I really hate zombies. They’re gross and smelly and violent, and they get everywhere. So killing them is basically a victimless crime, right? For example: If I were to, say, take a truck and attach a giant mechanical arm to it, and then put a gun on the end of that arm, and then have my buddy drive me around a zombie-infested city so I could sit inside and just fire endless rounds into the undead legion and maybe laugh like a crazy person while doing it, which court in the world would convict me?
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: Free
No court, is which one.
That’s kinda the premise of Gunner Z, minus the lengthy, sensational trial: You’re the gunner of a suped-up armored truck that drives around shooting zombies and occasionally members of a fringe paramilitary group. It’s an arcade-style, free-to-play shootfest in which you mow down endless waves of zombies in a world gone mad.
And it’s surprisingly dull.
The game’s viewpoint is through a camera mounted on the gun arm; you can raise or lower it at will. Each level is a battle against several waves of the undead and crazy military guys with their own Murder Trucks. You aim by dragging around the screen and fire with a button in the corner, and you can switch between bullets and rockets. Kill all the enemies before they destroy your vehicle, and you win.
It’s night, and you’re looking through a camera, so everything is in that weird black-and-white, night-vision mode that is so prevalent in footage of airstrikes on CNN. It definitely adds some interesting visual flair, but it also makes individual enemies kind of hard to pick out. But that’s not really a problem because it’s not like you aren’t going to kill all of them.
I’m willing to suspend my disbelief long enough to buy that when there’s no more room in Hell that the dead will walk the Earth, but I can’t understand why vague arm flails are enough to destroy a car.
The zombies shamble toward the truck as it sits completely still in the intersection, which is the sort of thing you’d expect from an arcade shooter, but it makes very little sense on its own. And also, if your truck is so crazy armored and overpowered, why do zombies pose any kind of threat? I’m willing to suspend my disbelief long enough to buy that when there’s no more room in Hell that the dead will walk the Earth, but I can’t understand why vague arm flails are enough to destroy a car.
But hey, it’s an arcade shooter. And it’s a free-to-play game, too, so that’s two levels of grinding at work. You use the money you make from killing zombies (somehow) to buy upgrades for your truck (or brand-new trucks), and then you wait while the game installs them for you. You have the obligatory “speed up time with fake or real currency” option available, and I seriously just fell asleep writing this paragraph.
Don’t get me wrong: Gunner Z is good at what it does. But what it does — have you mow down endless waves of the undead from a parked car — is just not very interesting.

 Game Name: : Gunner ZThe Good: Cool visuals, plenty of stupid zombies to kill. The Bad: Monotonous; paygate-riddled free-to-play shenanigans. The Verdict If you want to hop in and kill a few dozen undead, go for it. But if you’re looking for something a little deeper and less of a grind, this is not your game. Buy from:App Store |
