[#5] [RRR] A Shooter Game, Named After A Country?

Zimbabwe is a game created by robygamesro

Hey all! This is a special review, as it's the one I'm entering into the Royal Review Rumble! It's also the first Shooter Game review, and I think it's a bit ambitious entering with a review of a category of games I'm fairly new to. But hey, it's always great to try new things!

So the game I'll be reviewing today is called 'Zimbabwe', and it's created by a good friend of mine, whom some of you may know, called robygamesro.

As well as this being my first Shooter review, Zimbabwe is also Roby's first Shooter, too.

Enough of that though, let's get into the review!

Pre-Thoughts

Before playing this game, it looked pretty good on the thumbnail. From what I could already see, this game had a bit of a good design. It wasn't perfect, and it's pretty easy to make, but it was cool, I liked it. It definitely made me eager to play the game, so I went ahead straight away.

Game-Play

Ah, the game-play, my favourite part of a game. And Zimbabwe had it. Roby likes to do this thing where he has a sort-of intro at the start, but he makes it part of the game. There's a few enemies to kill, and it takes a bit of your health off before you actually get fully into the game.

That's a good quality of a shooter. Games shouldn't be too easy, but not too hard either. You don't really want to die right at the start, but you don't want to whiz through either.

So basically, in Zimbabwe, the goal is to obtain stuff. You need to get crystals, supplies, and a flag to win. There are quite a lot of crystals, but they're packed in groups in certain areas of the game. There's often enemies to try to stop you, which is pretty normal I think, but it's still pretty easy, it's like taking crystals from a Turret! Oh, wait...

There's also a couple of keys to defeat, but they weren't too hard to defeat, they were cornered into little spaces.

The difficulty of Zimbabwe was pretty low. It was quite easy. It didn't take much to win it, you could just cruise past the enemies, maybe shoot a few of 'em as well, but it wasn't too hard. I think that maybe Roby had put too many health boosts in, which meant it wasn't as intense as some other shooters, and there's nothing to really be afraid of, if that means anything. I do admit to being a pretty bad gamer, but sometimes really good games can be too easy just because they boost your health too often. There's Mojo close to the star to top up on your health, and then later when you've got half health left, you just get handed 2 Mega Healths, just out of nowhere. No challenge in order to get them. They aren't a bonus or anything, they're literally blocking the road.

There weren't really any puzzles in Zimbabwe, and for a while it felt like you were just following a path to lead you to some crystals, maybe dodging some enemies here and there, but I think Roby intended this to be a sort-of RPG, and even though RPG's aren't so good in Shooters, this one wasn't bad, to be honest.

Okay, so the game-play was pretty good, but it could've been tweaked a bit in various parts of the game. But I'll round up the scores later in the review, so keep reading!

Design

The design of Zimbabwe was pretty good. You can tell that it wasn't just a default shape edited a bit. But, it was pretty much one route, there were no mazes or anything, you just go along this one large road, while it distributes crystals and enemies for you to get out of your way.

I would've liked to see more mazes, and extra paths that could have your falling into dead ends, or maybe even your doom.

It wasn't too bad, though. But maybe if there was a bit more art, like you see in the thumbnail, it would cover up the fact that you're just getting from one end to another.

I did like the colour scheme, though. I think the brown fit in well with what would be an African desert, so that was pretty good.

Okay, the design wasn't brilliant, and it wasn't as good as the game-play, but it was pretty good if I must say. But it's time to move on, now!

Placements

I've never done the placements before, mostly because I review PPGs and I cover the addictiveness instead. But we'll do something different today.

The placements were a bit, 'eh' to me. Sometimes they were pretty good, other times, they weren't so good.

Like I've said a few time now, a lot of the components Roby has put into Zimbabwe were right in front of you to say 'Hi, pick me up!', or 'Bwaa! I'm in your way!'. I don't think the easy-to-find health boost were a good idea, at least conceal them. Also, the SwitchPoly's were way to close to their switches which made advancing through really easy. Even the bosses were hunched up together, with only doors dividing them, right next to Turrets. And you'd find the odd Nitro-filled area where enemies would just kill themselves if they saw you coming, so, in other words, enemies were way to close to their death.

The placements though, whether they were good or not, were a good touch to the design, it made the simple design seem a lot better.

But, I don't think the whole story corridors thing was necessary. Maybe if Roby had included it in the actual game-play part, it would've been less tedious, but maybe Roby had intended it to be that way, and in that case it would've been okay, but at least have something in those corridors to make them a bit more fun to travel down.

Ratings

It's that time of the review again where I say how good I think this game actually was! But first, let's go over the pros and cons.

Pros

- Game-play flowed throughout.

- Design was pretty good.

- The thumbnail was nicely made.

- Storyline was a nice touch to the game.

Cons

- Too easy.

- Placements weren't the best.

- The game was pretty much one long path, with exceptions in just a few areas.

Ratings

Woot, here it comes...

Overall, Zimbabwe gets:

Nice one, Roby!

Final Thoughts

Zimbabwe was a pretty good first attempt at this type of game, and Roby did well on it. While some things could be changed, this could be easily improved in the future.

Is Zimbabwe feature worthy? I don't think this game is feature worthy, but I'm sure Roby'll be making some pretty cracking shooters over his time on Sploder!

Like this game? Check out Anesthesia, also made by Robygamesro! http://www.sploder.com/games/members/robygamesro/play/anesthesia/