A fast-paced VR zombie shooter

Zombieland: Headshot Fever is a fun fast-paced VR zombie shooter. It revolves around the idea of “double-tapping” your enemies. That means that if you shoot the zombie in their head two times in a row, you trigger a slow-down effect, which is a very interesting and fun idea.

The tutorial was a bit slow, but funny. The narrator talks to you all the time and walks you through the basics of the game. Then you meet a very cool badass guy, who’s crew is going to give you quests and teach you advanced game mechanics. The dialogues are well-written, very fun and the characters have fitting personalities which are going to entertain you from the very first moment you talk to them.

The Safehouse

There are a few spots you can go to in the Safehouse. There is the Missions table, the Shooting range, the Gun kitchen and the Achievements balcony.

At the Missions table you can play missions. Each one of the missions has its custom objectives/quests given by the crew, its rewards, its highscores table, but mainly its unique environment and set of zombies. The missions are relatively short (at the beginning about 2 minutes), so you don’t mind replaying any of them to get a better score, complete more objectives, get new achievements etc, because it is a lot of fun every time you play. During the missions you stand in place and aim and shoot at all the zombies trying to kill you. There are a few types of zombies: the basic walking easy zombies, then giant zombies, which are hard to kill, the running zombies, which are hard to hit and can kill you quickly and the screaming zombies which call their friends in case you don’t kill them as soon as you can. The zombies are placed at the same spots on every run, so you can speedrun the levels after you remember their positions.

If you eliminate all the zombies in an area, you simply look towards the next waypoint and the game teleports you there. I found this a very smooth way of moving through the map, fitting to the fast gameplay. After each mission there is the final score, highscore table and objectives list. If you complete an objective, you get your deserved reward: a new gun, a gun skin, a perk, or TP - the game’s special currency.

The Shooting range offers a range of games, each of them focusing on different playing styles and objectives. You get a grade and rewards for your try based on your performance. There is the Speed mission, in which you have to shoot so many targets in so little time that I cannot believe someone actually managed to get the best grade possible. There is also the Precision mission, in which you need to hit the centers of the targets to get a good grade. Then comes the Damage per second mission, in which you need to quickly draw your gun and hit all the targets to get a better score. The Shooting range is a very fun but hard way to practice your skills in VR shooting, timing, precision and much more. Of course there are highscore tables and rewards for every run you complete in the Shooting range.

The Gun kitchen is a wonderful place in the house full of guns. You can select, upgrade and reskin your guns for Toilet Paper there. Yes, you collect Toilet Paper for every mission and task against the zombies or in the Shooting range. More valuable than gold. There are not many weapons and it is really crucial to upgrade them, so make sure you go to the Kitchen often. You can also select different perks there. The perk I loved the most was the Beginner’s perk, which automatically reloaded my guns and attached a laser pointer to them, so that I had an easier time aiming at zombies’ heads.

At the Achievements balcony you can view all the achievements you can get throughout the game. If you complete all of the achievements, you get a special reward, which I sadly cannot tell you more about.

Conclusion

Overall, Zombieland: Headshot Fever is a polished game with really fast-paced gameplay testing your skills in quick aiming and double tapping your enemies. The time slow-down after a double tap is a great game design element and gives the game another level of fun and gameplay. In the Safehouse there are enough things to do to entertain you for hours and you won’t want to stop playing.