by Mike Favila, Editor

The original Rebuild on Android was head spinningly addictive.  On the surface, it was just a standard zombie survival game.  But when I spent more than 5 minutes with it,  I couldn’t put it down.  I contacted Northway Games a while back and asked them to keep us in the loop for when the next installment would be out.  Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville hit the Google Play Store and iOS store yesterday, so we took it out for a spin.

In Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville, you are a zombie apocalypse survivor trying to slowly claw out and secure your little corner of the world.  You and a few survivors task yourself with the duty of reclaiming a city, one house at a time.  As the game begins, you can choose your character’s visual traits and starting skills.  There’s definitely more customization options for your character compared with the first Rebuild.  I got to enjoy a few little Easter eggs (you can get Sarah/Colin Northway or Hillary Clinton) when I hit the name generator.

Unlike the original Rebuild, you can now choose the game speed, or retain the original turn based mode.  I still preferred to play the game turn based myself, but the other modes are great for limiting your dilly dally, especially if you’re one of those people who take forever to pick a card in Uno.

There are four main professions/specialties that your character can specialize in.  These include:

• Soldier – Shooting zombies or disagreeable factions
• Scavenger – Finding a can of spam or building materials, farming
• Engineer – researching survival techniques or making bullets
• Builder – reclaiming areas or making new buildings
• Leader – negotiating with merchants/factions or survivor recruitment

Of course you can level up in all areas, but you’ll still need to set your characters to a specialty.

You can also achieve new abilities in Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville for your town (like building watch towers and bunkers) through research.  If you are an Engineer, this process takes less time.  Training is also useful for picking up production on farming, or increasing the health of your members.

After that, it’s one building at a time.  You scout the block to assess the situation, kill all the undead there, maybe scavenge for food or supplies, and take a few days to reclaim the building.  Depending on the difficulty level, you’ll have to contend with zombie attacks, different human factions, bad weather and other fun factors.   That being said, my description doesn’t really do it justice.  Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville never feels repetitive and is always very engaging at each play.

As you conquer enough of the surrounding town, you have the option to build a town hall.  There, you can negotiate with the various factions, start different projects and eventually spawn out and retake another city.  The narrative advances and keeps you from overdoing a town to death.

I really liked the new integration into achievements with Google Games.  I found myself creating different saves just to hit certain trophies, although certain targets are harder to hit than others.  The autosave really came in handy for those times when I wasn’t planning ahead and got hit by a massive zombie wave.  It’s definitely worth it to save at strategic times, as Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville will only keep your 3 most recent autosaves.

Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville is a much more developed game than it’s predecessors, and just asking to be played for hours.  I’d been playing it sporadically since ComicsOnline.com got to check out the preview last year, but the new builds on Android and iOS are rock solid and just perfect for getting immersed in the world.  With the undead getting so much exposure, it’d be easy to get zombie fatigue.   That’s not the case here.  Northway Games provides a fun story that isn’t just another boring retread.  At $4.99 it’s a solid buy and worth every penny.  Go out and get it today!

Rating:  

ComicsOnline.com gives Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville 5 out of 5 fatal zombie friends!

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