Nintendo Okie

There are fewer games that have sold me based solely on the concept and a few screenshots. Zombie Panic in Wonderland is one of those titles. Heck, the title alone was enough to get me to even find out what the game was all about. It combines some of the greatest children’s stories of all times with the best possible video game enemy, the zombie.

Fighting Isn’t a Solo Affair

Sure you can fight the game’s single player campaign and arcade modes by yourself, but surviving the zombie apocalypse is going to mean bringing a friend along. The game gets easier on a few levels when you’ve got a friend along. For one, dieing means the game doesn’t automatically end as long as one of you still lives. The other is that you’ve now got a second gun mowing down the game’s seemingly endless hordes of the undead. Having one person cover half a battlefield is considerably better than having to cover the entire thing yourself and the friendly conversation can’t hurt. It’s not easy to carry on a conversation with someone who’s trying to eat your brains after all.

Arcade Fun in Your Living Room

The game is very reminiscent of old school arcade shooters. Your character inhabits the bottom part of the screen where you can’t move. That’s your spot and you’re going to defend it with your life. Zombies come at you from everywhere else on the screen, including off screen in some cases. You have some lateral movement that will allow you to take care of zombies that are attacking you from beyond your field of view, but other than that you’re not going anywhere. It’s sort of like a tower defense game where you’re the tower that you have to defend. The Wii Remote’s pointer takes care of all your aiming and it’s very responsive. You don’t have to worry about losing track of your pointer or using it to move you to a new field of view. All of your movement, what little you have, is handled by the nunchuk. The Zapper is perfectly suited for a game like this that uses both parts of the controller, but there’s no motion control to deal with. It might be the perfect time to clear the dust off of that peripheral and use it for once.

You’re given a time limit that you must clear the area of 100% of your enemies. The time limit is usually very generous and gives you plenty of time to complete your objective. Later in the game having a partner really makes this task that much easier to handle. You’ll constantly be moving your eyes back and forth between these two obstacles to see how well you’re doing. There is also some strategy to how you kill the zombies. Each of their body parts are separately targetable meaning you can shoot off arms and legs as well as heads and many times it’s easier to drop a zombie by shooting off it’s legs than it is to whittle down their torso.

Cast of Colorful Characters and Sounds

You start the game as Momotaro by default, but very quickly will have the option of choosing different characters. Favorite characters from children’s classics such as Dorothy or Snow White will soon join you in ridding Wonderland of Zombies. Each of these characters is drawn in a brilliant anime style theme, but I do have some issue with the designs of characters. Zombie slayers like Momotaro or Dorothy are very well developed. Snow White is dressed a bit like a tramp with different parts of her chest visible at various times and a sultry tramp walk into the sunset when the job’s finished.

The zombies themselves are great. There is a lot of variety in them from the standard shambling zombie to more elusive ones like the samurai or the jester. Many of them also have some form of distant attack whether through bow and arrow or just hurling boulders. The bosses are also quite intimidating. One of the early bosses fills a large portion of the screen and hurls huge tree trunks at you. These boss fights aren’t terribly hard though as it’s mostly a matter of patience and whittling them down a little at a time. One thing makes this game worth it if nothing else; exploding chickens.

Not Terribly Difficult

The game itself isn’t terribly difficult. I mean that only in that you have an unlimited number of continues and the game saves as you go along so it’ll be just a matter of spending enough time shooting zombies. That’s not to say there aren’t difficult parts of the game, but it feels almost superficial by way of the time limit which is the only thing keeping you from moving on to new levels at different times. Part of that comes from the arcade nature of the game, but it feels a bit outdated in today’s gaming world. The game would be successful at taking your quarters if you were in an actual arcade so it does a good job of getting across that feeling.

Conclusion

There’s definitely no shortage of zombie themed arcade shooters out there. Most of them tend to take themselves a bit more seriously and that’s where Zombie Panic in Wonderland sets itself apart. The shooting mechanics feel spot on and the cast of characters is interesting. They’re mostly just cut and paste skins because they all function exactly the same, but just being able to choose between a stereotypical Japanese warrior to Dorothy to Snow White gives everyone some character they’ll enjoy. It’s a very fun arcade shooting experience in your living room with the perfect control scheme for devices like the Wii Zapper and a great buy at 1000 Wii Points.

Final Score: 4/5 Above Average

Played through entire campaign once and played many levels of arcade mode in single and multiplayer.
Total Play Time: 7 hour
Game purchased on the Wii Shop Channel.