Zombies are invading a Japanese girls’ only high school, and it’s up to five teenage girls to fight back and survive.  School Girl Zombie Hunter is a downloadable PS4 third person action shooting game with plenty of guns, zombies, and Japanese quirkiness.

There’s a more complicated story here, but I skipped though most of the cutscenes because it was just the five school girls talking to each other and I found that very boring.  But you really don’t need to know the story to enjoy the game.  The story is set up into small bite-sized missions.  You get a time limit of usually around ten minutes to beat them, but you’ll probably finish them in half that time.  You’ll mow down zombies with guns and melee attacks in third person over the shoulder fashion.  In some missions you must reach a certain area in the school, while others will have you killing all the zombies in an area, or surviving as long as you can.  Sometimes defeated zombies will leave behind pickups, like new weapons to try or health refills.  Hidden in most levels are zombie birds to pick off, too.  There are a wide variety of zombie types to shoot, including slow stupid ones, jumpy ones, and fat, slow, yet strong ones.  The game starts out very simple but ramps up in difficulty and there’s an optional hard mode as well.

In most missions, you can choose to play as one of five school girls, and outfit each one with weapons and clothes.  Each girl has her own special skill.  One can heal others without having to use med kits, another can detect hidden items, etc.  One unique (and kind of creepy) thing you can do in the missions is make your girls undress themselves to their undies, which serves the purpose of having zombie attacks directed towards them.  The game has a low budget feel to it and kind of reminds me of another Japanese zombie game series called Onechanbara (I wonder if the two games are related).  Aside from the story missions, there are some online co-op missions for up to five players, and you can also play dress up with your school girls at any time.  The game is certainly not high quality, and on the opposite end of series like Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead.  But if you just want a simple zombie game to play in short bursts, you might want to check this one out anyway.

Kid Factor:

School Girl Zombie Hunter is rated M for Mature with ESRB descriptors of Blood and Gore, Language, Partial Nudity, Suggestive Themes, and Violence.  You shoot down gross zombies with all manner of firearms and other weapons, and they burst into blood when you hit them.  Interestingly enough, you can change the blood color from red to other colors of the rainbow, including green, white, and Pepto Bismol pink.  But the blood already on the ground is always red.  You can undress the girls to their undies to create a distraction for the zombies, and when you take damage your schoolgirl uniforms get tattered, so that’s where the Partial Nudity and Suggestive Themes come in.  It sounds awful, but it is presented in that campy B-movie Japanese way.  I MIGHT be OK with some older, more mature teens playing this, if they’re OK with zombie movie violence and understand cultural differences regarding sexuality.

Tags: Game Reviews