The Hungry Horde

6.5 Overall Score
Gameplay: 6/10
Fun Factor: 7/10
Graphics: 7/10

Great character model style | The sticker book is magical | Fun in short doses

Not much variety in the main campaign | Minigames get repetitive after a while | Long load times

Game Info

GAME NAME: The Hungry Horde

DEVELOPER(S): Nosebleed Interactive

PUBLISHER(S): SCEA

PLATFORM(S): Vita

GENRE(S): Action/Puzzle

RELEASE DATE(S): November 4, 2014

Zombies.  You know?  I mean, c’mon…zombies.  You can’t throw an undead cat in a video game store without hitting a game containing them.  So I don’t get terribly excited when I hear about new games staring them.  But the new Vita title The Hungry Horde from indie developer Nosebleed Interactive perked my ears up when I saw the art style and learned you play as the zombies.

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The whole point of The Hungry Horde is to grow the biggest zombie clan you can and to stay alive as long as possible.  This is done via arcade-like single runs that can take multiple in-game nights.  As your lovely green couple rises from their graves at the start of each run, any human they touch will instantly transform into an undead state and follow you wherever you go.  You take your horde all across town in hopes of avoiding that night’s impending nuclear winter.  You can extend the countdown clock by reaching checkpoints spread throughout the maps.  If all of your horde gets killed or the nuke goes off, you receive your score and get to start over and try again.  If you make it to the end of the map, you get to partake in a mini-boss battle, and then it’s on to the next night where you do the same thing over again.  Spread throughout the maps are presents that contain multicolored brains that give your merry band of zombiers powers to help ward off those pesky humans, like a bullet stopping force field or speed boost.

Other presents take you directly into one of five minigames.  The minigames are new zombie themed takes on games we’ve all played before, like snake or light gun pop-ups.  The loading time going in and out of these minigames can get a little long, dragging down the fast paced flow of the game.  In fact, loading times across the board all felt really long.  The minigames are all somewhat fun in short doses, but the only reason you’ll probably play them by themselves is for the PSN trophies or to compete for leaderboard placement with your overly competitive friends.  The Ikari Warriors inspired Zombat is my favorite of the bunch.  If you do well in the minigames during the main game, you can earn yourself extra time, kills, or best of all, a sticker pack.  That’s right.  Hungry Horde features a virtual sticker book for you to complete.  It is a perfect recreation of the old Panini sticker books I used to fill full of Thundercats and Silverhawks in my fun-filled 80s youth.  In addition to earning packs via completing minigames, you can also earn one for every 100 kills in the main game.  The stickers contain images of the various zombies and humans in the game.  The best ones though unlock full versions of the minigames to play outside of the main game or other hidden features.  Once you get into these full versions of the minigames you can compete for high scores with your friends or try to earn the PSN trophies associated with them.  I loved the feel of the book and how they even made four-sticker pictures like they did back in the day.  If you get a load of duplicates from the packs, you can even digitally send them back for a brand new pack.  The nostalgia is strong with this feature.

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As for the actual gameplay itself, it starts out fun, but gets pretty repetitive.  There seems to be just over a handful of available maps, and they get randomly stitched together each night.  Some contain makeshift fences to bust through by taping the screen.  Some contain switches to activate with your horde to open gates.  And some just contain cars and fences and human lives to destroy.  As you progress through the nights, the humans trying to stop you get tougher and tougher.  It’s not uncommon for a soldier to drop half of your horde in a couple seconds, so making smart use of your power-ups is essential if you want to post a good score.  Some of the maps are more fun than others, but they all start to blend together after awhile.  Every real world day, a new starting map is featured, which means that if you play 10 times in a row, you’re going to start at the same place every time.  For a game that requires replays as much as this one does, it would have been nice to have a fresh map each time you tried again.  It would make longer gaming session feel fresher.  I understand the concept of wanting the player to try the same map over and over in order to better learn it and dominate it, but with a main campaign that doesn’t have a lot of content to begin with, you need to mix things up more.  The end of night bosses are another example of a lack of variety, as there are only two different ones.

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I do love the art style they came up with.  While obvious comparisons to Minecraft are valid, these characters bring the charm.  Everyone has a giant square head on top of a tiny blocky body, but lots of detail goes into each face.  There are many variations of humans and each one has a specific zombie version of themselves.  You don’t realize how many there are until you unlock the character model viewer and take a gander through all the art.  You can even create your own characters when you obtain the correct sticker if you’ve ever wanted to turn yourself or your ex into a zombie.  It’s too bad that you can’t see the great detail of these characters while playing the main game, but you can see them more in some of the minigames.  The rest of the scenery is just OK.  Nothing stands out, but nothing really fails hard.

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THE RECOMMENDATION

The Hungry Horde is a decent enough time filler that has very charming character models.  But big blocky heads can only take you so far.  You’re going to need some meat and variety in your game to keep people coming back, and unfortunately, this animal is a little on the skinny side.  There’s some fun available, but leaderboards, art style and (super-mega-awesome) sticker books can only take you so far.

 

 

Summary

Review Date
Reviewed Item
The Hungry Horde Vita
Author Rating
31star1star1stargraygray

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Author: Shaun Zimmerman View all posts by
Still waiting for the Commodore 128... Find me on Twitter @Zimm108