Project Zomboid- First Look on an Early Access Game.

Hello weary traveller! Pull up a hand made seat and a warm can of beans as I proceed to tell you about the indie game that has gripped me like that bad case of food poisoning I got that one week in Uni that had me walling off the bathroom rather than clean it.

Welcome to Knox County! And Knox County is fucked.

Ever wanted to play a game where if you make an error in judgement, don't eat often enough or get cocky then the game is going to beat you to your knees and laugh at you whilst you spit out gobs of blood and bits of skin? Well here is Project Zomboid, the newest installment of "If you fuck up, you'll know about it."

When you make your character in Project Zomboid you have nothing but the clothes on your back, and you actually have less than that if you chose the handyman specialisation in the character creation screen, where you will be topless, not the best choice for the zombie apocalypse.

First off, you choose your map, the place where you will inevitably die, then you create the character who you will inevitably die as, choosing Male, Female, skin tone, weight, job, extra skills and most importantly - beard.

Then you wake up in the map somewhere and shit goes downhill from there.

First things first, there is no map, no HUD circle in the corner to tell you where you are, no you have to remember how you got to where you are going and how you are going to find your way back to your safe house before some undead bastard uses your skull for the Sunday league bowling tournament.

Secondly you are going to need to find a bag! Because you can only carry so many cans of beans and baseball bats before you get weighed down so any fucker can sneak up behind you and nibble on your neck...and not in the good way.

And then you are off! In to the wilderness of Knox County! Oh wait did you use a gun? Good luck mate, I'll time you to see how long you last after firing the first bullet....And you ran? You are just going to make them hungrier and angrier.

Zomboid is a game about tough love, there is a tutorial as soon as you open the game and you can call it up at any time. But when the first group of deadites come shambling through the door to your safe house lets see how well you remember to not run before using that bat to cave their skulls in, so you can save on stamina.

Now then, it should be a couple of days after you have first emerged blinking from the static caravan you spawned in and it's time to start reinforcing your safe house, time to go in to town and find equipment and tools if you haven't found them in the houses you've looted in the area...oh and be careful about smashing windows, some places have burglar alarms still on.

So then...Now that we have a little time now that you know what the difference is between your arse and your elbow, let's talk more about what you can do in Project Zomboid, starting with looting an entire house from top to bottom, using a hammer and nails together with planks to board up windows and doors, cook, farm, hunt.

Admittedly to get some of the necessary items for this you are going to have to go in to town, which is about as good as it sounds when used in the context of Zombie Survival game, because you are going to need things like a Fire Axe, seeds, a trowel and things that you probably won't have access to in your current location.

Electrical systems and Water systems will shut off after a random portion of time (You can decide on this time in Sandbox mode, along with what type of zombie you will be surviving against,) so your food will go rotten, and you won't be able to use the oven, microwave or fridge to cook or store food, so perishable foods are less than useful at that point...and you will have to learn how to make a fire outdoors.

So let's see what I have covered: If you run you'll get killed, if you use loud weaponry without checking your surroundings and having lots of ammo you'll get killed....eat bad food? Killed....Don't fortify your safe house? Dead...Don't take enough weapons to adjust for weapon degradation? Whoops!.....Don't check your surrounding before entering or exiting a place? Zombie food...

Well, aside from it being an early access game, there isn't much more to say about this game...other than I have spent over 110 hours playing this thing...so I would probably say that I do enjoy this game.

And in conclusion!: 

Pro's:

-I have been playing this game for over 100 hours and haven't been able to put it down for a long period of time.

-I have found this game to be incredibly tense when things start going wrong.

-It's being updated often so things are changing and there are lots of new thins being added.

Con's:

-It's in Alpha, I didn't really touch on it, but it is in Alpha, I have found a few occasions where the processor was chugging it's heart out trying to get it to work.

-Weapons degrade far quicker than I would like but that is just me.

Similar Games!:

Okay...now then, I'm trying to think of a few games like Zomboid but I can't think of any.... Well I guess you could play any zombie apocalypse game like Dead Rising and pretend it's your own character.

Doom 3: BFG Edition

Ahhhh Doom, id software's big number from back in the 2.5D era, and one of the big games that everyone still remembers...well if you weren't a spod when everyone else was playing this masterpiece, and now id has brought out the BFG edition to make my trousers tight and my journalistic gonads churn with anticipation.

So then, we step back in to the very comfortable boots of the "Doomguy" to wade through the legions of demons that stand between you and the Cyberdemon....and of course there is doom 2 and 3, so yeah it's pretty good.

Okay, so then, the original Doom, Doom 2 and Doom 3, along with the expansions and also a couple of extra levels for the original 2 games to pad the game out a little...that and get you some interesting stuff for completing those levels (Xbox is what I got it for, so avatar stuff for me!)

