Infected is an arcade third-person shooter that has you destroying extremely large zombie masses. The basic premise is that New York City has been overrun by zombies that infect anyone who they touch. You play a character that happens to be immune to the virus in question, so you’re sent out as a one-man army to eliminate the spreading hordes. In typical Planet Moon style, the game is laced with the developer's own brand of humour and innuendo, both in the actual levels and in between. It’s mainly confined to silly voiceovers and at times, it seems a little on the trying-too-hard side. You start the game by creating a profile and a character. You choose your name, look and your location. Interestingly enough, the locations cover most of the gaming world except (not surprisingly) Australia. More on this later, but you will have the option to change your character and avatar as you play through and unlock some of the goodies within the game. The customising options are nothing like the 'EA Game Face' or anything, but they suffice.
Blowing up zombies never gets old.
There are two main gameplay options in the game: the campaign and the multiplayer. The campaign is a set of 35 missions that are spread across various, vaguely familiar locations in New York/Long Island, with the main objective the mass elimination of zombies. The missions are divided into six basic types, with one requiring only mass zombie elimination, and the other five having some variant of saving civilians, while executing extremely dense zombie hordes. Each mission comes attached with medal objectives. Completing the required objective will reward the player with a medal, which in turn rewards money that can be exchanged for upgrades. The objectives generally consist of killing within the time limit, performing certain tasks and saving certain amounts of civilians.
The developers have done a reasonably good job at creating a unique yet portable shooter. Basically, your character's blood is immune to the infection (but not zombie attacks) but at the same time, can destroy the zombies when they’re vulnerable. So you’re equipped with two weapons. One is a selection of ballistic weapons and the other is a viral gun. Every zombie starts with a yellow aura, so you fire off a few ballistic rounds (X) to reduce them to a red aura. Once at red, set off the viral gun (square) and enjoy the splatter. Given that this would get incredibly boring after a little while, the true incentive lies in building combos. If you have two or more zombies in red and together, charge up your viral gun and watch the mass splattering of zombie groups. The higher your combo, the more points you get, and the higher the potential for dropped goodies, such as power-ups and unlockables.
Your viral gun is essentially the same throughout, but you’ll get five main ballistic weapons. These include a pistol, shotgun, automatic rifle, RPG and one called BMFG (and yes, it really does stand for that). You’ve also got some special weapons that include grenades and other explosives, as well as a chainsaw that you can pick up for some timed slice-and-dice action. Initially, the game doesn’t make the greatest impression. You start off with nothing but the pistol (a pea-shooter, more like) and the action comes off as mundane. After a couple of missions and medals, things start falling into place and weapons can be unlocked, as the medals give you cash. After each weapon is bought/unlocked, you can’t start with it straight away, but it becomes usable after a few kills. There are a few other silly unlockables, that include Slipknot avatars.
And you thought the zombies were a handful.
Despite the slow start, the game possesses excellent progression. Soon enough, you’ll be painting the town red with some of the most intense and addictive zombie splatter action seen in a while. It’s easily the best arcade shooter on the PSP at the moment. The developers didn’t duff the controls either - there's no need for precision aiming, and the PSP analogue nub is only required for moving. The R button locks on to enemies and allows you to strafe, while the L button switches between locks. Obviously, it's no Zelda, so don’t expect the lock-on feature to be perfect, but it's serviceable. You’re also granted a handy 180-degree turn. In all, the controls are quite decent and get the job done pretty damn well. Infected also does a fine job at being portable as well. The HUD is a bit convoluted and messy at first, but nothing that can’t be gotten used to. The load times are suitably fast and the missions don’t usually last more than five minutes. It isn’t that great a game for long periods, but great for on the go.
In terms of the multiplayer, Infected has a rather nifty concept behind it. In both Ad-hoc and Infrastructure modes, every match that you win will cause the other, losing players to be “infected” with your avatar. Conversely, if you lose, you are the infected one. The cool thing about infection is that when you are connected online you can observe on a world map, just how far your infection has spread (too bad Australia isn’t represented). When you are infected, all zombies in single player will have the infecting avatar, though it can be removed by giving the infection to someone else or completing a few single player missions. Multiplayer takes place over four modes, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Saviour and Mad Cow. Saviour basically has you saving civilians, while Mad Cow is a glorified Capture and Hold the Flag, where the flag happens to be you "dressing up" as or hunting a Mad Cow. While standard, they service the game pretty well, especially if you can fill up the eight spots in the ad-hoc mode. Disappointingly, only two players can partake in online games.
While there are 35 missions in the game, a player is unlikely to take more than four hours to complete them all. Given the surprisingly compelling nature of the mayhem, we wouldn’t put it past players to fully-upgrade and unlock all the goodies and gold medals but even then, it's unlikely that players will go past the eight-hour mark. Still, it’s a damn good game for on the go. If you have friends with PSPs, you’d all do reasonably well to purchase a copy, as the multiplayer is a simple but engaging and enjoyable experience. Despite a pretty nifty concept, the online multiplayer is probably too sparse to consider as a significant game component, especially when the game was released in the US last November.
The more zombies, the more splatter... YAHOO!
Given that the game has come relatively early in the PSP life-cycle, it shouldn’t be surprising that the graphics are a tad below-par. It runs smoothly enough, and there is plenty of splatter and boom, but the game doesn’t look like it would have fared well off the PSP. Still, Plant Moon’s style is unmistakably present. Sound-wise, there's a lot of heavy metal music, and it’s actually somewhat suitable for the game. Too bad that it gets to be a bit grating after a while. The game is filled with satisfyingly gruesome sounds, but they can get a tad drowned in the metal. There's some good, colourful voicing, but it can be a tad muffled at times.
As a game for purchase, Infected hasn't got the best argument at full price. However, if you can get a few friends together, you’ve at least got some very reasonable multiplayer action to keep you going. Outside of that, it’s a surprisingly enjoyable and addictive shooter, that's not only competent but good for portability. It's got an exhiliration that keeps you going and a real "DIE @#$%" feel to it. Not to mention that mass zombie elimination is never a bad thing, and the game has its own definitive blend of humour. It's just too bad that the game probably won’t fulfill some of the more endearing and interesting concepts that it brings to the table.
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