Taking their viral queue, Majesco Entertainment offers up Infected for the PSP. A viral outbreak in New York City is turning citizens into the living-impaired, and just days before Christmas. Last minute shoppers become shamblers and as a member of the NY Bio Team, it's your job to prevent further spread of the virus, first by weakening each zombie with a barrage of weapons, then hitting them with a few drops of your own blood. As it turns out, your blood is a potent anti virus that causes an explosive chain reaction when introduced to infected blood. Remember the end of Blade, where the blood swollen bad guy gets injected with Blade's cocktail? Explosive internal combustion! A gun specially fitted to your arm lets you fire projectiles of your own blood to finish off a weakened zombie.
Gameplay is made up of rescue missues, seek and destroy and timed challenges. Completing bonus objectives like clearing a level in less time than required pays you cash with which you can buy power-ups like armor, speed and weapon upgrades. Pistols, machine guns, shotguns, rocket launchers and even chainsaws are all available for turning the undead into chunks. A lock on control helps to target your enemies properly and keep on them as you dance around. Once you've weakened a zombie enough, indicated by a meter above their heads, hit them with your viral gun to explode them. Weaken a group of them and hit one with your blood to string together a chained combo which errupts the screen into blood and guts. Pre-rendered cut scenes and audio clips that play while levels load offer up quite a bit of adult humor. Language and visuals are deffinately NOT intended for children, hence the M rating.
Single player run and gun is pretty standard fair, as is multiplayer except for one unique detail. Using the built in Wi-Fi for the PSP, you can connect via the net for one on one gaming. If you lose an online match, your PSP then becomes 'infected' with the virus of the player who just whooped you. Single player levels you've already beat now have additional challenges added to them and every regular zombie-joe now bears the resemblance of your foe, a custom avatar created and maintained for multiplayer use. Likewise if you win, your virus is transferred and this continues to each PSP the loser plays until he 'cleans' his infection. Using a world map, you are actually able to track and see how far-reaching your infection has spread. If a player's system is infected and he wins a match online, he spreads his previous infection, instead of his own until he goes back to the single player modes and beats those levels touched by the infection. The problem is a lack of motivation to actually play online. Playing on the net means you have no choice with whom you connect to, which means a high-drop out rate and since you're only playing against one person, deathmatch is the only mode available. Ad-hoc games offer a little more variety and up to eight players in a match, but its still just back and forth firing, the kind of gameplay offered by the original Doom.
Despite a truly unique way of tracking scores and claiming bragging rights, Infected still tends to be a monotonous shoot-run-shoot game with an emphasis on throwing as much blood into the snow covered New York streets as possible. It doesn't offer anything truly innovative in gameplay, but does provide a limited fun-factor if frenetic action is your thing. As a bonus, fans of the metal band Slipknot will be happy to know they are among the soundtrack contributors and band members can be unlocked as avatars for use in multiplayer.
