While a lot of games of this generation try and get you to kill zombie hordes thirsty for your brain meats, developer Ignition is trying something a little different and giving you the chance to play as the zombies for a change in their latest DS game, Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys.

The story opens with a good looking comic which requires the player to put the DS like a book. The comic proceeds to show earth being invaded by aliens, who all look like old pieces of chewing gum in floating jars (or if your of a certain age group: Krang from TMNT). Humans are too stupid to defend themselves against the attack and succumb to the aliens. 3 zombies woken by the attack and the smell of fresh brains come to Earth’s aid. Although this is the story to start with, its never really carried on until the very end and it often feels like the main characters are going around to eat brains, not save the planet… maybe its both?

Most of the cut-scenes in the game use this text heavy comic format to (try to) explain the happenings in the game. It’s not award winning story but the writing is fairly impressive, taking a very Jhonen Vasquez/Invader Zim approach with odd and surprisingly fresh humour for a game aimed at a younger end of the gaming spectrum.

Not much in the game is very fresh unfortunately and while having a very different and funny title, the game sits firmly in platformer roots and doesn’t try anything different. Platforming in the game is done with 3 characters; all of which don’t have much presence and could just as easily been merged into one. While none of them have much presence they all do have their own skills to help progress through levels.

Graphically the game is nice, it presents well and while having a little slowdown from too many characters on screen at some points in the game, plays smooth 99% of the time. A lot of time has been put into the comic style sequences depicting the current story which works well and the same style is used in-game.

Controls are basic which will make gamers with years under their belt quite frustrated but at the same time can help the younger gamer not get too confused about what’s going on. There are a few things missing which I think really should be in any game, especially in platformers. The fact the characters cant attack while jumping is almost ridiculous and it makes me question the team who put the game together and how no one mentioned it during the games cycle. The lack of a run button also annoys me as all of the characters move far too slow (even for zombies).

The game does play well despite these flaws with Chapters (which act more like save checkpoints) between sections in levels. Each chapter has one or two specific puzzles which involve the player using one of the 3 main characters a certain way and while these do seem a bit tedious, they aren’t repetitive. Health is recovered in two ways, to eat the brains of the enemies you kill (that’s pretty cool when you think about it) and through a mini-game in the touch screen although health is pretty meaningless in the game as you have infinite lives and restart at the last chapter/checkpoint.

Touch screen uses are minimal at best, apart from the obvious menu selection used when you boot up the game, during gameplay the touch screen is used to select the character you want to use (which can also be done with the shoulder buttons), use it to assemble body parts to regain health (which can be changed on the fly) and when a mini-game is found. The mini-games aren’t anything new, exciting or special, nor do they actually do anything to the gameplay which is a big shame. As far as touch screen uses go though, it didn’t do any worse than New Super Mario Bros.

Closing Comments

The way Teenage Zombies plays you can tell its not made for the older gamer who has been playing Super Mario and Sonic for 15 years. Its made for the younger newer gamer who grew up on Sonic Advanced and a slur of movie tie-in platformers like Open Season and Ratatouille. It’s been released a little bit before it should have and if the team pushed a little harder and spent a little more time on it to fix a few issues like playing mini-games outside of the main story, being able to attack while jumping (which has been in gaming since the NES and Master System guys) and making the characters a little more fleshed out, the game could have been the start of a good franchise. It isn’t a terrible game, its not even a bad game, but the problem is it isn’t very good either.

+ Graphically appealing.
+ Genuinely Funny writing.
+ Interesting Idea….

- .. That wasn’t pulled off well.
- Seriously? I cant attack while I jump?
- Minigames are a letdown.

Score 6.5