Zombie Driver

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Zombie Driver is a PC Driving Game developed by Polish developer EXOR studios in 2009 and distributed through Valve's Steam platform, in which you attempt to build up large Combos running over zombies with a car. The game features an Isometric third-person chase cam and driving feels not unlike that of Grand Theft Auto 2, except with more physics and much-improved graphics.

An explosion at a chemical plant run by a Mega Corp has set loose a plague of the living dead on an unspecified city. You play the role of an unnamed taxi driver who has managed to survive the initial outbreak. A general hires you to go back into the city with your car and rescue survivors, and the mayor is paying you by the dollar for every zombie you kill. You can build up your combo meter by running over zombies and shooting them with a number of weapons. The better your combo, the more money you get, which can then be used to buy better weapons and upgrades for your car.

Besides the story mode, there is Slaughter Mode, which challenges you to stay alive for as long as possible on several different maps while Scoring Points. Bronze, Silver and Gold medals are awarded for reaching certain point threshholds. Added in a November 2010 update is the Blood Race, a mode that pits you against other AI-controlled drivers in a series of violent, zombie-infested events, grouped into a handful of tournaments.

Tropes used in Zombie Driver include:

• Action Survivor: The player character would appear to be this. In the intro he is shown killing a few zombies with a handgun while making a mad dash for his cab, peeling out and splattering a few zombies along the way. You also meet some cops and firemen who were apparently holding their own against the zombies.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: It's the Zombie Apocalypse - but instead of just getting upgrades for free, you have to earn money to buy them with. Definitely an acceptable break from reality.
• And Then John Was a Zombie
• Awesome but Impractical: The military supercar, acquired late in the game, has excellent ratings in all three areas, but can only carry four survivors- a lot less then you'll need to rescue at that point in the game. Get ready to make some round-trips.
• Car Fu: Your primary weapon is your car itself.
• Combos: Run over zombies to get cash. Run over a lot of them, hit them with different sides of your car and use different weapons to increase your multiplier.
• Badass Driver: Your character obviously becomes this as the zombie corpses start piling up.
• Big Damn Heroes: Your main objective in each mission is to rescue a certain number of survivors holed up in different areas of the city. Doubtless they see you as this.
• Boring but Practical: The bus isn't fast, but its armor and ramming ratings are as good as the Supercar's, and its capacity is more than enough to rescue all the survivors in any level in one go.
• The Cameo: The military supercar previously appeared as one of the drivable vehicles in DIPRIP, a car-based multiplayer shooter using the Source Engine, also made by EXOR studios.
• Camera Screw: From three variants, one selected by default - "smart camera" - is rather wonky. It won't necessarily screw you over, but it might make you nauseous. Then again, the static and freelook cams aren't much of an improvement.
• Critical Existence Failure: Averted. Your car will begin to lose bits of its armor and emit smoke and fire as it takes damage.
• Dead Weight: Beware the fat zombies. They explode when you hit them, dealing massive damage to your car. The solution is to drive near them, which sets them off but not in time to damage you, and likely killing lesser zombies in the area. They are also very, very large.
• Determinator: //You//, especially after it comes to pass that you're infected as well. You're getting sicker and sicker, but that's not going to stop you from rescuing people.
• Disproportionate Retribution: A meta-example: The achievement name for your first kill in the Blood Race? "Don't you ever scratch my paint again!"
• Downer Ending: Midway through the game, the driver is scratched by a zombified cat. As you progress, survivors mention that you look ill. At the end of the game, the driver narrowly escapes the city as it is lit up by a nuclear bomb only to crash his car on a rock outcropping. He apparently dies in the crash, only to reanimate. You then receive the Zombie Driver achievement.
  • From a story perspective in general, this applies: the ending has the reanimated Driver attacking someone else, so it seems that the infection hasn't been stopped.
• Endless Game: Slaughter Mode, and also Endurance events in the Blood Race.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Lightly tapping another car will cause it to explode. The cars the player drives on the other hand can survive a lot of damage.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: From the Destructoid review: "The review will tell you, in my opinion, whether or not the act of running over and killing zombies with a car is an entertaining as it should be. If you need to know more than that in order to hit the jump and read the review, you obviously did not notice that the name of the game is Zombie Driver."
• Excuse Plot: At first it looks like this: zombies have overrun the city, you have a car, go run over the zombies. Then, halfway through the game, Ominous Implications start coming up.
• Fragile Speedster: The sports car has little armor and doesn't plow through zombies very well, but goes like a Corvette on nitrous. The Muscle Car, featured only in the Blood Race, has the same speed rating but better armor and ramming ability, though not quite equaling the heavier vehicles.
• Fridge Brilliance: Why are you paid for breaking objects? Well, say the government wanted to rebuild the city, but didn't want anything that the infection could spread on to remain. What would they do? Demolish everything!
• Gatling Good: Though labeled machine guns, said weapons when mounted on your car are clearly gatling guns. They chew through groups of zombies at a respectable pace.
• General Ripper: General Blofeld really seems to enjoy sending you hurtling into the undead hordes.
• Kill It with Fire: The flamethrower cooks large groups of zombies with extra-crispy effectiveness. It's painfully short range can be offset with upgrades.
• Made of Explodium: Parked cars explode from merely being bumped into.
• Made of Plasticine: the zombies
• Mighty Glacier: The city bus boasts the highest armor and most resistance to being slowed by zombies. While it is the most sluggish vehicle, it is still far more maneuverable then one would expect from a bus. It also seats up to 48 passengers, far more then appear in any mission.
• Night of the Living Mooks: We have regular zombies, dog zombies, muscular zombies, zombies that throw garbage at you and fat zombies that explode.
• Nitro Boost: In addition to increasing your speed, nitro pickups also let you plow through zombies more effectively.
• Not My Driver: averted, as you're the only driver left.
• One-Hit Kill: Both the rockets and the railgun kill zombies in one hit. The rockets explode on impact and take out a bunch of zombies in a group, while the railgun gibs every zombie from your car to the top of the screen. Both have fairly limited ammo.
• Outrun the Fireball: The final mission of the Story Mode has no survivors to rescue. Your only objective is to get the hell out of Dodge.
• Palette Swap: The Blood Race offers alternate color schemes for your cars as rewards.
• Pimped-Out Car: The game lampshades this by giving you the "Pimped Car" achievement for fully upgrading any one car in the Story Mode.
• Scoring Points: Though in Story Mode and the Blood Race this gives you money, in Slaughter Mode they are just points.
• Shout-Out: Several. One survivor asks if you are the Taxi Driver. Achievements include I Am The Law! for unlocking the police car, Superbeast for unlocking the supercar, and The Last Express for progressing to the train station area.
• Suddenly Voiced: A December 2010 update added full voice-overs to the Story Mode.
• The Taxi: Your starting car, with all-round performance.
• Vehicular Combat: In the Blood Race. This is the entire point of "Eliminator" events.
• Voodoo Shark: The mayor telling you that he'll give you money for killing the zombies that are destroying his city, which raises the question: who's paying you for destroying the city? May actually be averted. See Fridge Brilliance above.
• Weaponized Car: Your cars start out looking normal, but acquire spikes, weapons and armor plating as you upgrade them.
• You Break It, You Profit: Every single destructible object pays out for destroying it.
• Zerg Rush: Keep on the move, or the zombies will swarm you, bogging you down and sapping away your armor.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Is there any other kind of zombie event? This one appears to be contained to just the city you're in.
• Zombie Gait: Most of the zombies obey this, save the dogs. This can make them dangerous in large groups.