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I was reading the latest issue of Famitsu (which, by the way, has a pretty awesome preview of Siren 2) when I ran across a crazy game called The Zombie VS Ambulance (THEVS). This is SIMPLE2000 game, which means its a budget title by D3 publishing (retail in Japan is about $18, which is ultra cheap considering most new games are in the $70 range). D3 has made horror-themed games in the past, including the awful-looking Onechannbara (a stupid play on “onechan,” meaning “young girl” and “chanbara,” meaning “sword fight”) and The Noroi Game (lit. “The Cursed Game”).
So I did a little research on The Zombie VS Ambulance, because I just couldn’t get over the idea that somebody made a game about zombies fighting ambulances. There’s an official site for the game which has some tiny screen shots, but the most interesting information comes from this guy’s blog about the SIMPLE series (man, and I thought my blog was niche). I translated a couple of snippets from his review:
… The basic formula is leave the hospital -> run over some zombies and help some people -> return to the hospital, repeated over and over. But the need to run zombies over to win keeps the tension level high, so I think the system works pretty well. First of all, there’s a “hospital health gauge.” As you drive around the gauge is slowly depleted, and if it ever goes to zero it means the hospital has succumbed to the zombies and it’s game over. It’s basically a life bar for the hospital. In order to fill the gauge back up, you have two options:
This mechanic keeps you on your toes. … The ambulance upgrades are cool. You can get mechanics that you save to upgrade your ambulance, but they’ll require you to complete their weird requests (like, “run over 40 zombies to finish this upgrade”) first. This is another reason to keep running over zombies, and combined with the hospital’s health gauge, there’s a nice balance that keeps the game from getting dull. It’s a good combination. … If you don’t get survivors that you’ve picked up back to the hospital before the time runs out, they’ll turn into zombies inside the ambulance. This makes the ambulance harder to drive. How are you supposed to solve this problem? By driving full speed into a wall, which causes the zombies to fly out of the vehicle! WTF. This guy also talks about the things he doesn’t like (no D-Pad support, and you have to drive carefully when you have people in the back). Basically, this game sounds like a combination of Crazy Taxi and Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick: pick up people and take them somewhere, and on the way drive over zombies and send buckets of blood and gore everywhere. So yeah, they really made an ambulance vs zombie game. Is it Survival Horror? Probably not, but since I’m including Evil Dead, it’s a tough call. |
HONESTLY!!
Your little quest will NEVER be complete if you keep being stupid with your choices that make no sence. Splatterhouse, Blue Stinger, THIS GAME and a ton of other games AREN’T survival horror. If you have Evil Dead, you might as well include Devil May Cry and Oneechanbara, even though you hate those games.
I don’t hate Devil May Cry! I thought it was one of the best games on the PS2. I have the sequel and I’m picking up the special edition for #3 this week.
I do think THE Onechanbara is probably one of the worst-looking games I’ve ever seen, but I haven’t actually played it much.
But the question here is: are those games horror-themed. I don’t think they are, and I don’t really think this game is either. But Onechanbara and Evil Dead really are not that far apart, so maybe Evil Dead doesn’t belong in the database either.
This game sounds cool. Even if it is 50-50 in
the quality department the experience and the
laughter would be worth the bargain price 🙂
I’m not sure it would be import-able for the masses. The PAL-Landers might get a translation tho’ They got The Sniper 2.
why do you think its so bad looking? Do you mean graphics? If you think the graphics are bad, you seriously need to pick the game up. The graphics are very good for a budget game, and the graphics for the sequel are awesome. I couldnt believe it was actually a blue back disc.
You still never addressed Splatterhouse. And Vampire Hunter D!? Have you ever played that game? The new Bratz game is more survival horror.
I was a Splatterhouse 3 lobbyist. The reason
was it meshed the story of a survival horror
game before there was a true SH game with a beatemup engine. Unlike most brawlers it had
a time and strategy component that dictated events
in the game. Ie, do you save your wife Jennifer
or does the bore worm consume her brain and render her a monster.
As I have written elsewhere I think “Survival Horror” is not a great way to define games. So
think of Splatterhouse 3 as a good action-horror
game worthy of study.
Would that make Devil May Cry an adventure-horror-fantasy game? Perhaps.
I think it would be better to communicate the
strengths of DMC tho’ as opposed to attacking
the poor old Evil Dead games.
Hello! I’m a total douche and Oneechanbara rules!
Heh. I actually want to grab this, if I could, just for the sheer craziness of it. And by the by, this is Chris’ site. Yes, I don’t exactly agree with some of the list contents myself, but I still respect him doing this database. So, yeah. This game looks neat and props to Chris. Tis his site.
A lot of hate on this little patch on comment
board.
Hey. It looks like this game will get PAL release
as “Zombie Zone”
http://forum.aceboard.net/7869-1299-28508-0-Zombie-Attack.htm
yeah, zombie zone’s been out
I respect what Chris is doing too, which is probably why Im more fustrated at his choices and my sever dissapointment/disagrements with them. I guess I feel like oneechanabra should be on here is because its survival horror action. You have to survive against HURDS of zombies, and its more scary than Resident Evil 4. And I dont understand that. And I love Splatterhouse and Evil Dead (sorry, im not attacking those) but I dont think they are survival horror in any shape or forum, except it had monsters in it.
At least this site doesn’t exceed its transfer rate after someone views four images.
iceburn
Strap a hockey mask on a man, have him struggle through freaky monsters with tons of blood and gore to rescue his wife… if that’s not horror, I am beyond lost here.
On the other hand, a man in a leather jacket killing puppets does NOT qualify as horror. And if somehow DMC did make the list, God of War must then be added… and that doesn’t make much sense.
DMC really ist “horror”. It has a dark and gothic atmosphere/setting, but for the reason of stylte, its not enough to be “horror”. If you add DMC you could also add the Shadow Heart, Shin Megami Tensei and tons of other dark themed games, where you have to kill demons…
am i the only person disapointed that onimusha seems to be drifting further and further from a samurai horror game into a regular action hackfest? i think they should have made it like resident evil, only with swords – which was the original idea until they fooled around with some of the storylines and decided to make a less serious adventure.
Hahaha!! I never knew they made games like this.
It looks like it’s gonna be fun in a lot of ways!