Tom Christiansen

Overlive is a promising mix of things. On one hand the game is a tap-and-shoot zombie shooter, and on the other hand it's a choice-driven narrative full of decision making. Unfortunately, neither one of these elements stands out memorably. The combat scenarios involve simply tapping at static images to shoot, or swiping a finger across the screen for a melee attack, and while the writing was grammatically sound, by the end of my playthrough I was left with more dead-end subplots than I cared to remember.In the game, players are tasked with escaping a zombie-filled city before the local nuclear power plant has a meltdown and blankets the area with atomic radiation. Instead of simply tossing players a shotgun and pointing them in the direction of the best way out of town, Overlive has players scrounging the city for a vehicle to use to escape the blast radius of the power plant. While on the hunt for a vehicle, players encounter a number of survivors and begin to unravel the mystery surrounding what really caused the apocalypse."The problem with Overlive's storytelling is that the game can end before the story does. I literally ran the clock out, attempting to unravel the story, and ended up dying on the 180th day when the power plant exploded. I never found any answers to the half-dozen plot points brought to my attention while playing through the game. Now, while that does promote replayability (something which I typically like within a game), the gameplay itself was just too dull for me to want to have to deal with it again.