Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ Review

For a long time now, I’ve had a thing for Little Red Riding Hood. Not any specific girl, mind you, but the overall idea of the character herself. It’s a tale with a lot of potential, you’ve got to admit: young girl with a distinctive look, trying to save a loved one from the threat of a vicious wolf. I’ve even had, for many years, the perfect game based around the character planned out in my head. You’ve got Little Red Riding Hood, dressed in a blood-red Japanese Elegant Gothic Lolita-style outfit, traveling through the dark and daunting German countryside (complete with fully German voice acting), hunting down the bloodthirsty werewolves she has unwillingly been tasked with killing. In grand Devil May Cry fashion, the action is fast and furious, and you must fill your enemies full of silver bullets until they are severely weakened, giving Riding Hood the opportunity to relieve them of their heads with a swing of her mighty sword.

…er, anyhow, what I’m trying to say is, Little Red Riding Hood as a game character is an interesting proposition, and when I found out that not only would there be a game with her in it, but with her battling zombies of all things (another favorite of mine), I simply had to give the game a go.

Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ could be best described as an ode to the classic era of third-person shooters, when the genre belonged to games like Nam-1975, Wild Guns, and Cabal, instead of newer entries like Gears of War or SOCOM. The dual screens of the DS are used to show the path that our heroes–Little Red Riding Hood and her companion, Japanese mythological character Momotaro–must travel, and while forward moment is handled automatically depending on the current situation, sideways movement can be done either one step at a time via the d-pad, or in a quick jump to a specific location via the stylus.

You’ll have to get the hang of both control methods, because a majority of the time, your stylus will have a more important duty: aiming your gun in order to blast the crap out of the hordes of undead creatures ready and waiting to take a bite out of you. The idea of tapping to shoot at a specific location may at first seem lacking in challenge, but that lack in aiming difficulty is made up for by a need to be smart about who you’re shooting when, not necessarily where. Even low-level zombies can take a number of hits, and when stronger creatures and obstacles start popping up, the challenge comes from carefully-timed dodging of attacks and being picky about who you’re focusing your attacks on.

Indeed, Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ feels rather old-school in its attitude and approach to gameplay, and that’s one of the elements that really gives it its charm. With the complexity of today’s game offerings, it’s been quite some time since I’ve been able to return to simpler days of “dodge, shoot, dodge, shoot”. Gaming has advanced, however, and it would have been easy for Zombie BBQ to start as an interesting concept but end as an overall shallow experience. That pitfall was avoided by two main components: a game that is challenging not just through simple difficulty, but in offering the player the chance to use some real strategy and quick-thinking, and the overall charm presented in each of the game’s levels. Riding Hood and Momotaro end up doing battle with a who’s who of zombified fantasy characters, and the specifically-themed areas mix things up enough that they relieve some of that potential feeling of just doing the same thing over and over again.

The only real complaint I have with Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ is in the way the auxiliary weapons were handled. In addition to your infinite-ammo main weapon, along the way you’ll also find a shotgun, flame thrower, laser, and grenade launcher, but ammo for these is woefully scarce. The few shots you’ll be able to get off often aren’t worth the precious moments it takes to switch out weapons and re-orient your aim, especially with a shotgun that is far too easy to mis-judge the proper range of. Instead of a few uses that are best saved for the boss fights, I would rather have seen Zombie BBQ incorporate another type of system from a similar style of game, such as giving these additional weapons infinite ammo but a set amount of usage time, or a higher fixed ammo count but no choice in switching back to your main weapon without giving up that bonus firepower.

That minor complaint aside, Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ is a great mix of new and old, a game that revives a style of gameplay we haven’t seen in quite some time with a more up-to-date look and attitude. This is an enjoyable niche title worth the $20 you’ll spend in order to pick it up, and while it may not be for everyone, for those with an appreciation for the days of video gaming gone by, there’s a lot of like in this latest take on Little Red.Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ

A Great
was reviewed using review code, physical copies, or hardware provided by . Scores are graded on a scale of E (Bad) to S (Special) in homage to Japanese video game grading scales, with the understanding that an S still does not denote a "perfect" score. Scores may have been adjusted from the original source to better fit my personal scale.