Ever since George A. Romero made Night of the Living Dead, zombies won’t stay dead (pun intended). Although the general zombie culture is attributed to him, zombie folklore has been around for centuries, especially in Haiti. Zombies have made a huge impact in pop culture, including in movies and video games. We now have them in pixelated worlds in which you can destroy, kill, or even play as them without any risk of being infected. Now, we have another zombie-themed game entering the Nintendo Switch realm. Riddled Corpses EX is a twin stick shooter in which your mission is to kill all zombies on sight.
The game’s story to sum it up is about how humankind wanted to eradicate all evils in the world, but something went terribly wrong and a greater evil was created with only one goal: Destroy all Humankind. In the beginning of each of the 5 Stages of the game, we are given a cut-scene that gives more insight on what is happening and the motivations of out cast of heroes.
Your main character to play in the beginning will be Jon. Playing with him offers the most pure experience since you only start with three lives, no items, and your main gun deals standard damage. On each stage, there are waves of zombies to clear before moving to the next part of the stage. However that doesn’t mean that you can rest easy, since regardless of the waves you need to clear before advancing to the next part of the stage, zombies continue to appear. It’s especially difficult when you don’t kill them since they follow you, and if you are not clearing them on your way to the next wave, you can find yourself surrounded and ultimately with a game over given.
Speaking of game overs, you better get used to them because you will have them a lot. But not all is lost. If you look at the pic above, when you kill zombies, some of them drop gold pieces. Each piece differs in valor. However, besides killing zombies getting all gold you can is a must because when you lose all your lives and start another run you can use that gold to level up. When you level up, your basic stats improve, and your main weapon get a damage boost. Besides using the gold for leveling up, you can use it to purchase some handy items that will definitely make the run easier.
There are three types of items you can purchase: a Stopwatch, Dynamite, and a First Aid box. The Stopwatch freezes time for your enemies for a while, allowing you to clear the way and finding a place to shoot safely from a distance. It also works on bosses so its really useful. The Dynamite pack destroys all enemies on screen, so it’s useful when you are surrounded by zombies. The First Aid pack gives you one more life. It’s also worth mentioning that enemies drop these items as well, so if you are in a John Wick shooting spree and you see them pick them up. There are also cans with fire, oil barrels, and cars that when you shoot and deplete their health. The explosion can damage and make short way of the zombies close to it (when you destroy a car, it damages all zombies regardless if they were close or not).
There are several modes in the game besides Story Mode. There is the Arcade mode in which instead of using gold to level up. As you are shooting zombies, a special item will fly over the area if you pick it you level up. Besides the fact that you cannot level up with gold and that you can’t keep gold obtained in Arcade mode, it is the same as Story but with increased (or decreased) difficulty.
Survival mode puts you in a stage with limited lives and items. You must destroy endless waves of zombies all to obtain the highest score possible, so you can brag of your zombie killing skills in the online leaderboards (your score in Story and Arcade modes appears as well in Solo and Coop modes). This mode is fun because the gold you acquire here it can be used to level up your character.
The game has six different characters to choose from. However the other five besides Jon need to be unlocked. This is one of the things I didn’t like about Riddled Corpses, since the conditions to unlock other characters can be overwhelming. Cloe being the cheapest means that you need to replay the first stage without leveling up a total of four times (since you get an average of 500 gold per run if you get to the boss and beat it). Then when you get Cloe since she has a magnet that pulls gold toward her, you can get an average of 700 or so gold per stage again with no upgrades. We are looking about seven runs to unlock the next one. Once you unlock Liery, it is easier because of her 2X gold ability. Once you get to her, the player might feel burned about the game since all of the time used to unlock other characters (and I haven’t mentioned that machine gun and turret since I wasn’t able to unlock it in my play-through).
The game has really crisp pixel art-style, and you can change the music that plays. The music is good in classic and remix. I have no preference in that aspect. I like the challenge it offers, but once I got to unlock Liery, I decided to just try and beat the game with Jon.
Bottom Line: Riddled Corpes Ex is a fun and challenging twin stick shooter. While I’m not to keen on the unlock requirements, as explained above, the game offers enough challenge to satiate twick stick fans. If you like hard and challenging games this one is for you if not better stay clear from it.
A Review Code was provided for this review.