If you’ve ever wanted the feel of a B-List movie in a video game, “Bunch of Heroes†might just be the game that makes you re-think that idea. Filled with zombies and aliens this top-down four player shooter by NGD Studios is filled with frustration and level restarts.
There are four characters to choose from- all which fulfill some type of cartoon stereotypes. To explain the caliber of how over the top silly these charmless characters are, one of them is an African-American with a red, white and blue do-rag with a gold dollar sign chain around his neck.
The characters are all the same except in regards to a “special†move. These moves become available after you collect random star energy that falls off of enemies. Once your meter is full, you can unleash an area of effect attack that deals a fair amount of damage. This would be a fairly useful concept except that when you initiate this attack, it takes you out of the action and pulls the camera close to your character so you can see the attack. When the camera pulls in, you’re unable to do anything but watch in horror as any enemy that wasn’t killed mauls your little bundle of racial stereotypes.
All characters start with an Uzi that has a ten-bullet clip that is reloaded constantly. With such a weak weapon to start with you’re tasked to look for green crates to find a new temporary weapon to help you blast away at your foes. These weapons vary from your standard Gatling Gun to your strange Disc Launcher. Some weapons are certainly better than others and some aren’t even worth to pick up. Also it’s worth to note that explosives have friendly fire and if you’re not careful, you’ll end up doing more damage to yourself than the little martian that was two feet away from you. There’s also turrets that shoot on their own, but aren’t permanent.
There are three levels in total with three chapters each that pretty much play all the same. There’s simple objectives such as destroying a zombie creation machine or protect the cheerleader. Cheerleaders are actually a big part of this game and they’re introduced in the first level. It’s explained that the President’s daughter is in trouble at a farm and needs rescuing. Yes, you read that right. This is about all the storyline you get in this game.
The camera is a complete pain as it never moves from its fixed position. There are times you’ll have to move your character behind trees or buildings where it will give you a silhouette of your character but not of the nearby enemies. As you carry that cheerleader back to the car you wont even notice that you had three zombies in front of you.. This was a major issue and one that could have been easily remedied by the developers.
There’s online co-op but you’d be hard pressed to find any games that are active. At the time of this review there were three games in progress with a combined total of four players online. This game is difficult by yourself and even on easy will give a single player a challenge. It would be more enjoyable and easier if played with friends but probably hard to convince anyone you know to buy this game at its current price tag of $9.99.
A Survival and Time Trial mode in addition to the Campaign mode that add very little to the game’s replay value. If you’re a fan of top-down shooters with no personality and just want to play a mindless shooter with three other friends then you may overlook all of this game’s problems. If not give this game a pass.
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