Zombies, Run! For Android and ZombieLink – A Review

When I first read about the Zombies, Run! Application, I thought it was a great idea. A fitness/gaming application where the player is a scavenger for a base of survivors in the zombie apocalypse, running to grab supplies and away from zombies.  It was first developed for the iPhone, and, well, I don't have one of those. However, one of the positives in my period of re-employment recently is that I did get an Android phone,and last week (6/14/12) Zombies, Run! Was released for my phone, and I've given it a few test runs (pun intended,) since an injury has me out of the weight room at the moment anyway.  The launch is not without its hiccups, but overall I like the application a lot, and will continue using it. I hate running, but this has motivated me enough to give it a serious try.

I used to joke when asked if I ran "Only when chased." Be careful what you wish for.

Zombies, Run! has a fairly simple interface. There is the base door, which lists Abel Township's (the settlement) population, and allows a quick swipe to open the door and start a mission. There's the mission menu, that displays all unlocked scenarios as well as criteria to unlock certain missions that have requirements. Next is the base upgrade menu, where each of the critical structures in the town are shown, and after each mission, collected items can be allocated to upgrade facilities with a simple drag and drop. There is an options screen with a help system, the ability to choose distance units (miles/km,) credits and the ZombieLink synch settings.  Each mission is a series of audio files telling the developing story, introducing characters, announcing when items have been picked up and cueing sprint sequences with a warning and the groans of approaching undead. Get away, and you keep your loot... get caught and you must drop an item to distract the horde. The game plays without needing to interact with the screen while running, using it to build the base and look at collected supplies later.

The Good

The voice acting in this game is spectacular, on par or better than that found in top-quality animation and AAA-video games. The story is immediately engaging, and finding out what happens next is a great motivator for getting back out there and running around a bit. The zombie chases also motivate a burst of speed, as I found myself not wanting to surrender any items even when my body was protesting that I'm built to lift weights, not sprint. I've always appreciated games that allow you to do some base/city building, and though that aspect is simple, I'm glad it is there. ZombieLink automatically tracks your progress, distance, and story events that happen along each workout for later viewing, as well as tracking in other fitness programs/sites like RunKeeper or Fitocracy. Getting to see the base's population increase as it is made more secure reinforces the idea that the player is assisting a desperate community while going out for a jog/run.

When finding that pack of underwear in the wilds, do you
allocate it to the residential facility... or the Armory?

The Bad

The application is far from perfect, and I've found a few frustrating things, especially considering the relatively steep price tag of $7.99 in an Android market packed with free or $0.99 apps. I think it is worth the price, but the flaws are a little less forgivable than they would be in a cheap/free product. There is an option to use your own music while running, but at launch, it was frustrating to use and sometimes interfered with playing the game.  Though supposedly compatible with WinAmp (though not the default music player on my phone,) the music wouldn't play through Zombies, Run!during my first two workouts. When manually starting a playlist, the music frequently drowns out some of the narration, marring the experience. It is worth mentioning that with today's update and a swap to Android Music Player, these issues seem to be resolved. ZombieLink is great, but seems unfinished, with no maps of my runs, a feature the website suggests should be live. Finally, the zombie chases are great, but they start randomly, so I find myself moving slowly when not being chased, not wanting to be worn out should a sudden chase start up.

I have great hopes for ZombieLink, but it isn't quite there.. yet. And yes, I run slow. Shut up.

The Future

Today's update, in addition to resolving the audio issues I experienced, added a shuffle feature which greatly improved the experience with each story clip or "transmission" playing as an intro/outro to random songs from a custom playlist I made for running. Various stability issues were also addressed, and my experience with the third time playing the game takes my recommendation from a cautious "Yes, but..." to an emphatic "Oh, definitely." There are currently 23 missions available, with a total of 30 promised for the first "season," as well as 5k and marathon training expansions (as I'd like someday to try the "couch to 5k" program, I look forward to this.) The team seems committed to supporting the project, so I am confident that an already great app will only get even better with time. As an experienced gamer, fan of the zombie genre and novice fitness enthusiast, this game hits the right notes. As the application is patched and refined, I think it'll be a great tool for my quest for  being more physically fit. After all, ZombieLand taught us that Rule #1 is: Cardio.

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Futuristic Shopping – Groceries via QR codes scanned by Smartphone.

