UFO Interactive’s first eShop game, Samurai Sword Destiny, didn’t really go over too well with our reviewer, but their second game, a rhythm action game called Zombie Slayer Diox, showed a little bit promise. The game stars a rock star named Diox (the x is silent) who apparently has a guitar sword, which he uses to slay zombies. The story is suitably nonsensical for the subject matter, and features random post-level screens that show Diox doing weird stuff.

The rhythm gameplay uses the touch screen heavily, and on the easy difficulty level all you do is swipe across the screen in one of three directions. The basic mechanic reminds me of strumming the guitar in the DS Guitar Hero games. On the two harder difficulty levels, you also have to hold a button down as well. For righties, you use the D-pad, and for lefties, the face buttons. This mechanic makes the game much harder, though the difficulty never seems to rise throughout the game. It just fluctuates a little bit between challenging and really challenging.

For better or worse, that’s the entire game. You take that mechanic through 12 different levels, each split into three stages. The level themselves are too long for their own good, taking three or four minutes of repetitive strumming to complete. This wouldn’t be so bad if the music wasn’t just generic guitar-heavy rock music. The conceit is that Diox is busting out epic guitar solos, but the game proves that Diox isn’t really that interesting of a guitarist.

The third and hardest difficulty level has to be unlocked by completing the story mode, and you also can unlock alternate picks that are nothing more than cosmetic changes.

Zombie Slayer Diox tries decently hard to be a good game, but it just misses the mark. The rhythm gameplay gets repetitive, and the music is extremely plain. There’s nothing functionally wrong with it, the game just never evolves, remaining stagnant from start to finish.