Not sure how much interest you guys have in this game, but I've been the demo over the past few days and have found it to be pretty fun. It's been a while since i've played an online co-op game, and while Thoth might not be too fond of "shooting zombies in a maze," Left4Dead does this concept extremely well, accurately portraying the upcoming zombie apocalypse.

The zombies in this game aren't your average stumble around falling down kind of zombie, they act much more like the zombies from 28 Days later. They have a tendancy to charge at you in large groups, leaping over hurdles, bursting through doors, etc. in attempt to smother you and your group of friends before you can reach the escape point.

There are three different difficulties you can play the game on, most of the time my friends and I play on Expert, which actually poses a considerable challenge.

The way the game works, is the 4 of you start at a drop location of each map, where you choose your weapon for the map (either shotgun or sub machine gun). From there you attempt to make your way through the hordes of zombies to an extraction point at the end of the map. Zombies come at you in 2 ways, one being that they infest pretty much every building and every street you encounter on your way through the map. However, randomly as the map progresses, your team will get swarmed by a large wave of charging zombies (these waves are usually when your group gets overcome). The game has what's called a "director" which randomizes the spawning locations, swarm sequences, and item locations in each game, so no 2 games play the same.

As you move through the map you'll find weapon upgrades (in the form of new weapons) grenades, firebombs, medcits, pain pills, etc. to aid you on your way through the map.

In addition to your run of the mill zombie, there are several special types of zombie which you'll encounter throughout the map. The lesser special types being a ranged zombie called the smoker which acts kind of like a barnacle from halflife, the hunter, which is a stealthy yet powerful zombie which leaps on a player and incapacitates them until they are either dead or until someone else shoots the hunter off, and the boomer, which is a bloated zombie which vomits on you, the vomit blinds you and sends a massive wave of zombies to close in on your location.

Also, there are 2 boss-type zombies, the Witch and the Tank. The Witch doesn't do too much, you can hear her crying from several rooms away, when you hear the witch you have to move stealthily until you pass her, if you startle her, she will 1 shot kill whoever it was who startled her and then run away. The other boss type is a massive zombie called a "Tank." Tanks are disgustingly difficult to kill, they have massive hit points, 1 shot incapacitate you, and have the ability to pick up pieces of the map itself and hurl them at you for an insta-kill.


The game is really well done, if you have any interest in it, grab the demo off steam before it dissapears. The game goes live on the 18th, best to try out the demo before it does.

z_spawn witch

give molotov

give health x20

needs more:
levels
modes
open space levels (more than one path from point a to point b)

Aside form that, very well done. I look forward to the full release.

Well, it is a demo. You'll most likely get all three of your requests once the game goes live.
I know there is a mode which allows up to 10 players to play as either survivors or infected. And more maps are deffinately to come.

Played it once single, once multi, then deleted it.

Hordes of zombies running at you, with navigation greatly aided by mapper-placed scripted sequences, is at least a somewhat novel approach. I had feared, since the advent, of Doom3, we weren't going to see any serious monster swarms anymore, due to the poly count of modern engine models. This at least aleves that worry better than Serious Sam2 did, but it doesn't really have any more to offer than that game.

The immersion on this game is just plain broken. I've X-ray vision, anything I can pick up glows wildly, be I looking at it or not, and pop-ups exclaiming kill bonuses are constantly being thrown up in my face. This game does everything possible to remind you it's an arcade game, when all you really need is health meters (and even those could go, with some work).

Then you have, for some bizarre reason, akimbo pistols with magically limitless ammo, that in many ways rival the expendable weapons (which also have a ton of ammo). These things have perfect aim, so long as you are crouched, so you can snipe zombie heads at 5000 yards. This, while akimbo, mind you, so I guess we're a team of ex-navy seals, or some sh*t.

Zombies do not respond to your footsteps. They do not respond to your voice. They do not respond to your flashlight in their face. They don't respond to gunfire. They don't EVEN respond when their buddy zombie gets capped right in front of them. But SOMEHOW - they respond to car alarms. :\

The ammo fairy seems to roam about, and gather all the ammo and weapons on the map into these neat little glowing pre-fab piles, that are often in entirely non-sensical (ie. "who the hell would try the hold the line HERE!?") locations. ZPS's approach of scattering ammo everywhere, making you poke your flashlight into every dark corner of the room, is much more immersive.

Zombie Panic: Source's immersion, aside from the recently added crap female player model, is actually much better than this retail game. You're always desperately scrounging for ammo, you get the impression that your character has maybe never fired a gun before, and you aren't constantly hounded by "SCORE!" pop-ups reminding you that you are in a game, on the off chance you might actually get scared. Hell, the game doesn't EVEN tell you when your friends die. You just find yourself going "Fred? ...Fred? Fred!!!" The multiplayer in ZPS, of course, is also MUCH better. (Although player controlled zombies makes that kinda inevitable.)

ZPS's focus on multiple objectives and barricading procedures also means there's just a lot more to the game than Left4Dead's shooting gallery (which does remind me of one of those pistol games you might find in a cheap movie theatre).

