Post by SPN on Oct 2, 2011 4:58:10 GMT -5
More like Dead Bored.
Wow, I can't believe it's been over a year since I reviewed anything. So lets kick it off with what I believe to be my first game review.... I think?
So Dead Horde is a top down zombie shooter set in the magic world of invisible walls and frustrating game design. So you are an army man without a name, back story, or personality stuck in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. As with every other zombie game ever made you are inexplicably immune to the zombie virus possibly because it's the only real way to make the game last longer than 12 seconds. Anyways, the whole world has gone to shit, zombies killed everyone, they came back as zombies, and now you have to re-kill them because everyone else is too fucking inept to dress themselves much less fight of a horde of zombies. That last comment wasn't without meaning, there are only 5 kinds of zombies I've run into thus far and they go as follows.
The Zombies:
Running zombie in reflective vest
Running shirtless zombie
Fat shirtless zombie
Bigger shirtless zombie
and
Bigger jumping shirtless zombie
The running zombies are pretty much target practice when they arn't coming at you in mass groups. The fat zombies are pretty much the fat zombies from Left 4 Dead only instead of just being a minor annoyance when they vomit on you, they do a fuck load of damage. The bigger zombies take a few more bullets and are target practice most of the time. The jumping zombies are easy to deal with when not bugging the fuck out. Speaking of bugging out it's time for the game play
Game play:
The game play is your basic WASD, controls with your mouse being how aim at shit you want to kill. For the most part the game runs pretty smooth with the controls up until you find yourself trying to out run a fat mother fucker while reloading but you can't take your finger off any of the move keys in fear of being killed in 2 seconds flat. The game runs like that one fat kid in your gym class, that being very slow. 90% of the time the game seems to chug away due to it's inability to handle itself running at an incredibly slow rate causing all of the fast pace action of the game to simmer down to shooting fish in a barrel, only you're too busy looking at butterflies to fucking react to any of your controls. Outside of the controls the game is riddled with more bugs than a $5 hooker. The fat zombies don't have to be anywhere near you for their vomit attack to hurt you. Granades sometimes don't go where you want them to, the weapon shop bugs up and the gun selection keeps spinning out of control, zombies spawn inside the side of buses and cars rendering them useless and fucking frustrating to find the perfect angle to shoot them, because you have to clear the area to advance. Speaking of which, who the fuck is controling all these gates?
This is getting a little long so lets just cut to the point
The Good bits:
The game gives what it promises, hordes of dead people. They even include what I like to call "Shit is about to get real" music that play before they pile on the waves of undead on you. Although sometimes it seems to oversell itself with the music followed by three shirtless running zombies.
There are a variety of weapons and granades, all of which can be upgraded with money you find lying around and by killing zombies, once again proving that zombie killing is the most ridiculously overpaid job ever. I don't even know why you need money. You're not buying anything from anyone so why not just take it.
The upgrades really help this storyless mess of a game progress for the most part, although some of the weapons are a pile a wasted time and bull shit and your better off just using your basic assult rifle
The crow sounds are amazingly realistic and atmospheric... every other sound is more annoying than a fucking two headed woman.
The Bad bits:
So all in all this game is pretty much a rip off of the amazing Dead Nation on the PS3, if you took all the fun out of it, and Dead Nation was made on an etch-a-sketch
One things Dead Nation had that was amazing was a melee attack, and while it was over powered, it was a great additon to the game to be able to cut any zombie who got too close in half. However if F.E.A.R taught us anything it's that as soon as you're given 1 hit ko melee attacks all guns are rendered usless. I feel if Dead Horde could have used this and tweeked it a little, it could have been improved a great amount.
One thing Dead Horde is lacking is an armour system. Dead Nation's armour system was a joke and I feel like if any other top down zombie shooter ever wants to out do it, they really need to improve this aspect.
Dead Horde looks like it should have a very interactive world, but it really doesn't. You can't shoot cars to make them explode like in Dead Nation, there are invisible walls everywhere. It really limits where you can go. In a number of cases there are warehouses with wide open doors, but you can only enter the ones with no roof covering it. It's not that hard to make a roof fade away when you enter a building, fucking Diablo did it, so it's not fucking rocket science.
