Undead Bowling (Nintendo 3DS) Review

Upon starting up Undead Bowling, it greets players with a neon lit sign welcoming all to everyone's favorite post apocalyptic bowling alley. The choices are: start the game, enter the tutorial, or view the survivor records (this is kind of like Achievements). The tutorial is a simple slide show of cards that are screenshots trying to explain the controls and rules. This really doesn't help, though; it's better to just start the game rolling...

Starting the game will enter players into a difficulty settings page, with 'Normal' being unlocked from the start. More challenging difficulties are waiting after players have completed the list of stages under the previous difficulty. Sadly, the game never really changes. There may be a few more zombies on the screen, but the stages will stay the same no matter what the difficulty is set to.

There are three types of zombies or stage types, with one stage type being a mix of all three zombies at once. There is also a secret boss level that will unlock after completing all four stages and their accompanying goals. The goals will start out fun and interesting, and it is clear that this is not the average ten pin game of bowling! It is so much more than that…

There are three different modes to play, all with their own difficulty settings and zombies to run down.
In 'Survival' players must survive fifteen rounds without having the zombies make it past a red line. If they do make it past the line, players will lose the game and need to start over.

'Hunt' shares the same basic idea of 'Survival' in that players must not let the zombies make it past the red line. This mode is different, though, in the fact that the way to pass this is goal is to kill a set amount of zombies, with an unlimited amount of tries. Next up is 'Combo' where players will try to kill and survive while hitting as many zombies at the same time as possible. There are five chances to hit the combos as they are given. Every time players miss the set combo, the zombies will move closer and closer, until they finally cross the red line, which will result in a retry.

While in both the Survival mode and Hunt mode, there are two power-ups. The Mince Grinder and the Zombie Crusher. The Mince Grinder is a larger ball with more deadly spikes. The Zombie Crusher will have players navigate the bowling ball to special spots on the lane floor, where upon hitting the spots a giant hammer type object will crush the zombie.

After the first time with each one of these modes, players will have had their fill and won't need to see any more, as sadly this is the whole game. It would have been nice to see a 'Free Play' option. There are no online leader boards to speak of, and in a game that is only based around getting a high score, that really hurts it overall. If players have a house full of people that would all like to play this, there is still a problem. There is not any sort of name system to keep track of scores! There are some other goals outside of the main game to aim for, but chances are after a few hours with this game, players will not want to try and get a strike ever again.