Pumping Irony

I tried a Half-Life 2 mod today, Zombie Panic: Source which actually turned out to be entertaining, at least in short spurts (of blood).

The idea behind ZPS is the classic zombie outbreak scenario, nothing new there. Unlike many of the zombie mods out there, however, this one is multi-player. Here’s how it works:

When the match starts, you can choose to be human or zombie. If no one chooses zombie, the server will randomly select one player to be the first zombie: the carrier. Humans are armed with random melee weapons such as a club, shovel, even a Logitech keyboard! Humans also have flashlights to get a better view of things, since the game is quite dark. Pistols, rifles and shotguns are available if you can find them, though ammunition is sparse and must be found as well. Explosives also, though I haven’t seen them today. Zombies can only melee with their clawed hands, but they hit very hard. Zombies also have regenerating health which helps keep them “alive” longer. Where humans have their flashlights, the undead have “zombie vision” which is a sort of infrared vision. The more active a human is, the more body heat he gives off and the easier he is to track.

If you noticed above I referred to the first zombie as the “carrier” that’s because once a human is killed, he respawns as a zombie! Despite the humans having ranged weapons, some of which are quite deadly, every match I played today ended in a zombie victory. One dead human means one more zombie to join the ranks and overrun the dwindling human population!

ZPS is fun in its own right if you’re into the small skirmish PvP scene, and the automatic team change from human to zombie is an interesting change of pace.

Personally, I was hoping for a cooperative PvE experience; Dead Rising meets Resident Evil as a Source engine-powered FPS. I envision somewhat larger maps, with multiple goals to achieve in order to win. Zombies continually spawn and march toward the players, hungry for their virtual brains. If another player connects to the server to join the fray, the server will spawn more zombies to keep the difficulty level sustained. Conversely, when a player disconnects either some zombies will despawn or a longer period of time will pass before any further zombie spawns. Something like that… I’m making this up as I write, after all.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 5:12 pm and is filed under FPS.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.