It’s hard to know the exact details of why a movie tie in game turns out bad. Is it that the developer was on a tight deadline with no resources? Did the movie studio provide no reference materials? Or did they place tight restrictions on what could be used? We could speculate all day. In the case of Zombieland Double Tap Roadtrip something has gone wrong and they’re charging $69.95 AUD for it.

Zombieland Roadtrip takes place between the first movie and the new sequel, starting with the Showgrounds from the end of Zombieland. Over 10 levels you’ll be working your way across the map to the White House in Washington. Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock are all along for the trip as they kill zombies, destroy portaloos, escort the elderly and spout one liners. There is the bare bones of a story, Tallahassee has his eye on the Oval Office and becoming President despite the majority of the United States being zombies. This story is only reflected in conversations that happen in between the gang doing other things, such as looking for a safe toilet or escorting an old lady down a zombie-filled street. Don’t worry, there’s no Zombieland lore in the story that adds extra context to the sequel, everything is throwaway here. In fact most levels only take 10-15 minutes. You’ll make your way across the USA and the locations you visit don’t actually reflect any of the states in any way.

Zombieland Roadtrip is a straightforward twin stick shooter. Move with the left and aim with the right. Being from an isometric view, you can easily see the hoard of zombies gathering around as you gun them down. You can have one to four players along for the road trip. Turns out Zombieland is lonely when you’re by yourself, this game is ideally meant to be for two to four players mindlessly shooting the breeze and some zombies. It feels like the game objectives also assume you’re not going solo. From the first level where you need to activate all the showground rides you’re besieged by constant zombies, making it all the harder to have the time necessary to activate the rides. Not that it makes it more challenging, only more tedious.

Every level starts you with a basic pistol with unlimited ammo, but you’ll quickly find that it’s not enough. Luckily scattered through the levels are other weapons you can use. Some feel useless like the shotgun, so most of the time I favoured melee weapons like the bat or sword. They feel more effective than the majority of the guns and could do real damage to the zombie spawners/portaloos.

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Choosing Tallahassee (the Woody Harrelson character) I discovered his special attack is to whirl around as a whirlwind of death (or blender of death?), killing any zombie I ran into. It looked ridiculous, and raises the question of what brought this choice of special move about?

Should you wind up dying, you’ll slowly find (with loading times and all) that you have to start the level from the beginning. Worse is that you have to endure the talking head dialogue all over again. I managed to die from being on fire after killing the boss that should complete the level! Not only did the game go to a blank screen requiring me to restart the game, but I then had to do the whole escort mission all over again! Worst was when I got back to the boss, the game glitches again and he wouldn’t take any damage. The framerate became a slideshow and I had to tackle it a third time. It could have been the game actively trying to save me from itself. But I persevered and beat that level, and I was rewarded (or punished) with more levels to play.

The visuals are basic. The isometric viewpoint does help hide this to a degree, but there’s no hiding how lacklustre the characters, environments and zombies look. Some moments feel like they’re meant to resemble some of the wall breaking moments of the movie, only they look like an off-brand bootleg version. It would not be so shocking if this game was originally meant to be a mobile game.

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Some bad generic rock music aside, the music is mostly just present. Now it’s time to talk voice acting. It’s no surprise they didn’t get the movie cast to fully voice this soulless cash in. What was surprising is that Abigail Breslin showed up and voiced her character Little Rock. The dialogue from the gang all feels like things they could say in the movie. So it comes down to how much you enjoy that banter, taking any ‘jokes’ and running them into the ground over the course of 2 hours.

I had heard that Tallahassee had some end of level dialogue that was a bit out of place, but I was not prepared for a text to voice computer voice to quip a line that was clearly intended for a Woody Harrelson soundalike. While some gameplay bugs and glitches can slip through the cracks, I have no idea how this doozy could sneak through. It happens at the end of the first 15 minutes, on top of several other times it is repeated through the game.

I’m always up for a good twin stick shooter, but this is not one of them. There is the barest of glimpses of an okay game here. At the very least, there’s some extra interaction between the Zombieland characters for you if the new movie isn’t enough. But for the exorbitant asking price there is no way that anyone should buy this. Unless you hate yourself and your poor friends who you drag into the deeper level of hell with you that goes by the name Zombieland Double Tap Roadtrip.