Are you a fan of tower-defense games? Cleverly designing powerful strategies to keep your objectives safe. Perhaps you’re a big fan of round-based zombie games like I am, always striving to get just one round higher each time you deploy. Now you can have the best of both worlds in the latest title from Terror Dog Studio, Ultimate Zombie Defense 2.

The streets of modern-day Europe continue to be plagued with infected zombie scum, and all efforts to contain the outbreak have failed. They are laying waste to everything in their path and swarming their wave of death upon every living being. This type of destruction will soon destroy humanity as we know it. Other than this setup, there isn’t any more story that unfolds. This isn’t that type of game.

Unlike its predecessor, a top-down shooter/tower defence, this sequel has been made to play in a first-person perspective. The first-person perspective heightens the intensity of the round-based zombie survival chaos. 3 game modes can be played solo or co-op 4-player squads, all sharing the same primary objective, survive as long as possible. How long can you survive the nightmare?

Survival mode is what I would consider the core game mode and is where I have spent the majority of my time playing. In this mode, players must survive ever-increasing waves of zombies. At the end of each round, players can strategise and build defences around the map to help them survive. Place items like auto-turrets, explosive barrels, mines, laser fences, walls, and sandbags to fortify your location.

Damaged items can be repaired and rebuilt in the same location if destroyed. Items are also upgradeable, making them more durable, increasing damage, regenerating ammo, and even increasing accuracy. I love that your squad can contribute money toward each of these upgrades, wipe out enough zombies and you’ll have all the cash you could ever want and all the upgrades in no time.

Eventually, you will succumb to the overwhelming force of the zombies and it will be the end of your run. Don’t sweat it because this is where you’ll become even more powerful the next time. Players are awarded XP at the end of each game, levelling up will earn you a skill point which can be spent on upgrading your soldier.

Currently, there are 2 skill trees that you can upgrade, Scavenger upgrades are centred around cost reductions for map exploration, weapons, and ammo. There are also a few handy perks to purchase like Time for Some Revenge, which allows the player to be revived at the end of the round without losing their hard-earned weapons.

Engineer upgrades are focused on the building aspect, allowing you to place more auto-turrets, make them hit harder, and make structures more durable. Earning these perks through your hard-fought hours of gameplay feels incredibly rewarding and helps to bring out the carnage-loving monster as you become more powerful.

Survival no-building mode is the more traditional wave-based mode we all know and love. Running around the map collecting perks from the vending machines, buying wall weapons, and hitting the mystery box on the way through all sound very familiar, don’t they? The developers are big fans and I’m glad they are. Oh and yes you can upgrade your weapon tier but this happens in a very unique way.

You’ll need to travel to hell and back to get it. Every 10th round you will be offered an opportunity to travel through a portal to hell and face off against a giant boss. Should you travel to hell and beat the giant boss you will spawn the upgrade machine, insert your weapon and reap the rewards. Voting to not travel to hell will spawn minibosses into the round and without the benefit of turret defences, this can be quite the harrowing battle.

Defending the objective mode is more like you’re a typical tower defence. At the end of each round, you’re presented with the variety of paths zombies will take. This mode is quite slow, but once you progress past round 10, things start to get challenging fast. Every mode is super fun and can get chaotic, but they all share the same fatal flaw. At the moment, there are loads of improvements and bugs that need to be squashed and to be fair, the team are working very hard to squash them quickly.

The visuals are stunning, gritty and very GPU-intensive. Blowing up zombies and sending them packing back into oblivion is pure joy. Map designs are fantastic for the most part. Until you fall through the floor and end up in a non-playable space. Even after lowering graphic settings, performance staggers resulting in far too many dropped frames. Visual recoil on some weapons is so bad that you’ll almost drag your mouse off the desk trying to tame the beast. I hope to see many more improvements along the way.

The sounds of gunfire and explosions are top-notch. Delivering the fatal blow to a zombie’s head as you blast his brains everywhere with a 50-Cal sounds incredible. The star of this zombie-slaying gorefest is the game’s soundtrack. As a fellow metalhead, I approve. I couldn’t help but start to give in to the urge to headbang away as I lay waste to the hordes of undead.

Ultimate Zombie Defense 2 is a worthy successor to the franchise, but it still has a long way to go. When it’s running smoothly, it’s super fun and very addictive. Terror Dog Studio still has a lot more content to come. I look very forward to seeing the finished product in all of its zombie-slaying glory. This FPS zombie-survival/tower defence game is a joy to play, and if you can get past the bugs, you’ll have a great time. Out now in Early Access on Steam.

Written by: Gary Nielsen