I suppose it might be more fair to compare Left4Dead to the HL1 mod, Brain Bread (RIP), game play wise. Aside from being limited to four players, it beats that hands down - but that isn't exactly hard.

I'll give it points for the smoker. Not in any way an original idea, but at least it has some character to it. Getting nailed with boomer bile and knowing there are going to be 500 zombies on your face, that you can hardly see, also intense. ZPS could take some tips from this game, but more often, sadly, the reverse is also true.
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"But I don't care darling, because I love you, and you've got to let me eat your brains." - Fred, Return of the Living Dead
Thothie

Well but they're not really the same game. in ZP, all the zombies are other players, starting with one mega zombie. In L4D zombies are all computers, so in a way it is more like serious sam.

Zombies however do respond to gunfire and flashlights. They also do respond to their friends getting capped most of the time. But one might wonder... why they would? They're not intelligent.

One must assume they at least have enough know-how to express the rudimentary desire to eat human flesh - or they aren't zombies - but corpses, and that doesn't make for much of a game. I kinda expect at least animal-level intelligence.

But no, I had this game set on 'Advanced' difficulty, and the only way these zombies would react, barring bile-tag, is if you walked within 6 feet of them, and even then, it had to be from the front. I stood right behind one, capped two of his buddies in the distance, who were facing one another, and none of the three zombies in this scene reacted in anyway (except to become, more dead - the third doing so when my buddies caught up.)

My computer buddies were kinda the same way. They wouldn't shoot any zombie further than 12 feet away - so I always had to spend a minute or two pistol-sniping before we moved to the next point. I'm used to this in ZPS, as you don't want to shoot at anything that isn't close to conserve ammo, but in this game of neigh (and not so neigh) limitless ammo, and zombies that just lounge around, it didn't make as much sense. It got to be really annoying after awhile.

The ONLY zombie that I could find that did respond to flashlights was "The Witch". I saw said witch not too long after passing a weapons table, so I went back and got the sniper rifle. ( Mental Note: sniper rifle to the head will not kill the witch. ) She responded to the headshot by ripping my head off, but she didn't respond to any of the zombies being slain in the same underground garage before then, or even to the moltov I tossed in to juice them up.
_________________
"Send... more... paramedics!" - Return of the Living Dead, finest Zombie moments
Thothie

/facepalm

Well I think your criticisms are a little harsh, I had a blast playing it with 3 of my friends with the difficulty turned up to Expert. I distinctly remember pistol sniping a zombie next to another zombie, and the second zombie deffinately attacked me upon blowing his friend's head off. Maybe they're not as responsive on easier difficulties or maybe you just found a bugged zombie?

Sometimes i found them a tad unresponsive, but I didn't attribute it to bad AI, I thought it was done deliberately because they are... zombies. The real fun of the game comes from being ambushed either via random ambush or boomer bile.

I'm not sure how it is on the easier difficulties, but on expert you get rushed by a wave of zombies every few minutes. This can complicate matters especially if a wave comes in tandem with a tank battle.

I wouldn't compare the game so much to ZP as I would mad max with a zombie feel. Your pistols might have unlimited ammo, but they don't do much for you when you're being swarmed by a massive wave of zombies.

where was I? oh yeah, zombies

This game is designed as a coop game, not primarily a single player experience. The SP works, but it is first and foremost a coop game. It's also best played on Expert, where the weapon/ammo spawns aren't nearly as frequent.

It's more about giving your friend crap when he turns and shoots you in the face after dealing with a hoard. Zombies far off in the distance still don't respond to gunfire, but everything in the first ~15-20 feet rushes you when you open fire.

There are also extended moments in the retail game of true hoards. There is at least one scripted hoard event that is 3 times longer than the one at the end of the demo.

Agreed, was playing the first campaign last night with my friends on expert. Took us 3 and a half hours to finally beat it on, the ending was fucking epic. A hunter pinned one of the final 2 survivors, and as my other friend went back to save him, the rooftop filled up with zombies and he had to make a break for the elevator. Came within inches of not making it. This game is just full to the teeth of intense fight sequences. I've not played another coop game that was this much fun.

Played another map today, didn't quite beat it but got to the 4th stage. The game is really fun when you're playing with people you know. Reminds me a bit of the old days playing battle toads, where you'd accidently cut your friend's rope and he'd kick your ass the next time he respawned.

Coop with your friends is simply the shit.

The survivor mode is kind of meh. It's alot like NS in that if you get two evenly matched teams it can be epic, but it's also like NS in that 1 or two really good players can throw the whole thing out of balance and then you just get steamrolled over and over again. Not really a fan.

I haven't tried it yet, been having too much fun with co-op on expert.

vs is identical to coop. It's the first two campaigns only boss zombies spawn every 30s and are controlled by humans. You play either humans or zeds, humans score based on how far they make it through the level, then you switch sides. So you play surv and zed on each map in the campaign in sequence.