Although this game has some RPG elements, Zombieville USA 2 has clunky controls and a weird sense of uncertainty added to mechanics as simple as buying new weapons. It's a game where you kill zombies using guns in order to get money to buy better guns and perks that will help you defeat more tougher zombies. The game controls with a virtual joystick that mostly works and I had some fun with it before being frustrated with certain systems and uninstalling it.
Moving with the left virtual joystick is not a problem, but the weapons on the right are kinda weird. There is a green, red and brown button, if you press the button of the weapon you have equipped, you shoot, if you press another, you switch to that weapon. Which button corresponds to the weapon do you have equipped, you ask? Tough luck. It would have been a nice thing to see a small icon of the weapon inside of the circle, or just highlighting your current weapon. Weapons vary from shotguns to axes, from sniper rifles to uzis, from grenades to cryo guns. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but all you can use to deduce which you'll like is a small blob of flavor text. Weapons cost a lot and you can't buy them all at once - you'll need to grind - so buying a gun for 4000$ and realizing that you hate it for some reason isn't fun. There should be a way to 'try' guns, or at least to resell them - maybe at some loss.
You can also upgrade the weapons and they all have different things you can upgrade, while I enjoy that - I'm happy that it's not just the same upgrade for all weapons - I wish the game would surface every upgrade you can give a weapon so you'd know if it's worth dumping money into. You also can buy perks - like regenerating health, getting more money, more ammo capacity for all weapon types - and upgrade them as well. The perks are okay and even if they cost a lot to upgrade, they do pretty much what they say and you never feel like it's a rip-off. To progress through the game, you need to kill zombies. After X zombie kill, the next map is unlocked and you can go there to kill even more enemies, to make more cash, to kill more enemies, etc. I know it's not the game's fault, but it's a bit annoying when you need only to kill 1 zombie in order to unlock the next level.
During gameplay itself, you move up and down, left and right - but mostly to the right - destroying items to get ammo and cash, getting into vehicles for high kill combos, but mostly killing zombies. While you shoot in front of you, enemies can attack you from different lanes and they will move at you diagonally in ways that you can't really defend yourself. If only the game was on a single lane, or if you could shoot up/down, it would feel fairer. As-is, you get grabbed - and terribly slowed down - by some enemies you can't even kill and then you probably die. If you manage to kill them, nothing drops health pick-ups in this game. Why not? The destructible environment should yield medpacks as well as the money and ammo. Enemy type is pretty basic, normal zombie, fast zombie, exploding zombie, spitting zombie and tough zombie, nothing to write home about.
The weapons are fun for a bit and the progression isn't too crazy, but high difficulty due to weird controls - and weirder enemy movement patterns - and frustration due to buyer's remorse made me stop ZU2. It's okay, but not much more.
