I picked up the Zombies, Run! app today, and I'm pretty excited about it. If you haven't heard about it, check out their video:
I've only had one run with the game, but the story felt very well-done, and I really like how they've added an extra element of fun to my run. Of course, I'm a fan of all things "Zombie Apocalypse".
If you do pick up a copy, spend some time setting up a decent play list. The story unfolds in small bits of dialog, but then launches into your own music. You'll hear a bit more of the story between each song.
I'm pretty happy about my playlist, even though I only got through the first 17 songs today. Here it is:
Zombies, Run! Playlist (22 Songs, 1.3 hours)| Song | Artist | Time (seconds) | | --- | --- | --- | | Micro Cuts | Muse | 218 | | Them Bones | Alice in Chains | 149 | | Name of the Game | The Crystal Method | 255 | | Rebirth | Boy Hits Car | 242 | | Still Running | Chevelle | 223 | | Unreal Tournament - Go Down | Epic Games | 178 | | Bloody Cape | Deftones | 217 | | Excessive Reaction | Nonpoint | 171 | | Cotopaxi | The Mars Volta | 218 | | Unreal - Isotoxin | Epic Games | 246 | | Darkening Days | Switched | 219 | | Licking Cream | Sevendust | 197 | | Insatiable | Helmet | 154 | | Closer To The Edge | 30 Seconds To Mars | 273 | | Temptation | VAST | 189 | | Jesus Or A Gun | Fuel | 238 | | Endure | Nonpoint | 178 | | We've Had Enough | Alkaline Trio | 168 | | Crawl | Staind | 269 | | Jambi | Tool | 448 | | Until The End [Explicit] | Breaking Benjamin | 252 | | Maybe | Faktion | 296 |
Complaints
- Missions don't auto-progress. After you finish a mission, the app enters "radio mode". This means it plays music interspersed with dialog. I like this mode, but I wish I had a way to tell the game to just move to the next mission once I finished on. I mean, I did an 8 mile run, and I only completed two missions!
:-( - The audio mix is buggy. I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, but during the second mission, the audio started acting funny. I could hear the dialog just fine, but once a song started playing, the audio was really suppressed until I picked up some supplies. At that point, my music played at a normal volume. This was really annoying because I either had to fumble with the volume on my phone or go halfway through a song without being able to hear.
Takeaway
I like the game. It's a neat idea, and I'm pretty curious to see how it unfolds. I'd already been running, but this will definitely make me look forward to that next run just a bit more. If you don't run, it could still be a fun game. Got for a 15 minute walk and give it a try :)
PS:
You can export a playlist in iTunes. Just right-click on the playlist, then choose Export and save it in a plain text file. You get lots of information about each song, but I pulled out the bits I wanted with this awk command:
awk -F\t '{print $1, " --- " $2, " --- ", $8 }' Zombies.txt
Also, here's a map of my run.