The popular Nazi Zombies mode is realized on the iPhone, but may only be worth it if you have friends to play with.
While the word 'Nazi' is conspicuously missing, the rest of the game is relatively unchanged from the console versions. Players begin with a pistol in a small room that quickly comes under attack by endless waves of zombies. Each hit and kill rewards you with money, as does repairing the windows that they enter from. One would think that repairing the windows would cost money rather than reward it, but I'm not going to complain.
The money can be used for a few different purposes. Scattered around the level are chalk outlines of guns on the walls. Approaching these will display the cost to purchase one. After you own the weapon, the chalk outline will allow you to buy more ammo for half the price of the intial cost. There are only a couple of firearms in the initial room, and the player must pay to clear the debris in order to reach other rooms. The best weapons can only be received from the mystery box that randomly gives you a firearm. It's a bit of a gamble because you have just as much of a chance to get a weak weapon as you do a powerful one.
There is no end to the game; the goal is simply to survive as long as possible. Online leaderboards show you how you stack up against the rest of the iPhone community. There are also in-game achievements that give you plenty of goals to shoot for. There are the basic one like reaching a certain wave (the final achievement is for wave 20), while more complicated ones require a specific amount of enemies to be killed at once or killing a set number with the same weapon. This gives plenty of replay value even after you have reached the infamous twentieth wave.
Chances are that you will be unable to make it to wave twenty without help from friends, though luckily the game's best feature is co-op play. Two players can team up via Bluetooth connection while up to four can play on a wireless network. Not only does this add the benefit of being able to watch more than one area at a time, but other players can revive you if you fall in battle, making the co-op much easier than playing alone. This title is clearly meant to be played with friends.
The controls get the job done, but can be confusing from time to time. There are three control schemes, but the one I found to be the best was the setup that implemented the tilt function for looking. A joystick on the left controls movement, while buttons on the right handles shooting and zooming. All looking was done simply by moving the iPhone in the direction you need to see, with the option to flip the Y axis. Even with the sensitivity turned up, it did get a bit difficult to see the screen when you moved the device far enough to turn quickly. The second scheme uses the dual joystick that mirrors the home console controls. This layout has a single down side; shooting is done by pressing the right joystick, making it impossible to effectively shoot on the run. The last scheme is horrible because it requires you to look by moving your finger in the direction you want to go. Half the time, this requires you to cover up most of your view, especially if you have large fingers. A few tweaks to make the game control more like Modern Combat: Sandstorm would go a long way.
Graphically, it is one of the best looking games on the system. Everything translates quite well from the home consoles to the portable format, with the expected reduction of resolution and polygon count. Even so, everything just looks great. There are plenty of animations for the zombies, so pulling off head shots is challenging since their movements aren't completely predictable. Limbs and heads can be blown off as well as chunks of their torsos. I must say I was genuinely creeped out the first time I blew a zombie up with a grenade and he crawled toward me out of the smoke without any legs. The zombies have detailed uniforms that look rather good (though note the lack of the swastika on the armband). There are plenty of little additions that add to the atmosphere, like broken furniture, smoking vehicles, and a dense fog in the distance that the zombies come shambling out of.
While the game is an absolute blast, it is hard to justify the ten dollar price tag. There is only a single level (with more promised for purchase in the future) and it isn't particularly large. It is possible for a good gamer to see everything the game has to offer in their very first play through, which will usually last under a half hour. When games like Modern Combat have multiple levels and several hours of gameplay for less money, I can't see a reason for this to be priced so high. I suppose it entirely depends on how much use you will get out of the multiplayer, which is still a bit of a rarity on the device.
Call of Duty: Zombies is an impressive looking title, but that may not be enough to justify a purchase for most gamers until the price drops. If you have a few friend's with iPhones, this is an excellent choice. If you are a solo gamer, there are better options out there. Hopefully this was just a first step for Activision in the process of creating a full fledged Call of Duty game for the system.