Zombie Apocalypse 2: Never Die Alone – More Like Never Fail Alone

“LOL! You guys, these zombies make me LMFAO!” says the nerd as he fires off his submachine gun. The old man fires off his last shotgun shell as he pulls out his tennis ball-walker and smashes a zombie in the face with it. “Ay yo my man lemme lay down some of those friggy fresh lines! Wikky wikky!” says the rap star. This sounds like a bad comedy, doesn’t it? Nope, this is Konami’s Zombie Apocalypse 2: Never Die Alone.

If video games have taught us anything about the inevitable zombie apocalypse, it’s that all survivors will be strewn into groups of four, achieve the impossible, and above all – be extremely stereotypical… At least that’s what Konami, makers of the top down adventure shooter Zombie Apocalypse 2: Never Die Alone would like you to believe.

Zombie Apocalypse 2: NDA takes you through the post apocalyptic lives of four stereotypical survivors. You’ll see nerd boy, the typical computer nerd who ‘LOLs’ whenever anyone starts ‘trolling’ and refers to helicopters as “ROFL-copters.” Then, you’ve got the stereotypical Christian Pastor who believes that the zombie apocalypse is god signaling him to save their souls via a divine intervention. (Maybe that’s his shotguns name?) Next up is the stereotypical African American rapper who I’ll simply refer to as ‘yo-yo-dawgy-dawg,’ need I say more? And the back end of the group is a surprisingly un-stereotypical woman who came from a gun-producing facility.

The game starts off with a still-drawn-art of each characters back story while they narrate over it and you’ll even get cheesy dialog galore throughout it all. Oddly enough though, you’ll also have to watch this every time you resume your single player campaign, so props to Konami for catering to those with memory loss.

From there you’ll jump into the game. You can swap between characters using the right and left bumper for the varied weapons and power ups they have. You’ll fight your way through the literally never ending horde of undead. Aside from your standard run and hit zombie, there’s a giant charging zombie that look exactly like Left 4 Dead’s Tank, yet it spits bile just like the boomer.

While having three team mates may seem like a nuisance, the good part is getting three chances to die before ultimately failing the extremely hard missions found after the first and second levels, although you can revive your team in a very Castle Crashers-esque style.

As you progress through the game’s twenty or so levels, you’ll start to notice a lot of blatant rip offs of other games, although that simply adds to the cheesy comedy effect. After playing only three or four missions in single player, the game became extremely stale and boring. I eventually simply spun my stick while I shot hoping not to die.

Now I wish I could say the co-op was this games saving grace that it made this a total 10/10 and was totally amazing – But it’s not. With small arcade games like this, the community really determines the games ability to hold its own online, and Zombie Apocalypse 2 simply lets you die alone when it comes to online play.

So, if you haven’t figured it out by now, Zombie Apocalypse 2 isn’t that great a game. Should you buy it? No. Not unless you consider yourself a Konami super fan who feels the need to buy anything they make.