A bizarre time capsule of long nights away from home, browsing over the Xbox Live Arcade for something new and interesting on a console we didn't own. This is a memorial of more than that, of course. Beyond the l33t-speak in its title, it's very much of the era where zombies were in vogue, and everyone wanted them in their games. The developer of this put them in their game, charged a dollar, and you're going to buy it. It's very much the "Mario in Unreal" of its day, but self-aware if that makes any sense.

As for the game itself, it's a pretty standard twin-stick shooter. Animations aren't the greatest, the play space is kind of small, and if you're playing it on your own, the repetition sinks in long before the sixteen minutes is up. It does maximize those things, though. As the song in the background evolves, so do your surroundings. Zombies become a snake from the game Snake, but it's deadly if it touches you, then it becomes asteroids, and so on. And the song that's playing in the background isn't some cheaply made retro-inspired diddy, either. It's got the tune of a punk song but, given how it elaborately forms the way you're playing the game, is given the presence of a progressive rock song. Given the premise of this game, there's a surprising amount of care put into it.

The only real downside to the Steam release is that the already flimsy meta-humor doesn't hold up when it talks about the game being a dollar. It's free on Steam. I'm not annoyed by this; it's just kind of silly.

(P.S.: why isn't Tug of Four on backlogged :( )