Doom 3 now actually handles with common sense, for those amongst us who never played the original Doom 3, I refer to the fact that you couldn't use a gun and a torch at the same time, I like the fact that I can have a torch when I am shooting at a guy....though I would have enjoyed having a rifle sight aswell, but thats just me.

 So then, there isn't much that needs to be said about the original Doom games, you ran, you killed, you got to the end of the level and moved on, getting progressively bigger weapons and going up against progressively badder asses.

Doom 3 wasn't really changed either, you get the flashlight mounting on your body armour, you still can't aim down the barrel of the gun to allow for more accurate fire, but that's just a little nit pick of mine, and to be fair it doesn't really change all that much.

Pros and Cons.

Pros
-It's Doom.
-I missed old fashioned shooting games
-I can carry around more than 2 guns...which is nice

Cons.
-Oh god the pixels....

If you liked this then you might also like
-Quake
-Rage
-Most other FPS games that aren't really realistic.

Preview : Metro: Last Light

Metro 2033 was a fantastic game, and one of the few games I regret trading in for the cavalcade of mediocrity that was Skyrim.



And now they are releasing Metro 2034 and everyone who reads this can colour me excited, now with this trailer that was recently released I find myself wishing more and more that I could pick up my Bastard and head outside into the frozen wastes of Moscow.

I felt that Metro 2033 got a lot of undeserved stick, I found it to be extremly intruiging as a concept and as a storyline, namely due to the fact that I wasn't in America now and the story had more depth than a spoon...Also I didn't run around with people calling me "The Chosen One" or the "Lone Wanderer"....also it was Fucking DIFFICULT!

Now to my friends I am one of the few people who actually enjoys playing Dark Souls, and I love playing games which make me put more effort into them and force me to concentrate...for one thing Metro doesn't actually have a HUD system, and there is no health bar, to find out how you are doing you have to listen to your heartbeat, which adds another dynamic.

Imagine if you will, walking down a set of stairs, you get attacked, you panic unload a clip into whatever is attacking you, but not before it takes off about half of your health, and now you have to go into the bowels of a train stationin the dark, with only your helmet mounted flashlight and your Bastard assault rifle for company...all the while you can hear your own heartbeat telling you that you are injured.

As an action game it was relatively average, but with certain nice little details, though as a horror and a survival game it is right up there near the top in my opinion because it makes you think, makes you worry about yourself and above all, makes you strategise about your surroundings and how to survive by planning, something that I truly love.

I am looking forward to this game so much it's untrue, I would recommend you buy/replay Metro 2033, I am going to pick it up at some stage today or tomorrow.

Resident Evil 6

I liked Leon S Kennedy's campaign in Resident Evil 6.

I absolutely abhore sections of the rest of the game, including the other campaigns and the writing.

So then, after the Leon S. Kennedy review that I published yesterday on this site, I decided that I should continue from there and outline my thoughts on what Resident Evil 6 did badly after the fairly decent campaign that was Leons.

First things first, the story, Leon's was very well written and actually felt like a call back to the old Resident Evil series of games (I.E. like resident evil 1,2 or 3), whereas, in Chris' campaign the story was lackluster, and was more akin to a 3rd person zombie call of duty game with dodgy dialogue and ridiculous bosses that genuinely made me laugh when I looked at them...not that I didn't do that in Leon's campaign because Capcom still cant get around the need to make everything bigger, like the ballet dinosaur.

Jake's story was a bit contrived, it was the general pastiche of "Here is character A, only he can help us to save the world!" which always makes me nauseous because of the lack of creative design that the writers for games have nowadays, that and the main bad guy who was made out to be like Nemesis from Resident Evil 3, wasn't scary in the slightest, he was just annoying, over the top and in dire need of killing off half way through to bring in something else that was hard as nails...maybe his goatee sporting brother perhaps?

Carrying on from the storyline we have characterisation, something that this game tried to do for its characters in these campaigns and failed to do, namely because people, like me, who had played Resident Evil games previous to this, understood the characters, and also what these people did.

Coming in first, Chris Redfield and his life partner Piers, Chris is a former member of the Raccoon police department S.T.A.R.S. team, but is currently working for the B.S.A.A. to put down bioweapons and stop bioterrorism, something that he has apparently forgotten by this 6th installment as he attempts to channel Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, which means that all the characterisation that they put into the man is now gone....at least he looks relatively feasable as a human being now though

Yeah, he looked like a man who had started smuggling melons in his arms.

Piers seemed to me to be a smart and down to earth character, a man who had a slight amount of hero worship over Chris, but wasn't afraid to tell him his opinion which was something that I liked when I was playing through the game and Chris was being an idiot.

Jake is very well characterised, I like him mainly because he feels like an actual human being compared to all of the usual protagonists we get in games who save the world because it's right.
Not for Jake, he has his priorities sorted out, because even if he does save the world, he needs to get paid afterwards, namely because of the fact that you cant buy chinese take out on your reputation....unless you're Wilson Fisk I suppose.

Sherry Birkin was a nice addition to the game because I haven't heard anything about her since Resi 2.

