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Every once in a while you come across a game that shows you the value of having a well-crafted demo. Because the demo manages to mask the flaws in the complete game and as a result your customers end up wasting their money on the full version. Today’s example is Zombie Apocalypse (XBLA/PSN). The game is basically a higher-than-average-budget arena shooter that has you mowing down wave after wave of hungry zombies. Note that this is not intended as a review, rather this is me venting about wasting time with a shit game.

I want to go ahead and get the positives out of the way: it has zombies and lots of ways to kill them; the presentation is quite slick as far as HUD, menus, “modern” HDR bloom graphics, some limited physics and stuff; also the demo was pretty fun and I kind of liked screwing around in co-op multiplayer when I tried it.

Ok there, now that that’s done, let’s get on with why I hate this game (and trust me it takes a lot for me to actually hate a game with zombies). The game is incredibly fucking long. The regular campaign is 55 days, that’s 55 separate levels. Too bad there are only 7 unique arenas. Of course that’s not all, once you get even a couple of weeks into the game, a single level starts to take approximately forever to complete. Most of these levels are fairly poorly designed as well once all of the gimmicks (weapons, zombie types, radioactive zombies) have been revealed. I can’t begin to count the number of times that I’d thin out the zombies and suddenly more would spawn and I’d wish the damn level would just end, already.

The game starts out generously easy, with levels full of zombies from whom you can escape being grabbed and therefore never die and rack up tons of extra lives. Then it gets to frustratingly hard as levels consisting of waves of zombies that take lots of damage and kill you in one hit begin to appear. By waves, I mean spawn the same type of PITA zombie for 5 minutes straight while you try to credit feed your way into more favorable circumstances. Lets not forget my special favorite, the “Granny” zombie that throws knives. Light colored knives that kill you in one hit and travel in an arc and are therefore difficult to determine the path of, and are easily lost sight of in patches of bloom lighting effects.

Obviously the additional weapons help power you up and take out these more threatening zombie types, right? Not quite. The weapons that are spawned seem to be at least semi-random, and there’s nothing quite like accidentally picking up the slow-throwing and difficult-to-aim molotov cocktail when being faced with a wave of exploding kamikaze zombies. The chainsaw melee attacks aren’t much of a backup in that situation. The game actually feels a lot like the first Postal in a lot of ways, but unfortunately the weapon system isn’t one of them. Being able to pick up a lot of different types of weapons through the campaign and then switch between them at will later (depending on ammo availability of course), as well as back to your default melee chainsaw and infinite-ammo submachine gun, would have made a lot of sections much more managable.

Finally, the scoring system is sadistically aimed at people with lots of free time and very large bladders. Leaderboard entries are only saved for games starting from Day 1. Scoring is based heavily on a multiplier that goes up by 1x for every 5 zombies killed, and adds 3x for a zombie killed with a “chainsaw execution” attack that leaves you vulnerable. If you die, the multiplier goes back to 1x. This makes death have a score-ruining effect of around Deathsmiles Mega Black Label level. More forgiving is the 5000 point bonus for zombies killed by being forced into an environmental hazard. Anyone who wants to play straight through all 55 long-ass days of that kind of shit just to get #1 on the SP leaderboard is quite welcome to the honor as far as I’m concerned.

Oh yeah, the boss (there are three boss levels, but it’s all the same thing) is retarded and clearly tacked on. Also, I personally wish harm upon whoever decided that those dumbass flying things could one-shot a character, and have additional ones able to be spawned between player deaths. I’d bitch about the lack of story or the unlockable modes being equally lame, but I’ve wasted enough space on this crap already.

tl;dr – this game has too little content spread too thin and taken as a whole has almost no redeeming qualities as a single-player experience.

Back from a somewhat pleasant couple of weeks during which I completely failed to do any gaming. In order to rectify this situation, I finally picked up a fightpad for my XBox 360 so I could start playing Shooting Love 200x again without worrying about having to get my wrists unlocked with a crab-cracker from mashing buttons on the stock 360 pad.  The shmups skills test portion (obviously designed around a joystick, which makes sense considering the arcade heritage of the title) is suddenly much less frustrating and painful to play, although there are a couple of parts where autofire is just completely abusive.

Between the whole video games being hard thing and the nice weather I got a little bit burned out on serious gaming.  Lately I’ve been screwing around with playing games for fun (sorry sik) during downtime.  On top of the stack has been the deeply flawed budget-label near mindless zombie hack and slash Simple2000 Series Vol.101 THE Oneechanpon ~THE Oneechanbara 2 Special Edition~.  The game is a bit hard to take seriously–  the main character runs around in a bikini and a cowboy hat, the secondaries include a schoolgirl, a leather-clad biker chick with a shotgun, and some cameo characters from D3 Publisher and Tamsoft’s other games including a reimagining of Sofia from Battle Arena Toshinden named Eva.  Oh yeah, also the ridiculous level of violence wherein you slash your way through hundreds of zombies at a time, pausing only to sling the blood off your sword or throw knives/energy waves/shotgun blasts in the direction of more distant threats.