A lot of geeks who grew up watching classic cartoons dreamed of living in a futuristic world like the one we saw depicted in the old-school vision of what future life would be like. Commuting in a flying car, robotic servants and automatic housing that does nearly everything for you at the touch of a button. The future envisioned 50 years ago hasn't arrived yet, but every once in a while, tech news shows us an advance that suggests it is getting just a little bit closer. The portable electronic devices used for communication and entertainment get a little better each year, and visionaries innovate with these platforms to make lives easier a bit at a time. No matter what someone wants to do with their business, it is always easiest to attract customers by appealing to their sense of convenience. Someone who might not pay extra for quality, novelty or might not switch from a brand they are used to is more likely to buy a product based not primarily on price, but convenience. This concept is at the heart of a kind of store in South Korea that looks like it belongs in a cartoon's vision of the future.

When I first heard about a virtual grocery, this is pretty much what first came to mind.

Tesco (who recently changed their name to HomePlus there,) the 2^nd largest grocery store chain in Korea was confronted with a problem. Their largest competitor had many more stores than they did, and opening new locations is a great way to gamble potential profits by greatly increasing overhead. They decided to try an unconventional solution to the problem of not being able to grow and remain competitive without opening many new locations. South Korea has a high population density and many professionals have long working hours and short leisure time, so running necessary errands is inconvenient and stressful. Another thing that is interesting about South Korea is the level of smartphone adoption is extremely high throughout the population as compared to the US and many countries in Europe. Web-based grocery stores have had some limited success, but shopping for your food on a smartphone screen while waiting for the train to or from work isn't really a solution many people will accept.

Tesco decided to take another sort of gamble, with virtual supermarkets in subway stations, life sized pictures of food and drink on shelves that look enough like an actual supermarket for people to be able to shop. The photographs have QR codes that can be scanned with a smartphone's camera to add the product into a virtual shopping cart for home delivery, a service that has been developed with the ability to provide home delivery within hours rather than days. Looking at the virtual stores it is interesting to note that the products aren't lined up, in general with only one on the “shelf” except in cases where there are multiple varieties or flavors, just like actual displays in physical stores. The experimental stores have proven successful even beyond the short period where novelty could be expected to be the primary factor in people trying things out.

I'd like to see QR codes used in the US for more than stupid gimmicks in entertainment.

There are a lot of downsides to doing weekly shopping for the home in a shop like this, and reasons why a similar idea would have trouble taking root here in the US for the moment. For a lot of people, the tactile sense of being able to pick up and look at a container or individual item is very important in selecting something like food. Also, the produce and meat in a virtual supermarket is a photograph of a perfectly fresh item, and anyone who has compared the food inside a container to the picture on the outside knows how different the reality can be from pictures taken for marketing purposes. Whatever is delivered to the home is what is selected at a warehouse before shipping, with the control over quality of the individual piece of fruit, vegetable or cut of meat out of the individual control of the customer. Even with the fastest possible delivery time, there's also something to be said for not wanting to wait for a delivery service to arrive, though in this case, if you REALLY want it now, maybe you're willing to travel to a shop.

Presuming that service quality makes some of those questions a non-issue, and that convenience trumps the rest, there are still logistical differences between South Korea and many other countries. The primary obstacle standing in the way of something like this taking root somewhere outside of South Korea is the rate of smartphone adoption is much lower elsewhere. Virtually 100% of the South Korean population has a mobile phone, and almost a third of those are smartphones. In the US, rate of adoption is on the rise, but isn't where it would need to be for a service like this to be a smart business to open, at least for now. Home delivery in Seoul has already been nearly perfected, something made easier by the extreme population density allowing for a successful delivery service to drop off many packages in a single run. The “convenience factor” starts to tarnish a little in countries that don't have a home delivery service industry developed to the point where it can be run profitably without a lot of extra charges added for the convenience.

Mmmm... pizza.

Personally, if a service like this were available here in the US, and I had a phone capable of taking advantage of it, I'd likely give it a shot. Thinking about trips to the grocery, dealing with crowded parking lots, people rushing through the store itself without being considerate of others, screaming children... I'd sacrifice being able to actually handle an individual item for not having to deal with that, especially if the virtual store was somewhere I had to be daily anyway. When it comes to worrying about the quality of the food, I'd guess that a business like this has to maintain a high level of quality specifically to dispel this sort of concern. In instances of human error or something else resulting in an order filled incorrectly or with food of unacceptable quality, either the business would resolve such (hopefully rare) incidents quickly, or they couldn't expect to stay in business for very long. For now, though, I have to wait. No virtual grocery here yet... and no flying cars.

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