Undead Bowling review

Bowling with Zombies!

Review written by
Kathleen Weldon

September 20th, 2013

Imagine a world where the zombie apocalypse has taken place. Now imagine that someone has been able to round up these zombies as bowling pins for their bowling alley that was somehow impervious to said zombie invasion. This is essentially what Undead Bowling for the 3DS is. However, instead of just trying to knock pins down, you're fighting for your life.

You are given a bowling ball made of steel and you need to bowl down hordes of zombies as they come at you. There is a red line nearby that the zombies cannot cross; if they do you will die. A creepy narrator in the background, who sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to impersonate a ghost, informs you when you have survived and when you have died. If the zombies start to prove too much to handle, you can use the mince grinder, which will wipe all of them out with a giant ball made entirely of spikes, or the zombie crusher, which sets up specific points on the lane that you have to guide the ball to so that it crushes the zombies with giant platforms. All of this mayhem occurs with heavy metal music playing loudly in the background.

When the game is over you don't have to worry about the extra zombies coming after you. A giant wall of spikes will come out of the ceiling, spear the zombies, and throw them in a pit of lava. This is accomplished in the same fashion as when extra pins are swept away after a game of bowling concludes, except with more blood and violence.

The game mechanics of a bowling game are still there. Use the control stick to move the ball left and right before you bowl. Press A to release the ball. Control the ball as it goes down the lane to hit more zombies. However, the mechanics are lacking. For example, while you can move the ball as it goes down the lane, you can only turn it three times until it continues to go straight from whatever point it is on. This takes away from the overall gameplay because you feel cheated out of hitting more zombies when your ball has rolled into the gutter.

When the 3D is on, the lane looks farther away from you. The effects of crushing the zombies seem to be right on the screen when this happens. The cut scenes in between each game are lacking in quality and are repetitive. On the plus side, the game does provide you with a skip button if you don't want to keep watching the same scene over and over again.

In short, Undead Bowling is a bowling game with a zombie theme. With a price of $6.99 from the Nintendo eShop, this is a game that you would like if you have a love for zombies and heavy metal music. If you can handle the blood splatters and the spikes, then you might like this game. But because it takes the zombie theme to the extreme, it is rated M for a reason.