Zombie Master~!

[Azazel]

Following on from other zombie-game-related news, steam just had a link to this, which looks kinda interesting.

http://www.zombiemaster.org/

Anyone tried it? Worth the download?

[raydeen]

Goddammit, now I gotta buy HL2.

[Ironwood]

You don't have HL2 ?

[Azazel]

Actually, HL2 is currently discounted via Steam as well.

[Yegolev]

First of all, the description sounds awesome.

Second, play HL2 and Ep. 1.  My review doesn't seem to have survived the F13 server move, but I still have it on my rig.  Don't make me whip it out.

[Strazos]

Just got done playing it for a few hours....it's neat, but definitely unfinished. Lots of potential.

[Etro]

Does the zombie master get an advantage of time to put zombies and stuff down on the map before the game begins or is it go right from the start for both teams?

[Strazos]

I got to be a ZM only once...it seems both sides start at the same time.

[Megrim]

Am i right in assuming that it plays (or tries to play) like Dungeon Keeper?

[Azazel]

Just had a play with it. The Zombie Master part plays pretty roughly, but has potential, but the "survivor" was pretty fun. I did get sick of that warehouse after a few rounds though.

If you have HL2, it's worth a small (52mb) doanload to check out. It's not something to play yet, but it could become.

[Strazos]

It's fun as a ZM to spawn shit in the path of fleeing survivors.

I still have not gotten the hang of truly controlling my minions. I mostly just spawn them close to people and hope the AI gets the point.

[angry.bob]

I played it all day today. SUpar fun, everyone should play. A few notable problems:

1) A bug with weapons and ammo. Sometimes, for some reason you can just not get ammo. Several times today I had 2 or more empty guns and ran over all sorts of ammo to no effect. I expect that'll get fixed fairly soon.

2) Some of the guns really need to be more powerful. I can understand the pistol sucking, but taking 3 headshots point-blank with a shirtgun to kill a zombie is too much. Forget about the Banshees or the giant whatever they were thingies. The hunting rifle is great, but good luck getting it.

3) If you don't move and act as a team, or have a single barricade destroying nub you all die. Also, make sure someone good stays in the spawn. Nothing sucks more than finding the last part only to come back and find your spawn is full of banshees.

4) Turning on the generator is fun. As is making giant barricades at the spawn entrances. Not a problem, just saying...

5)Needs another map.

[Strazos]

Also, they need to do something with the ZM start point....half the time I end up seeing nothing, and move about desperately until I can see something, which generally takes at least a minute...that's a lot of time wasted that I should have been setting up zombies at item points or chokepoints.

Also, the movement controls as ZM need some work. Outdoors is ok, but if you need to click shit indoors, good luck.




What would be really sweet would be to make our own F13 server. Just the voice logs might make it worthwhile.

[Samwise]

Natural Selection with NPC zombies?  HELLS YES BITCH.  I will be trying this out.

[Strazos]

Good lucking getting randomly selected as the ZM. Seriously, you Might get the role once an hour.

[Samwise]

I rate this one a meh.  I seem to spend most of my time bunny-hopping around trying to dodge zombie monkeys as they teleport around me.  It feels really spastic compared to something like Zombie Panic or Natural Selection, which are the two other mods I was hoping it would emulate.  Oh well.

[Azazel]

Tell me more about this Zombie Panic...

[Samwise]

Zombie Panic

Team deathmatch with two teams: survivors and zombies.  The round starts with one zombie and everyone else as a survivor.  Every time a survivor dies, he respawns on the zombie side.  Zombies respawn as zombies, but they have a finite number of respawns allowed.  Round ends when one side or the other is annihilated.

Zombies have no ranged attacks and are slower than the survivors, so to win they generally have to either overwhelm the survivors with numbers (e.g. all gang up on one survivor and hope one of them can reach him before he shoots them all) or surprise them (e.g. hide in a dark corner that's on the way to an ammo supply and jump out going "rawr brains").  It's actually very much like the first few minutes of a Natural Selection round, where all the aliens have to be clever and stealthy to get within biting distance of a marine.

I think the idea behind Zombie Master was to shift the game away from having a small number of relatively powerful, smart, bunny-hopping zombies, and more towards a large shambling horde.  Which sounds awesome in theory.  The problem is that in the process they seem to have lost the elements of strategy and stealth that made Zombie Panic fun.

[NiX]

Any other worthwhile HL2 mods?