Corridor Z will forever have a place in my heart. It may, in fact, go down as one of the most memorable video game experiences I have ever had. When I lay on my death bed and it’s my time to go, and the reaper is struggling to drag me out of my bed away from my family, my fist will be clenched around my daughter’s own trembling hands. I will beckon her to lean in closer to my face, and only at that moment with my dying breath, I will whisper “Remember Corridor Z,” as the reaper finally succeeds in breaking my iron-like clasp. I continue to yell “Remember Z!” as he drags me away from my beautiful family, creating new haunting images for them to remember me. ***Sigh*** There you have it. A chilling tale to represent a chilling game about zombies.
No, but in all seriousness, I will remember Corridor Z forever because we gave birth to my daughter in the bathroom of my apartment while I was playing that game. To this day, I am still upset with myself, though. I can’t help but ponder what if? What if I never stopped broadcasting Corridor Z that night? My daughter would actually have a video of her miraculous birth. I would probably be a celebrity right now, an overnight sensation. Ah, I can see it now (as I smile creepily at the ceiling, remembering that fateful night). But sorry readers that is a story for another time. I promise to tell the story of my daughter’s birth in another blog post. However, consider this, I ended the PS4 broadcast about five minutes before my daughter was born because the sun had started to rise, and I had already been playing for several hours. Craziness. If you are interested, I will attach the YouTube video of me playing it that night, completely unaware that my life was about to change forever. Just to reiterate though, there is no baby birth on the video, unfortunately.
What is Corridor Z?
Corridor Z is an endless runner similar to other games like Temple Run and Subway Surfer.
(By the way, I love me some Subway Surfer. My high score is like eight million something-something. Come get some! Actually, to be perfectly honest, I stopped playing that game years ago, so don’t come get anything from me because I don’t have anything for you. I don’t want to play that game anymore. Sorry. It’s still a great game though!)
There is not a final level or anything. Like most of the games in this genre, the goal is simply to run for as long as you can and get the highest score possible. However, Corridor Z switches it up a bit and has a story. It cleverly incorporates pieces of the story into each run in the form of collectibles. You can only pick up one collectible per run, so this incentivizes the player to run more and more, which adds a ton of replayability to the game. I think Corridor Z and the use of its collectibles is what separates itself from other games in this genre. You have two reasons to obsess over this game: you are going to want to unlock all of the collectibles to help you understand the story, and you are going to want to post a high score.
You start the game with three characters: Megan, SGT Williams, and Logan. The gameplay consists of you fleeing from a horde of zombies by navigating through the hallways of your school. You can use your environment by knocking over objects to the left, right or above you, which helps to slow down the progression of the horde chasing you. You can also use a wide array of guns to keep the undead at bay as well. The longer you stay alive the more you increase your chances of encountering one of the games mini bosses. I won’t spoil them for you, but I enjoyed all of them because they are a nice change of pace. There are three in total, and two of them have to be taken down in a specific way. As you progress through the game, you will unlock two more characters and another level. It would have been nice to have had a few more stages, but I was ok with what we got in the end. There is currency in the game in the form of rations, and once you have enough, you can use them to upgrade your guns, to unlock perks, and to buy new outfits for your characters.
There is surprisingly some strategy involved as well, especially when you begin to have longer runs and the game speeds up a bit. The incorporation of guns, while extremely helpful, comes with the added stress of ammo management. Do you attack the game guns blazing killing everything in sight? Or do you preserve ammo like a cherished commodity until you really need to use it?
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the one gripe I had with the collectibles. There is a crafting section in which you use certain items that you pick up as collectibles to craft med-kits. All of the characters have a health bar, and when they get caught by the zombies, they lose a portion of their health. If I understand this correctly, once the character loses all of their health, a wait timer begins and you are unable to use that character until the timer runs out unless you have a med-kit. If you have a med kit, you can use it to restore the characters full health. This may just be a personal nit-picky thing with me but I never felt there was a real penalty for letting your character run out of health. I felt the wait timer was unnecessary. There was never a point where I didn’t have med kits. In fact, I currently have like 15 med-kits that I have no use for. So, I wish there was something more to the crafting system. Maybe the crafting items should be less plentiful? Maybe there should be a real penalty for allowing your character to run out of health. I’m not sure, but that is the one section of the game I didn’t really care for.
Story
The intro cut scene informs you of the current situation. I assume the voice narrating this cut scene is of Logan (the star quarterback of Massville High School), and he’s basically saying out of nowhere all hell has broken loose inside of the school because of some sort of outbreak. All of his friends are killing each other, the police and National Guard unsuccessfully tried to help, and he was forced to lock himself (and two others Megan and SGT Williams) in a classroom. Since the police were unable to eliminate the threat inside of the school, they decided to lock the school down and quarantine it. Logan says the soldier (SGT Williams) knows a way out of the school. All they need to do is get there. This is the information the player is given when starting the game. You have to piece the rest of the story together as you discover the collectibles scattered throughout the game. I am going to do a separate blog post on the story, so please come check out my interpretation of what happened at Massville High School.
Conclusion
Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Corridor Z. The story kept me engaged, and the quest to further improve my score still keeps me running even after finishing the game. I do want to say that there isn’t much of a difference between the PS4 and Vita versions. Although, I seem to play better on the Vita. This game is special for many reasons to me, but at the root of them all, this game is special because it is awesome. If you are into the endless runner genre, this is definitely something that you should check out.
This video contains SPOILERS!!!!
About the Author: Phil Purkett Jr.
Founder and Creator of Some Guy in Space. Second of his name. Real cool dude. Sexy.
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