hristmas has passed, and it's time to give a nod to all the holiday-season zombie-themed games ... all one of them. Titled Infected, the game is Majesco's entry into the "bash 'em and burn 'em" genre. The story goes like this: It's a couple of weeks before Christmas (game time, not real time), and a viral outbreak in New York City has disastrous consequences, turning everyone infected into a mindless, brain-munching zombie. Everyone except you, that is. You're Officer Stevens, a spanking-new cop who is somehow immune to the viral plague.
As Officer Stevens you'll attempt to blast through hundreds of zombies in a 35-mission campaign that finds you rescuing civilians, defending fellow cops and ... well ... just killing hordes of zombies. Knocking off the undead is a two-step process. First they must be weakened with conventional weapons, such as pistols, and then Stevens kills then with special bullets filled with his virus-immune blood. These bullets cause the weakened zombies to explode. That's cool, but what's really neat are the chained explosions that the bullets cause. If a zombie explodes while beside another of his undead brethren, said brethren will also explode, and so on and so forth. It's all very satisfying.
There's lots of multiplayer action. You can take your Infected game online using either PSP's ad hoc or infrastructure (Internet) mode. There are the typical deathmatch and team deathmatch modes, mad cow (you get points for wearing a mad cow costume) and savior, in which you must attempt to save civilians.
Zombies in your pocket
Infected is fun. It can even be thrilling. I love that whole there's-so-many-of-them -that-I'll-never-kill-them-all tension. But I'm not ready to anoint Infected as the first coming of first-person-shooter heaven on the PSP. The missions get more repetitive than the press's Bush bashing, and not much more fun. You can only kill so many corpses—even corpses with Santa Claus hats—before you're overcome with a huge sense of been-there-done-that.
On the flip side of the corpse, Infected has an endearing dark sense of humor—such as the banter between Steven's controller and the semi-cowardly mayor—and a story, something sorely missing from other shooters, such as Coded Arms. Additionally, the combination of the conventional/viral weaponry and the chain-reaction zombie explosions add a much-needed twist to the game.
Another twist is the multiplayer game's avatar infection system. It works like this: If you defeat an opponent, your avatar is sent to his machine. You can even track how far your avatar has spread with an included in-game browser. It's a pretty interesting idea.
The PSP is an awesome system. Unfortunately, it debuted with very few quality games. Infected is good news for the portable's fans, news that PSP games are getting better by the day. Better, but not yet great.
Hey, it's fun. Don't, however, expect something that competes with Resident Evil 4.
—Mark
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