Okay, so I've covered the characters and their storylines, now lets move on to the things that annoyed me, the plot related set pieces, I.E. the point where I was playing as Jake, and the helicopter I was in was getting trashed as was beginning to head towards the ground quicker than a hookers knickers. At which point the guy in the helicopter with me said "Jump to the other chopper!" now then, in a chinook, side by side with another chinook, both of which are level, jumping between one and the other would be DAMN NEAR FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE EVEN IF YOU WERE ON THE FUCKING GROUND AND STATIONARY NOT IN A MOVING HELICOPTER ABOVER A 500 FOOT DROP!

Okay, whilst that is only one example, I remember there being more, but they have obviously been blanked from my mind, thank you for reading this watch for my next review.

In conclusion

Pro's

-The game still had the same gameplay and streamlined controls
-Weapons felt like they did some hefty damage and were actually useful

Cons

-Partners
-Set Pieces
-Certain voice acting segments grate
- Storylines become annoying because of their obviousness

If you liked this you might also like

Resident  Evil 4....because it's better
Half Life 2...It's not even remotely similar but it's far superior to Resident Evil 6

Resident Evil 6 : Leon's Campaign

I remember playing Resident Evil 2 when I was in Primary school one halloween and I vivdly remember not being able to sleep or keep my bowels and urinary tract from staying in a position that wouldn't require that I sit on the toilet for something like 3 days.

 So then, Resident Evil 6, a game where the logo looks like a Giraffe getting a blowjob (Look carefully and you will see it plain as day, and then never be able to unsee it) a game which has a terrific gaming pedigree but will that grandure come out in this game?

In short, sort of.

The long answer is that Leon's campaign is very good in terms of storyline and pacing, going back to the roots of Resident Evil, but the rest of the game (Which will be in my next review) is lackluster, mediocre and slightly annoying.

So then here is the review of Leon and Helena's campaign, the one campaign that actually feels like a survival horror game in a game that is supposed to be a survival horror franchise, I personally feel that Capcom should drop the Resident Evil franchise and start a fresh, namely because I feel that Capcom are flogging a dead horse and should really just start a fresh before their rut gets any deeper.

You play as one of these 2

Leon's campaign feels very smooth and well written (as well as a Capcom game can be written anyway), and plays the tension in the game very well, by doing the same thing that made it great in it's earlier, less convaluted outings into the world of video gaming.

Leon's campaign uses tension very well in this campaign, (Until the graveyard but baby steps here) moving through the game actually feels quite daunting, unlike in Resi 5 where it felt quite easy, and due to the lack of ammo spread around the levels, you actually feel like this is not a 3rd person shooting game, but actually something that you have to SURVIVE.

The usage of zombies however was less expertly handled, not that I am saying that there were too many, but, if they had given me more ammo then it would have been fine, or if they had reduced the amount of zombies to make the game more of a psychological survival horror, then that would have been fine, but leaving you with no ammo, 5 zombies and Leon's slightly chunky 'can-can-kick' was a bowel movement extroadinare.

Now I understand better than most people what the survival horror genre requires of me, it required me to think, conserve ammo, don't get hurt and most importantly, piss myself in a corner if things get too hectic, but not giving us any sign in a boss battle that we aren't meant to try and kill them yet, or we are supposed to do something is not good design work because we spend about 15 minutes trying to hurt the big bastard of the level, only to find out that we were meant to run down an alley instead of wasting all of our ammunition.

I also prefer Helena as a character to Piers, Sheva or Sherry Birkin, namely because of the fact that during my playthroughs of all the numbered resident evil games, and having had a 'friend' along for the ride in those games, Helena was found to be the best companion I have ever had because she NEVER WALKED OUT IN FRONT OF MY FIRING LINE OR GOT IN MY FUCKING WAY.

But I digress, the combat felt very streamlined, the ability to move and shoot at the same time is very nicely handled, as is the ability to do combat roles and sprint, and when you hold the left trigger whilst sprinting you perform a nice slide which you can use to set up your targets in interesting ways.

So, in conclusion, Resident Evil 6: Leon's campaign is an above average shooter but it is let down by some bad design work, not being told what to do or whether a boss fight is an actual boss fight.

In conclusion, Pros and Cons.

Pros

-Good mechanics for shooting, and the movement controls are quite nicely streamlined to make it feel like you are a special agent.
-Weapons handle and feel like real weapons, unlike how weapons have had a tendency to feel when playing other resident evil games

Cons 

-The story isn't exactly stellar, and to be fair I could see the plot twist in Leon's campaign and in terms of Ada from about 25 minutes into the storyline.
-I still maintain that having a partner doesn't exactly help with the whole 'Survival Horror' stuff, because I felt that having a secong person there made all the puzzles (If you could call them that) arbitratry, and the horror element was diminished.

If you liked this game you might also like

-Resident Evil 4
-Splinter Cell Conviction
-Gears of War