Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ review

You really can’t help but be curious about a game called Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ. The questions just flood in. What kind of game is that? Are you really cooking zombies? Does Little Red Riding Hood have a tiny red minidress and a giant rack? And the answers are, in order: A vertically scrolling shooter; only when you’re using the flamethrower; and amazingly, yeah. They’re huge.

Fairy tale land has been invaded by the undead. And for some reason it’s up to a strangely sexed-up Little Red Riding Hood and nearly identical-but-slightly-lamer second playable character Momotaro (a male ninja with an underpowered shuriken gun), to take care of the invasion.

So, the little girl who needed a woodsman to protect her from a single wild dog straps on shotgun, flamethrower and machine gun and sets out to blow endless waves of zombies into gibs, including her own zombified grandmother and a humongous, cybernetic, undead Pinocchio. No, we don’t know how a wooden puppet becomes a mechazombie either, but when he’s throwing his head at you in an attempt to drive his massive, spear-like nose through your intestines, that’s hardly the point. And don’t get us started on Santa.

Gameplay itself is simple: Red stays at the bottom of the screen and walks forward, the bad guys erupting from the ground in front of her. You touch the screen anywhere you want her to unload with her machine gun. If she runs out of bullets, momentarily lifting the stylus from the screen reloads, and when you set it down again the carnage resumes. If she’s collected special ammo, she can double-tap to launch a grenade or touch the flamethrower or shotgun icons in the corners to equip those items in a pinch.