Zombie Gunship may be the first zombie-themed game where I'm not entirely sure the enemies are undead. Ostensibly they are, but that might be what the game wants you to think. Strapped to the gunner seat of an airplane flying over a survivor's bunker, you're tasked with murdering hordes of zombies while trying your best to avoid innocent casualties.

Thing is, your view is obscured by night vision goggles and distance. The people look like tiny white ants camouflaged in their grainy monochrome backgrounds. Zombies are portrayed as black silhouettes, but their diminutive size makes them difficult to distinguish as the undead. At first glance, it would seem that they could just as well be human enemies in a real-world conflict and you've just been brainwashed by the military industrial complex to think they're zombies.

At a distance the zombies look like those grainy videos of Sasquatch.

It's a heady premise that turns thoughtless zombie slaying fodder on its head until you feel like the mass-murdering jughead that you are. Unfortunately, this feeling is dampened by the inclusion of larger monstrosities.

As for how it plays, it's still some good, arcadey fun, although its adherence to realistic controls keeps it from feeling entirely rewarding. Just like a real gunner, it takes awhile for your fire to travel from your plane to the ground, and aiming with the machine gun is as scattershot as you'd imagine. The Bofor's explosives and the Howitzer's even more damaging projectiles help with crowd control, though there's never an accurate option like a sniper rifle.

The big zombies are hard to make out. Maybe they're zombie elephants?

This would be invaluable since killing more than three civilians results in a game over, with your commanding officer snarling, "You're doing more harm than good." Not true, Cap'n. Killing three innocents is sad, but not nearly as bad as letting the undead invade the entire bunker. After awhile I found it more beneficial to actually let innocents get turned into zombies, so I could wipe out the cluster worry free. Allowing civilians to be ravaged by the walking dead instead of the merciful business end of a Howizter seems more brutal, but orders are orders.

Zombie Gunship is addictive -- a sensibly priced upgrade store ensures that you'll want to keep playing with your newer, faster guns -- but its harsh rules regarding civilian casualties, inaccurate weapons, and tonally inconsistent giant zombies hold it back from being the chilling defense game it could be.

The bottom line. Zombie Gunship is a fine get-the-high-score game with a uniquely realistic vision of zombie slaughtering. Its stingy rules regarding casualties plays things too safe and its "what if?" premise doesn't hold up, but it still provides a unique and haunting perspective on a tried-and-true genre.