Why running again? Because I was tired of not running and because I found this most awesome of apps for my android phone called Zombies, Run! Yeah. Exactly! I know right!?! What's not to love?
So, here's what happens. You slide the cassette into your walkman and push pla... wait. What? No. You launch the app on your phone and choose a mission. First mission you're introduced as a guy who survives being shot down while riding a helicopter to Able Township. You run from zombies in the woods and arrive at the town and find that they need a runner and here you are, able to run and you've got to do something to earn your keep so you'll run. You'll run missions like saving a little girl, retrieving supplies, leading hordes of zombies away from Able Township. Just all sorts of things they send you, me, us, out to do.
While you run the voice acting is professional. Seriously, it's top notch and there are spoken word interludes between your songs on your playlists that you can choose from (Build the playlists in winamp it's easier... I had to download winamp to build a playlist for some reason. It didn't see any of my other playlists from other media apps... also, make sure you have it right because you can't change music while running. Also, make sure your playlist is as long as you're going to be out there. I was out an hour but only had a 45 minute playlist so I walked in silence for fifteen minutes with only the occasional "You found a sports bra," alert. (Seriously, I don't know where I'm finding all these sports bras but the ground is seriously littered with them if the numbers I'm finding is any indication... all in game of course. I'm not REALLY picking up other people's underwear! Honest!!!)
Oh yeah! Not only are there adventure updates between songs, but you'll find things as you run along and when you're done running you can use those items to upgrade various buildings in Able Township. The higher the level of the buildings the more missions open up. Cool eh?
If you run longer than the mission is, no worries. They've planned for that. The app goes into DJ mode then where the DJs banter back and forth with DJ chatter between songs. It's all very well done. Seriously. This thing is slick. There are only 23 missions so far but I've only completed 4 so far so I'm OK for a while longer.
Is it perfect? No. I got a phone call from work while I was on the thing and it was yelling in my ear about the zombies. Thank God the employee on the other end couldn't hear it. I could though. Did I mention that there are zombie chases? I didn't. I just checked. At random times in your run it'll pop a zombie chase event and you have to pick up the pace to out run the zombies. Listen. I know zombies aren't real. But I run on a nature trail and sometimes it's all shady and dark... when the zombie sounds actually come out of my earphones and it sounds like they're shambling through the brush at me. Trust me. I move faster. It's fun. It's creepy. It's really brought a level of gamification I hadn't thought possible to running. I look forward to running further and longer so I can collect more things to upgrade my base to get more missions. This is a good thing.
It's worth the price. It was about eight bucks and I love it. If you want to see how I'm doing check out my mission logs.
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