Buck Club Review | Yet Another Zombie Defense HD

How many bucks is too many? Find out with our first edition of the Buck Club Review where we take a look at the sub dollar zombie mayhem machine, Yet Another Zombie Defense HD!

Bucked Up Backlog!

Down at The Backlog Odyssey headquarters (a.k.a. our house) we’re always working tirelessly to bring nothing but mint content to the masses. It’s honestly a coin toss when reconciling what our two cents is worth to people. But we’re always in for a penny, in for a pound when it comes to playing games and giving our honest and unbiased opinion and we take pride in that.

Our most recent idea involves finding games that are currently selling for a dollar or less, and seeing if there are any overlooked diamonds in the rough. We put up a poll, stream the winning budget title, and then crunch the numbers to see whether we think the game is a cash cow or dough disaster!

The plan is to judge each game based on four categories and each category will be worth a score out of 25 points. So, top score possible is 100...get it? 25 points = 1 quarter. Four quarters add up to a dollar...clever right? You're dang right it is! We are gonna milk this dollar theme for all its worth baby! You’ve been warned!

This time on The Backlog Buck Club we took a look at Yet Another Zombie Defense HD for the Switch. And after putting our money where our mouth is, here’s what we thought.

The Dollar of My Eye (Graphics and music) 13/25

At a glance, the graphics didn’t seem overly impressive. You start out with a pretty typical title screen populated by awkwardly shambling zombies and that overused bloody font that every zombie game and their zombie dog seems to use. The devs certainly didn’t pull any punches when keeping with their “already been done” motif either. Though, the title of the game kinda says it all, I guess! 

To start, you have four generic characters to choose from. All aptly named after their role - The Guy, The Girl, The Swat, and The Doc. None of them have any advantage over the other if that wasn’t apparent from their generic names, meaning they’re basically just your avatar, so choose at will. 

The enemies on the other hand, are where this game graphically shines though. The sheer variety of enemies that will come at you is impressive, let alone the fact that each one has its own mannerisms and methods for busting up your barricades and taking you down. It was really fun getting to see what crazy new enemy would pop up next, the more nights you survived! Even if the enemy animations could be a little awkward at times. However, believe me… you’ll only really notice once you’re dead and have the time to watch your teammate getting pummeled.

Then there’s the music, which is nothing to write home about. There are no catchy tunes that will get stuck in your head, but there was nothing inherently wrong with it either. It all suited the various gameplay moments just fine and honestly, you don’t hear much of it over the rapport of all the gunfire and zombie grunting anyway.

Coin-tagious (Gameplay and replayability) 19/25

YAZD plays much like any twin stick, top down shooter. So, nothing special there. The aiming and movement can seem a little stiff at times and no amount of character upgrades will deal with it unfortunately.

There are lots of weapons to choose from, both basic and outlandish. Some are worth the zombie dollars and some are a bit disappointing. Let me say this though…buy the chainsaw immediately! It’s basically useless once you get into the harder levels, but in the beginning when you need to hoard all the cash you can…the chainsaw is where it’s at! No reloading means no bullets to buy… pro tip from me to you right there! The various things you can buy to defend your area each night are a little on the unimpressive side though. Which includes lots of different spike walls and mines and that’s pretty much it. Turrets can be useful, but you’ll have to drop 6000 hard earned zombie dollars to acquire it AND buy a gun to put on top! Come on!!!

There are three game modes to choose from: Defense, Endless, and Deathmatch. Playing Defense was fun and is the core of the game, but honestly, we had more fun in the endless mode where weapon drops are randomized and hordes of zombies swarm you non-stop.  A big downside worth mentioning is that if you are playing local co-op then only player 1 can build fortifications and buy guns and ammo, which was kind of a bummer. I don’t know if that changes for online co-op where teammates aren’t sharing a screen but it made the game feel a bit one sided.

On that note, this game has solid replayability. Mostly because there isn’t any story and you start from the beginning every time anyway. And if you can get some friends together the fun is exponentially increased. There are built in achievements that will bring you back for more if you have any completionist blood running through your veins. We unlocked a bunch of them during our brief playthroughs and I can definitely see us coming back to clean the rest of them up sometime.

Give No Quarter (Is it worth the sale price?) 22/25

At $0.99 we enjoyed YAZD immensely! The price point really lets you overlook any jank or shortcomings you encounter. And I think that will be the case for most of the games we review for the Buck Club. A dollar isn’t much of a risk or a loss should the game end up being terrible. This game was by no means terrible though, so high marks in this category!

Dollars and Sense (Is it worth the list price?) 15/25

YAZD is definitely worth the dollar as I just mentioned. It is a fun little time sink that you can play by yourself or with friends. The mechanics, though a bit janky at times, don’t particularly hinder gameplay enough to make it frustrating or unplayable. I think the more you play the more impressed by everything you become. That being said, it’s not a game that was meant to be played for hours on end. It gets tedious pretty quickly.

When it’s not on sale for a dollar though YAZD goes for around $4.99 in the Nintendo eShop. Which still isn’t a bad price. And after having played the game, I can say that I wouldn’t feel any buyer’s remorse about dropping the five bucks and the full price would have been more than worth it. The trailer shows you exactly what you have to look forward to and there was no real disappointment to be had once we finally got the chance to play it.

Now, to be fair, these are just our opinions and experiences and as with anything there’s always the possibility that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. The best part about The Backlog Buck Club is that a dollar is all you have to lose! Give the game a try and let us know what you think! 

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