iPhone

I’m in the top ten (or thereabouts) on many of the leaderboards. This doesn’t mean that I’m good, though, as much it means that not enough people have bought this excellent game.

Maybe they’re waiting to see if the Freeverse takeover means this will go freemium soon. Maybe they’re put off by people playing for five minutes and then saying they can’t tell what’s going on. Maybe it’s just lost in the huge, ungainly App Store.

Whatever the reason, it’s not right. More people should be playing this – and if that means my scores start to look rubbish, so be it.

The third character's stage looks rather strange.

No, there’s not a lot of variety. As far as I can tell, every character’s stage is different only in the colour palette and there’s a limited number of objects to interact with. It doesn’t seem to matter, though, as I’ve played for a few hours now and haven’t got tired of it.

Once I’ve polished off the achievements I might find I play it less – I’ve only got a couple of endurance achievements left, I’ve completed all the ones that require any skill – but I’ve certainly had enough fun from this to make it a worthwhile purchase.

More than anything concrete, though, is that I just plain like it for reasons more emotional than just a bullet list of features or the ratio of price to time spent playing. It fits the platform and, more importantly, it fits me.

So, right, there are three zombies who are, somehow, superheroes. They’re aliens, I think, and they want to get back to their home planet. They’re not very bright, though, so instead of building a spaceship of something, they build a cannon and fire themselves out of it. They don’t get home, but they do fly through the city, slamming into things and generally causing a mess.

Fly, zombie, fly!

You choose an angle and fire your chosen zombie out of the cannon. You control how they move with a thrust button and tilt controls, making sure to stay under the tops of the skyscrapers so you don’t get shot down by the Air Force. You get points for distance travelled and how much stuff you hit along the way and get a bonus multiplier for hitting pinball-style obstacles along the way.

Between each round you get to purchase upgrades, such as more fuel or armour. After three rounds (or more, if you buy them) it’s back to the beginning.

I have no idea what that crate of TNT actually does.

Longevity comes from achievements, leaderboards (I’m currently fourth in the world using the second zombie) and, you know, this just being a damn fine game that’s fun to replay.

Sometimes unfair and often random, it takes a while to reveal its charms. At first it’s very hard to tell what’s going on with the fast-moving, tiny graphics and you’ve no idea how or why you’re getting points – but after half an hour or so of confusion it all begins to click and I find it very hard to tear myself away once I start it up.

I’m still not quite sure about everything – like what most of the “mystery” items you can buy actually do – but it’s a lot less confusing than it was at first. I’ve got tactics and everything now. Pretty cool, eh?