Zombie Soup Review

There’s a full moon, and glittering butterflies fly overhead… which seems a little weird, right? We all know strange things always happen when there’s a full moon! Zombie Soup is a top-down twin-stick shooter with you playing as a young high school graduate named Ricky. I have to say — based on the character design, it’s really hard to believe this guy is older than four years old, but whatever, the game says he’s a high school graduate, so we will go with that. It’s late at night, and he is on a train, travelling through a desert, as you can see the cactus plants in the background. The train pulls up to the station of a mysterious town full of neon signs and rock structures that he doesn’t know, called El Prospero. He has no idea how he got there; he must have missed the right station when he took a nap. After that long train ride, Ricky is starving and decides that he should head into town to find somewhere to get a burrito. Just then, a purple-haired girl runs off the train, he works up the courage to speak with her, and we learn that he’s on a backpacking trip to travel the world. Ricky introduces himself and finds out that her name is Ashley. Hearts start flying, it is love at first sight, and he is enamoured with her. She has to get home, so she runs off, but our hero realises that he didn’t ask for her number, so he goes chasing after her.

Ricky figures that the Carnival of Death is sure to have burritos, so he heads in that direction. When he gets to the street it’s located on, we see Ashley being attacked by three goons, who kidnap her and drag her to the creepy fair. Ricky follows and stumbles into a show that is just starting, hosted by MC Skull, a sharp-dressed skeleton with rainbow sunglasses and a top hat. We see a diving board, high above a vat of bubbling green liquid, which happens to be soup. She will be the final ingredient for this meal that will feed all the creatures. Ricky pleads with the other people in attendance but discovers that they are all monsters waiting for their meal. Here in air-mail envelopes, we see pages of a tutorial that teach you how to move Ricky around and how to defend yourself. Fighting the zombies, you acquire your first gun, a Revolver. Now that the minions are taken out, you will fight against the skeleton pimp yourself.

Once he is defeated, the head of MC Skull sits on the top of your backpack, and he’s a chatty one, always making silly and rude comments. Ricky and Ashley escape the carnival and head onto the streets of the town. The hordes of zombies continue to follow, so you decide to take refuge inside a bar. There are multiple rooms and hallways inside of this bar/hotel, so there is a lot to explore. You will also learn special tricks, like how it is important to lock the door behind you to prevent enemies from entering the room after you. Some of the floors have traps that include spikes that come up through the floor. To avoid these, you will have to roll/drive over that area. But you can only dodge as long as you have stamina left in the orange-coloured bar in the top right corner. Your stamina will quickly fill on its own once you stop trying to use your dodge moves, so be sure to keep an eye on this when you enter a room full of monsters. 

Ricky finds a Techno-Fridge 3000, which is where you can change your loadout, rest to replenish your health and stamina, and save the game. But if you rest, the map will be reset, and all the smaller enemies you previously defeated will be back once again. Though this can be helpful if you are trying to grind to collect money to purchase better weapons.

Zombie Soup is really good at leading you in the correct direction by using arrows on the floor that point where you need to go. If you find food on the floor or table, you can eat it to replenish some health — doesn’t matter if it’s on the ground, Ricky isn’t picky! While exploring the room, you run into several survivors who require your assistance, but you get to choose if you want to help them or not, although this will lead to other outcomes. Some will ask you to complete other tasks, like collecting items such as comic books. These quests are listed on the top left of the screen, so it is always easy to see which ones you are still working on and which ones still need to be completed. 

The zombies in each room will follow you as soon as they spot you, which is helpful if you want to lure them into another room, causing a bottleneck situation, making them incredibly easy to shoot. I found the best tactic was to not stop moving and constantly stay as far away from the enemy as possible, but still within firing range so that you can continue to hit them. Be sure to conserve your health and avoid the creatures that are trying to grab you, and hit you with unconventional items like a fish. Having to go back to the last fridge you saved is never fun, especially if you have got to a new place that you haven’t explored before.

Zombie Soup doesn’t give you a map, but the game labels the rooms where you will encounter the stage boss. Before you enter the room, the game double-checks to make sure that you are ready to take on the boss. Once they are defeated, you will unlock power-ups like perks that can improve your skills and weapons, and your health and stamina bars will be refilled. After escaping the carnival with a Revolver, you are equipped with a Beretta as your primary gun and a knife as your melee weapon. You never run out of ammo, but Ricky will need to reload after emptying the clip. These weapons are upgraded once you collect the corresponding perk, so instead, you have an Assault Rifle and a Machete. Besides these weapons, you can also pick up Special Weapons. These items have a set amount of times that they can be used — or a set amount of ammo — so you can’t continuously use them. In the beginning, you can only carry one of these Specials guns, so you will have to try out all the different ones that you find to see which ones you find more effective, as each has its own unique ability.

A few of the Special Weapons include:

Basezooka — launches baseballs that can ricochet off the walls and increases how much damage it inflicts with every bounce. 

Firework Gun — fires exploding rounds that create a firework display.

Nail Gun — the nails are shot with enough force to push back the enemy and stick them to the wall.

There are a lot more wacky Special Weapons to find, so I won’t spoil the surprise, but they are all a lot of fun to use!

The gameplay reminds me of Super Smash TV or Zombies Ate My Neighbours, both on the SNES. I actually double-checked to see if this was the same main character as the one in Zombies Ate My Neighbours, as they both looked similar with blonde hair. The kid in that game was named Zack, so they aren’t the same character, but they sure seemed similar! Accompanying the cute chibi-like aesthetics is a soundtrack that has a jazzy, big horn sound. It reminded me of the Pink Panther theme song; it's catchy and upbeat, yet mysterious, like a detective story at the same time. The voice acting in the game ranged from being really fun with the voice of MC Skull to pretty cringy with the dialogue between Ricky and Ashley, but to be honest, I’m there to shoot at the zombies, not really for the story!

Control-wise, the game was quite straightforward and similar to other twin-stick shooters I have played in the past. The left thumbstick controls Ricky’s movements, while the right controls where you are aiming. To shoot, use the ZR button on the Switch (or LT if you have an Xbox controller). Grenades are thrown with the L button, and the R button is your Melee attack. The last super important button is Dodge which is the B button. There is a button to reload your weapon, but you don’t really need to worry about that as the game unless you want to refill before it's totally depleted; otherwise, the game automatically does it when your clip is empty.

I’ve had a great time playing Zombie Soup, completing the game in about five hours. When you first begin, the enemies are quite easy to defeat, but they become more of a challenge as you progress. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the character designs, but if you are a big fan of Funko Pops, this may be something that you find endearing. The one thing I do wish for was the ability to play this game multiplayer, as I think it would be a ton of fun to take down zombies and other creatures with a friend!