
On a personal note, I really wish that my solider was allowed to move himself at certain points, or that the zombies did try to fight back. It would’ve made the game even more challenging and much more fun.
While the gameplay is pretty good, the sound scheme is almost laughable. There is no real music per se, but there are these weird rocket launching sounds, zombie sounds. and innocent civilian sounds if you hit them (I won’t say anything more about that, you’ll have to get to the harder levels to see for yourself.) This game could’ve used a much better sound scheme: perhaps some 80′s death metal, or just some posers trying to pull it off. It’s just very weird to be firing a rocket and hear the equivalent of someone smacking a ball in ping-pong.
The graphics are nothing special for a flash game, but that is very excusable when most of the emphasis is based on the puzzle style of gamepaly involved in pwning the zombies.
Either way, if you want to take some time off from Left 4 Dead, then try out Flaming Zombookas.
