WaruiReview: Zombie Panic Source (HL2 Mod)

[Jango]

Intro: Earlier this week, Valve made an announcement that pretty much blows my mind but is pretty awesome at the same time. Starting next week, it will start supporting the Mod community by offering support for several of the more popular mods on its Steam service. One of the announced mods was an online FPS known as Zombie Panic: Source, a mod of Half-Life 2 that takes the Zombies vs Humans concept to online gaming. I'm a huge fan of zombies so I just had to fire this up. So is it any good? Let's find out!



Gameplay: If you've played Half-Life 2, you'll probably be more than familiar with the controls. If you haven't, you move with the W, A, S, and D buttons, change weapons with the number buttons, and aim/attack with the mouse. This is all pretty basic stuff so let's move onto the classes. This game gives you the choice to be either a human or a zombie, and depending on who you pick (the game will change your class, however, if too many people have already picked it before you did), your gameplay will change dramatically

If you choose to be a human, you will have one of two different goals depending on the map and what the server chooses. The first and most basic is simply to kill all the zombies. The second varies by map, and has you follow a mission. These missions range from activating nuclear warheads to wipe out a city filled with zombies, to running around a deserted neighborhood collecting holy books to ward off zombies, and even one mission that mirrors the ending of Romero's Dawn of the Dead. As a human, you basically follow most of the HL2 mechanics, but there are changes here and there. For starters, you start the game off with  a melee weapon and a firearm. Melee weapons can be anything from the classing Half-Life crowbar, to a frying pan, to even a computer keyboard. In general you only want to use these as a last resort as zombies take quite a few hits before going down (more on this later). That being said, though, guns should be used sparingly as ammo is scarce and must be shared amongst players. As an added feature, you can actually drop weapons and ammo for other characters to pick up if the situation calls for it. Furthermore, the more weapons and ammo you hold, the slower your character becomes. It's a nice little way to balance things out so that players don't hog all the weapons for themselves, although I felt that it doesn't make sense for a shotgun to slow down a person more than, say, a two-handed shovel (yes, I've held both just to compare it for the review). Another change from HL2 is the flashlight. Although there is no limit to how long you can use it, it obviously gives your position away to zombies in hiding. Finally, the last feature unique to this game is "Panic." At the cost of dropping all of your weapons, you are given a quick speed boost to help you escape out of a sticky situation. Needless to say, this doesn't show up a lot in online play.



Now I'm assuming the first time around, you'll likely get mauled by a zombie or killed by an environmental prop very easily, so you'll probably become very familiar with the zombie class early on. The first thing you'll notice is that zombies cannot pick up weapons despite me making a movie that begs to differ. Thus in order to kill a human, you have to get close and basically punch the shit out of them. While this sounds unbalanced, zombies have quite a few tricks up their sleeves to compensate. For starters, a zombie's health automatically regenerates. If you fall from a high height, you'll most likely regain your health in less than a second, and if you get drawn into a firefight, just take cover for a while and wait until you regain your health. In addition, if you get killed, you will come back to life. On a mission map, you have infinite respawns, but in a Last Man Standing Match, all zombies share a set number of respawns. The flashlight gets replaced with "Zombie Vision," which turns the world into grayscale colors, illuminates it, and colors all humans red, making it easy to find your next victim. The only thing that hinders zombies is the dash, which is a bit slower than the human dash and comes with a handicap: It doesn't refill unless you kill a human. Thus you want to make sure that the only time you use it is when a human is close by and is trying to run away. In general, it's kinda fun being a zombie, although I wish they could actually eat their enemies instead of just clawing them to death, but that would probably require more programming for a mere aesthetic.

Sound: I'm pretty surprised at the soundtrack! Assuming no one is trying to start a pizza party during your game, you'll find that the music in general sets a nice ambiance for matches. Nothing too upbeat, just suspenseful and creepy. Although I would've liked a little more variety, it does a good job of setting the mood. The voices, however, could use some work and variety. As the game only comes with two human character models (a black cop and a white street punk... uhhhhh...), you only have two different vocal sets, which end up repeating after a while. In addition, The grunts the human characters make often sound very close to the grunts zombies make. Thus in a room with a lot of human players, if someone starts swinging around a melee weapon, it's common for someone close by to turn around and hit him with whatever they're holding, or worse, waste ammo on him.

Rehash Factor: Your mileage may very, but this game has me hooked. It's always fun to start off as a human trying to do a very goal-oriented mission, or, failing that, stopping everyone from doing that mission as a zombie. It's a simple concept but for some reason, it just feels like there's so much depth to it.

Plot: There's a zombie outbreak and you and a group of survivors consisting solely of black cops and white street punks need to take them out or find a way to escape.

Difficulty: If you're a human, you'll have the easiest time on a Last Man Standing Match, as zombies have set respawns and you have weaponry on your side. This changes drastically with mission maps, as you have to worry about getting a mission done with zombies on your tail, made difficult that zombies tend to respawn close to where the current part of the mission is. Zombies, while generally easier to play as, are the exact opposite. They are pretty much toast in Last Man Standing matches, but are a huge threat in missions, as all killed humans respawn as zombies.

Final Score: 8/10
I never thought I'd be able to get such an original experience out of a mod. This game has proved me wrong and has totally kicked my ass and handed it to me. If you're a fan of mods, pick this one up now. If you aren't, this one will surely make you a believer.

Mandatory Closing Image



Custom maps are awesome. And yes, that keyboard is my melee weapon.

[Tyrannosaurus Reich]

i need to download this shit

[ughwtf]

I thought you hated it.

[DMK]

What server do you usually play on? D:

[Jango]

I usually play on the yellow cake server, but that one's pretty popular, so you might not get in. Another problem is that a lot of servers are still playing with the non-Steam version, so if you upgraded, you might not be able to play on them.

[DMK]

Yeah I did just update to the Steam one. Dammit.  :(

I think there is now due to it becoming a full Steam backed mod it should have a dedicated server. Was planning on also making a server as well.

[Jango]

Well the good news is that support is starting to pick up. And now, I'll present some changes that were made in the Steam version.

- Zombie health-regeneration has been greatly reduced. No problems here as the fast regen was one of my complaints with the old version
- Zombie vision doesn't turn the world grayscale any more, but everything gets lit up. People are still red.
- BLOOD MARKS ON THE SCREEN ALA HOUSE OF THE DEAD.
- Some of the movement problems have been fixed.
- Steam username is used to identify you (Humans beware, the legendary zombie WarioAkuma is upon you!)
- You can now set certain users to ignore prior to connecting, which is kinda nifty if you connect to a server full of twelve-year-olds and know who's going to complain about how unrealistic it is that their headshots aren't killing zombies in one hit (lol wut)

Oh yeah, as far as dedicated servers go, I know that Penny Arcade's (haha) server always seems to be on. Now we just need to beg the YCP admins to make a dedicated server.

[Tyrannosaurus Reich]

it's kind of enarg's job to handle steam-related servers