Infected

August 4, 2013 /

infected

While the members of Slipknot and their music are in this game, don’t let that determination be your only deciding factor in making a purchase.

Ever since Mortal Kombat hit the scene, the game industry has been pushing the violence factor to the limit. Infected is no different from the rest in this regard. Lewd language, heavy metal music, and violently bloody explosions create a fairly unique atmosphere that compliments the game play to a tee.

As you might expect, the story is nonsensical and daft. The idea is that a strange virus has leaked out into the public, turning people into zombies at an alarming rate. As fate would have it, you’re the only one in existence who is immune to the disease. What makes matters even more convenient is that your DNA causes a violent reaction in those who are infected, causing them to explode. It’s such a potent reaction that even their blood will weaken other infected just by touching them. As if that wasn’t strange enough, they have a sort of immunity to your DNA, so naturally you have to shoot them a whole bunch with shotguns, machine guns, and rocket launchers before you can fire off a dose of your DNA.

Ridiculous as it may seem, this actually makes for a great game. You have two weapons at your disposal. Your main weapon (X button) will upgrade automatically as you dispatch the infected. Upgrades include shotguns, automatic rifles, and rocket launchers. Your left arm weapon is a special dart gun that is connected to your bloodstream. This never gets upgraded, but you need it to dispatch the zombies. After you’ve worn down an infected person with your main guns, you’ll need to fire off one of these darts to make them go boom. I suppose they may have gotten the idea from the movie Blade since something similar happened to the bad guy at the end.

When you have a game that features exploding zombies, you expect great visuals to come along with it. Let me be the first to say that there are plenty of better looking games for the PSP. That’s not to say that Infected is an ugly game. As a matter of fact, it’s quite good looking, but they seem to have paid more attention to the explosions and the character models belonging to Slipknot’s band members. The zombies themselves and the other avatars are really mediocre at best.

The music in the game is great. Amazingly, they opted to use good music rather than just another hip-hop soundtrack. All the tracks are CD quality and unedited. The sound effects are about par for what you’d expect, but there is a lot of ambiance that adds to the overall feeling quite adequately.

The one area where the game falls a little short is on replay. There are three different types of missions and that’s it. The most basic and probably the most fun is “Kill ‘Em All”. As you would expect, your goal is just to kill all the Infected in a timely fashion. “Defender” is where you have a timer and have to keep as many cops alive until the time is up. Lastly is “Helipad Evac”. In this mode, you have to save as many people as you can by running into them and brining them to a safe helipad. After you get as many people as you can, this mode is just like Kill Em All.

To add to the replay, you can play with a friend through ad-hoc or infrastructure modes. I found it really difficult to connect with anyone over infrastructure mode, but ad-hoc was simple and easy. Having a friends list would have been better for the online, but they overlooked this for some reason.

Infected is good in more ways than a cheesy zombie movie kind of way. It offers fast-paced action with moderately addicting game play. If you find yourself a fan of zombies or just looking for a fun game on your PSP, you might consider picking up Infected.

-Originally Posted by Bloodspoor

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