Zombies, Run! App Review
Tonight on my 3.5 mile run I tested out the new Zombies, Run! app. Currently is is pre-released for iOS only but soon it will be available to download for both iOS and Android phones.
Let me start of first by saying that it was dumb of me to do this at night. My imagination gets the best of me sometimes so when I put my headphones in and started listening to the story I was in it. When my helicopter went down and Sam Yao came on the coms to tell me there was a pack of zombies to the east I literally looked to my left and then start running for my life. What made it worse was that I was running in a deserted residential neighborhood at 11:30pm so the streets were empty and there was a little mist in the air which added to the creepiness… But trust, when Sam came on and was like, listen, you have to run or they’ll catch you, I was not playing around. My ass ran.
I really liked how the story line doesn’t interfere with your music. At the beginning you can opt for a playlist and the voice over waits until the song is over to interject. The premise of the story is that after the zombie apocalypse all the fuel they have left goes to the generators and such in the quarantined areas, which means that they have to use runners to go out into the zombie infested areas and gather supplies. I don’t want to ruin the story too much for you but in the first mission your helicopter goes down and you have to run your way back to base. As you’re running the doctor of Abel Township asks if you’d be willing to stop at an abandoned hospital to pick up some supplies on the way back. Of course I said yes because I am a total hero. (And because I didn’t actually have a choice.)
One of the things I didn’t like about this app was that the voice that tells you when you’ve picked something up is a computer generated voice. Half the time I couldn’t hear it over my music and the other half of the time I couldn’t understand what it was saying. It isn’t really necessary for the story line to know what you’ve picked up and it isn’t like you have a choice in picking it up or not, but it was kind of annoying to not know what it was saying.
Another thing I wasn’t too fond of is that the mission can end mid run. I had completed about 3 out of the 3.5 miles I was doing when they welcomed me back to Abel Township and told me how happy they were to see me. Well, I wasn’t really done but okay. The app goes into “radio mode” then which is just basically your playlist. On the plus side, even though you aren’t on a mission you can still pick things up as you run. So I guess if you were doing a long run and you didn’t want just the creepy computerized voice talking in your ear you’d have to stop and pick the next mission, then continue on your run.
I’m still exploring the app so this isn’t super comprehensive, but from what I’ve read, you can enable GPS on your run and you have to option of turning on “Zombie Chases” where a mob will start chasing you and you have to speed up for 1 minute in order to escape them. I guess there is a beeping noise to let you know how close they are and if you aren’t going fast enough they’ll catch you and you drop your supplies.
All in all this was a good spend. I was totally into the story and was definitely looking over my shoulder sometimes like I actually expected the zombies to be there. It kept things interesting and I was excited for the song to end so I could hear what was going to happen next. Also, it makes me want to run again because I really really want to know what was in that CDC box I picked up!
