Drunken Fist 2: Zombie Hangover [Xbox]

8 Nov

Deklazon’s Drunken Fist 2: Zombie Hangover takes a slightly different approach to the original, with the player character being a hungover rocker this time round, and your foes all being zombies, rather than other drunk folk. After a month-long binge, you’ve woken up in the midst of the zombie apocalypse - but all you want is to get drunk again.

As you progress through the levels you’ll come up against different types of zombies, ranging from your standard, fairly weak ones, to stronger enemies that wield weapons such as firefighter zombies; and frustrating jumper zombies that will pounce on you from a distance, wiping out a huge chunk of health. Your health is replenished solely through beer this time, with plenty of it available throughout the levels, clearly visible with a glowing green light. There are also a variety of weapons to be found this time, highlighted in purple, and these are extremely overpowered - often defeating enemies in a single hit.

Still using the blocky , low-poly visuals from before, but with a slightly cleaner look - and a lot more blood and guts. The town is overrun with zombies, with not another human to be found, and levels run smoothly from one to the next, as with the first game. Zombies can burst upon defeat, with their heads exploding and their eyes popping out. It feels quicker and easier to move around, with less chance of falling over - though the auto-lock-on to enemies causes a lot of issues, and prevents you from being able to easily navigate tighter areas as you’re automatically fixating on an enemy. The soundtrack is a little on the rockier side this time around, and does the same thing as in the first game, with the music stopping temporarily upon you being knocked down, and beginning again after you get back on your feet - which is a fun little inclusion.

Unfortunately many of the same issues that plagued the first game are present here, such as attacks that don’t trigger despite pressing buttons, and enemies being hit into areas outwith the playable areas making it impossible to reach them, and a pee button that sometimes breaks - decreasing your health over time since you then can’t relieve yourself - forcing you to restart the level. Levels have more enemies than required spawning, which is helpful due to all of these various glitches, but due to the sheer volume of issues, this didn’t really have much of an impact as we’d both often have to restart levels anyway.

Overall, Drunken Fist 2 has some slight improvements from the first game, but suffers from a lot of flaws that take it from feeling like a promising start to a sequel, to a frustrating and unenjoyable mess. Available for the same price as the first game on Xbox, at £6.69 - it once again follows the same pattern, where it’s a cheap game, but is probably only worth picking up on sale.