Zombie Master Mod for Half-Life 2 Zombie Master review

[page=Introduction]

Incoming!

That said, Zombie Master sounds like it should be a train wreck. If I try to explain it to someone, there is this inevitable rolling of the eyes. See, the game is a fusion of Iron Grip’s first person shooter versus real time strategy mechanics with a heavy dose of Unreal Tournament’s assault mode and heaps of zombies sprinkled on top for good measure. It just sounds like a wet dream amalgamation of different ideas crammed together on the overused Source engine with fanboyish fever.

It also works wonderfully.

Set amongst yet another generic zombie apocalypse, players can assume the roles of different survivors that ban together in a feeble attempt to escape with their lives. In each level—of which there is currently only one—the survivors must complete a set number of objectives before making their escape. In the released beta of Zombie Master, these objectives involve finding parts scattered throughout the level to rebuild a damaged truck. Once these items are pieced together, the truck must be defended from the undead for three minutes while, presumably, the truck is jump-started and everyone can head to freedom.

Attempting to prevent these people from leaving is the zombie master, a disembodied spirit of some sort that can call fourth the undead hordes from preset spawn points throughout the level. In every round, a sole player is given this role, working to foil his or her fellow players while watching the carnage unfold around them. It’s all rather voyeuristic, but then, isn’t that why we enjoy horror movies to begin with?

Anyway, the need to work cooperatively is vital to the success of the humans. When the match begins, you start with only your wits and your fists to defend you. Guns and melee weapons are littered around the environment, but ammo is scarce and not everyone will find something to defend themselves with. Those with the guns must conserve ammo while simultaneously protecting their fellow players, who must foot the admittedly boring task of locating the different supplies. Veteran survivors might also wise up to the idea of creating barricades out of explosive barrels, boxes, tables and any environmental object that can be pushed.

Nice shot.

The zombie master himself, meanwhile, is wrestling with the controls at this point. A bodiless, floating entity should control just like the standard spectator camera, sailing easily forward in any direction with the forward button and a flick of the mouse. Instead, you control things like an RTS game, but with a first person camera. See, press the forward button to sail ahead, spin the mouse wheel to ascend and descend, move the mouse to the edge of the screen to turn around, scream at the game to vent frustration. It really is a broken control scheme, one which I constantly avoided by ascending as high as I could go, pointing the view downwards, then just playing the game like a stock RTS.

There’s no need for this. I see what the creators were trying to do. When you do start spawning and ordering your minions around, you do it like an RTS: by clicking them, selecting the attack and then clicking where they need to go. However, most of these attacks are largely unnecessary because the zombies are smart enough to go after nearby human players, making it only necessary to move them into position. Couldn’t the creators have made the zombie master play like a spectator camera, with some additional “select all on screen” and “move here” buttons added to the mix? It’d certainly be a lot easier.

Editors Note: According to the creators, there is an undocumented way to switch to the free roaming spawn camera by hitting the shift button while playing. This will hopefully become standardized in later releases as it went undiscovered during the review process.

The beginning of the match is slow. The survivors fan out and start hunting for supplies. The zombie master spawns a few zombies at different allotted locations around the map, none of which can really get near a spry and alert human. The zombie master can also activate a few environmental traps, zapping people with loose electrical wires and dropping cargo containers on them. Characters clever enough not to fall into these hazards return, slamming the supplies repeatedly against the truck until a script kicks in and sticks the item into place. Nearby, a chalkboard scratches off each item from the list until all of them are collected.

At this point, everything kicks into high gear. By now, you’ve fortified the warehouse, a countdown timer is ticking away and you’ve conserved as much ammo as you can. Your buddies are fanned out across the floor, taking up various positions and waiting for the inevitable.

The shotgun is your best option for defense.

It happens quickly.

The zombie master suddenly receives undead spawn points all around the warehouse. With a few clicks of a button, he can send literally dozens upon dozens of shamblers, banshees, hulks and drifters upon the survivors. The ceiling explodes inwards, raining undead monsters.

“Head for the catwalks!” someone screams over his microphone.

Two newbie players near the doors are instantly overrun, forgetting their lack of weapons and feebly punching the menacing hulk zombies until they are hurled across the room in tatters. A brave, self-sacrificing soul runs to an explosive barrel with his last bullet, blowing himself and several of the walking dead into the next world from whence they came. The survivors head upstairs, firing round after round into the seething mass of rotting bodies below, desperately trying to keep the horde at bay…

See, this is why people rave about this mod.

The buildup is agonizingly slow. Dying early means having to sit around and wait ages for a new match to begin. The controls are shoddy. The maps are woefully limited. The models are merely modified versions of preexisting Half-Life 2 materials. Everything in it screams “early beta” and lacks the polish and total immersion of Natural Selection or Iron Grip.

But, it also doesn’t matter.

As I watched hundreds of my drones swarming upon the last few survivors, I experienced an evil sense of hilarity I hadn’t felt since playing Dungeon Keeper back during junior high. When I ran forward into the zombie onslaught and started beating them with my sledgehammer, trying in vain to draw attention away from the others, any negative thoughts about playing this mod vanished.

Zombie Master is a game that draws you in slowly, reaches a safe plateau, then shakes your entire gameplay experience to the core in its last moments. The future success of the mod depends on its’ developers building greater and more complex levels—some set in an overrun cityscape would be a definite plus—but for the time being, this is a great work in progress.

(+) Great sense of atmosphere and genuinely exciting gameplay.
(+) Makes good use of the zombie genre for a change.
(+) Objective based gameplay, multiple unit types, optional traps and tight map design allows for highly different strategies and experiences.

(-) General early beta bugs.
(-) Unintuitive zombie master controls.
(-) Long wait times if killed early in a match.
(-) Some will be turned off by not always getting a gun while playing.