It’s easy to see why the game was a budget release.  The game has slowdown in densely zombie-populated rooms that screws with the timing-based combo system.  The experience system is basically broken once you’ve fully upgraded the main character’s combo stat, which is okay because the game is actually way more fun once everyone’s stats are maxed out.  There are exactly 6 levels (plus True Last Boss), of which the later ones take around 30 minutes to push through when starting out, but are actually really fun to speedrun/time attack (the game keeps track of time taken to clear each level) once you’ve levelled up your characters.  Since the game has a map to tell you where your next objective in a level is, exploration is good for… well, finding more stuff to dismember/decapitate/rip the heart out of, etc.  Actually, there are hidden areas in each level that require a combination requiring a certain combo stat (and the skill to perform it) to enter.  The reward for clearing all of these is an extra costume for the main character; the journey is far more satisfying than the destination.

Oh yeah, I’ve also been testing the latest Xeno Fighters EX release.  It plays really well so far, I can’t wait for more levels and ships to be added.  In the meantime I’ve been abusing the custom soundtrack feature to make stupid videos to put on Youtube.  Too bad I can only capture the window at the default 1x size, playing in a 240×320 window in the middle of a 1200×1600 display is almost the definition of eyestrain, and SnagIt hates it when I maximize it like I normally would to play.

I’ve been toying around with a couple of my XBox 360 shoot’em ups these past days.  Mostly because all of my moving around and preparing for future moves has left it so the 360 is the only machine I keep permanently hooked up.  Raiden IV I’ve made a pretty large temporary regression in since the last time I attacked it in February.  Getting aced by something that you KNOW HOW TO AVOID JESUS CUNT MCSHITNUGGETS HOW DID I DIE THERE FUUUUUUU- is an extremely frustrating experience.  This kind of frustration has limited me to a few runs a day at best, which is not actually helping me to improve.  Why you gotta make me mad, baby?

Triggerheart Exelica is even worse.  Some backstory: I bought the XBLA version because I absolutely adore the original Arcade version and subsequently put many many hours into the Dreamcast port with its gameplay-perfect Arcade Mode, slightly expanded Story Mode, and bullet hell + modified score system Arrange Mode.  The XBLA version of the game, however, was heavily tweaked from the original– with a simplified scoring system and somewhat rebalanced characters.  I far and away prefer the classic version but I’ve finally started taking the revision seriously.  The game is fairly tame f or a modern shooter and I have enough time in that it’s usually an easy clear (or even no-miss, as reflected by my old gamertag).  Not lately, though.  Despite putting up respectable scores I’ve been suffering strings of embarassing or downright stupid deaths.  Or rather, in spite of completely sucking ass I’m turning in decent scores.  Which is all the more frustrating knowing I’m a good run away from 250M+ clear on the leaderboards.

I promise vengeance and domination when I get my groove back.

Finished my run through Wolfenstein 3D.  I actually got the game to lock up at one point, great port.  Episode 6 was huge and has much more complicated levels compared to the rest of the episodes.  Which boiled down to more time spent running around and thinning out the ranks of the Nazi party and the SS.  Highest score ended up being about 910xxx points in Episode 2… somehow.  Looks like the leaderboards are ranked overall by score earned in the level, which is determined from kills and Kill%, treasure found and Treasure%, Secret%, and finally a bonus for coming in under Par Time.  Oh and the difficulty level, which affects the score by virtue of more enemies being present on higher difficulties.  So, as it turns out, just being thorough and playing at high difficulty will shoot you most of the way to the top.

Next up: I haven’t decided yet.  I need to go back and bone up on my Raiden Fighters Jet.  I also have a few things I want to do in Raiden IV and Otomedius.  Plus I need to break out the PS2 and the Hori Upscan Converter and shake up the Raiden DX highscore thread @ shmupsforum.

P.S. – Change Air Blade PVP is lol.

MEIN LEBEN!

I had 400MSP left over on my US XBL account so I bought and am currently playing through Wolfenstein 3D on XBLA.  The leaderboards seem to be based on both score and time.  Since I enjoy exploring and killing everything (this was much more satisfying in Doom with the larger variety of weapons, monsters, and level architecture… oh yeah and the automap) I’m doing much better on the score front than the time front.  477000 or so for the first episode, surely half of that came from floor 10.  I don’t think any of my friends are playing the game so I don’t really have much incentive to sprint through the levels just to get my leaderboard ranking up.

It’s a lot smoother than the last time I played it.  To be fair the last time I played I was a poor gamer with a low-spec 486, which meant shareware episode only.  Now I’m getting to enjoy all of the annoyances features added to the full 6-episode version.  Zombies that make no noise to alert you to their presence until they’re firing on you, two keys needed to escape most levels.  Fortunately, the gamepad controls don’t hurt Wolf3D as much as they did Doom, since the game has far fewer weapons and slower turning.  Much lower difficulty in general, actually, even though I’m playing at “Bring ‘em On!”

Despite the fact that I love to complain about whatever I’m playing (this will be a theme) I’m enjoying myself and I’ll probably end up grinding my way through all 6 episodes.  Then, back to racing games and shoot’em ups!