Zombie Wranglers

The city of Potters Field boasts decent sized houses, ample parking and low traffic volumes, it would make for a fine place to live. Buying a property there would surely be a wise move. The area is clean with plenty of foliage and wildlife, residents routinely dispose of extra cash in the outside garbage cans, and children are put to work, doing something useful, cleaning up the streets from an infestation of zombies, oh sorry! Didn’t I mention the zombies!?

Meet the Zombie Wranglers, a team of four kids who have been sent to sort out the Zombie situation, never mind the army, never mind the FBI, these kids have just what’s needed to rid Potters Field of the brain-dead scourge. And that, folks, is a “Wrangler”. It’s a weapon used to erm…wrangle Zombies, or if you like, sucking them up into a magical vacuum cleaner. Wrangling zombies earns you dollars, ker-ching, which can be used to buy various pick-ups dotted around the streets. Invincibility, health, a glue that sticks your enemies to the ground and a pumpkin head that scares them away are a few of the items available. If you find you haven’t had time to wrangle a zombie there are other attacks available, such as zombombs and a ranged attack which varies depending on which of the four characters you are playing as.

So it looks nice, it’s bright, it’s quirky. There are funky weapons to play with and of course zombies, everyone loves zombies right!? It’s a recipe for success but unfortunately someone must have opened the oven door halfway through cooking cause Zombie Wranglers falls a little flat. It’s repetitive. Repetitive repetitive repetitive, ok  sorry, you get the idea. Each level is near identical and you’ll find yourself  mostly running around like a headless chicken trying to gain ground on the zombies so you can quickly whip round and wrangle a couple of chasers before turning and running again. The co op mode would solve this this problem four players could swiftly take out a group of pursuers but there simply weren’t enough players online for a game at any of the times I tried to test it out.

I’d like to say it’s best suited for children, it is perfectly suitable for children, it could be Left 4 Dead junior, there’s no tonguing,  head-shots and ripping of guts, (there is a boomer though, sort of) it’s pleasing to the eye and the sound effects will appeal to kids but the damage taken from hits is pretty brutal and if surrounded by zombies it’ll only be a matter of seconds before your life is over and you have to start the entire, although short, sometimes frustrating level again and a child would get bored of restarting even faster than I did. It is easy, it is simple, you do have to think fast to survive but it’s just not entertaining enough for an adult and it’s too unforgiving for a child. The controls are clunky and the wrangler’s auto aim makes what is actually a fun and imaginative weapon seem a bit too cheap and easy to use.