GIBZ Zombie mayhem with friends

The clue is in the title. Zombies come at you in overwhelming numbers, and the point is not careful aim but keeping the horde from swallowing you. Shooting, slicing and general mayhem leave gibs all over the screen, and the cartoony art keeps the violence bright and cheerful rather than grim. You pick up coins as you go and spend them on perks: faster movement, stronger weapons, that kind of thing. Crates hold Supa Weapons for when the screen gets truly crowded, and if you take the killstreak perk, earning one buys you another. The controls are smooth and the weapons land with real punch, which matters when there are this many of them.

Getting from A to B is never just walking there. You wander an overworld map where random encounters pop up, some friendly, some very much not. If you genuinely just want to get somewhere, you can buy Zombie Repellent, which is exactly what it sounds like. Mini-games appear along the way too: surf on zombies in Zombie Surfing, hold the line in Gatling Gun Defence, dig for Treasure, or just cut loose in Mayhem. Bosses wait at the end of it all, monstrous zombie things with their own patterns to learn. The map turns a straightforward shooter into a run with surprises in it, and no two trips play out the same.

Up to four players can play together, online or on one screen with local co-op. That is where GIBZ is at its best: four customized characters, each with their own head, hair colour and tinted shirt, charging into a wave of zombies while hats and buffs get sorted out in the lobby. Plans fall apart fast when the horde closes in, and the chaos is the fun. Rounds are short and social, so it works as a pick-up-and-play session: jump in, survive as long as you can, argue about whose fault the wipe was, go again.