Zombies Ate My Android

Who doesn't love the Android app store? I check it at least once a week to see what's new out there, particularly in the games section. I'm all about free games and wasting valuable time at work, after all. There are lots of great time wasters, both free and otherwise, and just about every gaming genre you can think of is represented to some degree or another. I'm not a huge handheld or mobile gamer, but free is free and I always have my phone with me, which beats the hell out of trying to fist a PSP or DS in my pockets. Sure the games aren't as advanced, but for gaming on the go, I prefer the pick up and play easiness of gaming on my Droid.

As with just about anything else, there are a few key words that I'll search the app store for, one of which is "zombie". There are somewhere around two million zombie games out there, most of which range from bad to absolute shit, but every now and then I run up on something fun. So I thought I would take a minute to highlight some of my favorite free zombie games in the Android marketplace.

If you ever owned a Dreamcast and had the keyboard peripheral, you may have already played a game titled "Typing of the Dead". It was basically House of the Dead, only instead of shooting enemies with a light gun, they all had letters or words above their heads and you had to type out before they could get close enough to you to do damage. Typing Zombie is exactly like that. You use your keyboard to type out letters or words that appear above the zombies' heads before they can get to you and your delicious brains. It may sound silly or lame, but believe me when the difficulty ramps up, you'll be typing like a madman, or woman, trying desperately to save yourself. Once they do overwhelm you, the game tells you how many kills you got and shows you the words-per-minute you typed. It's fun AND educational!

Zombieville is a cutesy side scroller, with a visual style similar to Alien Hominid, only a poor man's version. Controls and premise are as simple as can be, you move from left to right killing zombies as they crawl from the ground both in front of and behind you. You start off with a pistol and baseball bat, but earn money for each kill which you can use to upgrade to better weapons like a shotgun, machine guns or a katana. It can get a bit repetitive, but to help break up the monotony there are several different kids of zombies for you to dispose of, including "special" zombies with various abilities like faster walking speed, or more damage.

Angry Birds fans take note on this one, Stupid Zombies is the exact same thing as the worlwide bird flinging sensation, only cool. Instead of playing as a giant slingshot that launches birds at pompous, self-righteous pigs,  in Stupid Zombies you eliminate zombies as a shotgun wielding character with a striking resemblance to a certain S-Mart employee whom we all know and love. Essentially, you're faced with a handful of zombies and  to dispose of on each level, you have a limited amount of shotgun ammo and must deflect your shots around obstacles in order to kill them as efficiently as possible. This is the game that I spend the most time with, it's highly addictive. In the beginning it's fairly simple, but the difficulty ramps up as the stages become more elaborate and the ammunition count gets lower. Hail to the King, baby!

Again, these are just a few of the multitude of free fun available. I also have a few non-zombie related games, Dante's Inferno, Ninjump, Traffic Rush, and of course the aforementioned Angry Birds. I also play a ton of Words With Friends, as I'm a huge nerd. I'm always looking for people to play Words with, so if you throw your lettered tiles into the righ with me, challenge Mister Bones to a game. Also up for any suggestions if anybody has any, preferrably free but if the game is good enough I don't mind paying.