There are parts of the game where you drive a big army hummer mowing down zombies along the way, which sounds amazing until you realize it handles like all the wheels are put on sideways and you're really better off driving as slow as possible.
Some of the camera work is shit. It gets horribly shakey and support beams for bridges get in the way, it's just a huge cluster fuck sometimes
As I already stated, if there is too much going on, like a car on fire or rain, the game tends to lag like you're trying to play Starcraft on dial-up
You have a flashlight that you can turn on and off. Other than attracting zombies I have not found any actual use for every having it on.
Overall:
Overall, I can't say I not having fun playing Dead Horde, I mean it's only about 8 levels long and I'm on the 7th level and I've already burned about 4 hours. Although 90% of my motivation is to beat it so I never have to touch it again and possibly justify the $9 I spent on it. People praise it for it's difficulty, but I find that unjustified when it's normally bugs in the game causing it to be hard. Others scorn it for it's horrible programing and pretty much theft of Dead Nation, and I can't completely disagree.
6/10 Thanks to Little Caesars hot-and-ready pizza, it's not the worst thing I've ever spend $9 on.
Wow, I can't believe it's been over a year since I reviewed anything. So lets kick it off with what I believe to be my first game review.... I think?
So Dead Horde is a top down zombie shooter set in the magic world of invisible walls and frustrating game design. So you are an army man without a name, back story, or personality stuck in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. As with every other zombie game ever made you are inexplicably immune to the zombie virus possibly because it's the only real way to make the game last longer than 12 seconds. Anyways, the whole world has gone to shit, zombies killed everyone, they came back as zombies, and now you have to re-kill them because everyone else is too fucking inept to dress themselves much less fight of a horde of zombies. That last comment wasn't without meaning, there are only 5 kinds of zombies I've run into thus far and they go as follows.
The Zombies:
Running zombie in reflective vest
Running shirtless zombie
Fat shirtless zombie
Bigger shirtless zombie
and
Bigger jumping shirtless zombie
The running zombies are pretty much target practice when they arn't coming at you in mass groups. The fat zombies are pretty much the fat zombies from Left 4 Dead only instead of just being a minor annoyance when they vomit on you, they do a fuck load of damage. The bigger zombies take a few more bullets and are target practice most of the time. The jumping zombies are easy to deal with when not bugging the fuck out. Speaking of bugging out it's time for the game play
Game play:
The game play is your basic WASD, controls with your mouse being how aim at shit you want to kill. For the most part the game runs pretty smooth with the controls up until you find yourself trying to out run a fat mother fucker while reloading but you can't take your finger off any of the move keys in fear of being killed in 2 seconds flat. The game runs like that one fat kid in your gym class, that being very slow. 90% of the time the game seems to chug away due to it's inability to handle itself running at an incredibly slow rate causing all of the fast pace action of the game to simmer down to shooting fish in a barrel, only you're too busy looking at butterflies to fucking react to any of your controls. Outside of the controls the game is riddled with more bugs than a $5 hooker. The fat zombies don't have to be anywhere near you for their vomit attack to hurt you. Granades sometimes don't go where you want them to, the weapon shop bugs up and the gun selection keeps spinning out of control, zombies spawn inside the side of buses and cars rendering them useless and fucking frustrating to find the perfect angle to shoot them, because you have to clear the area to advance. Speaking of which, who the fuck is controling all these gates?
This is getting a little long so lets just cut to the point
The Good bits:
The game gives what it promises, hordes of dead people. They even include what I like to call "Shit is about to get real" music that play before they pile on the waves of undead on you. Although sometimes it seems to oversell itself with the music followed by three shirtless running zombies.
There are a variety of weapons and granades, all of which can be upgraded with money you find lying around and by killing zombies, once again proving that zombie killing is the most ridiculously overpaid job ever. I don't even know why you need money. You're not buying anything from anyone so why not just take it.
The upgrades really help this storyless mess of a game progress for the most part, although some of the weapons are a pile a wasted time and bull shit and your better off just using your basic assult rifle
The crow sounds are amazingly realistic and atmospheric... every other sound is more annoying than a fucking two headed woman.
The Bad bits:
So all in all this game is pretty much a rip off of the amazing Dead Nation on the PS3, if you took all the fun out of it, and Dead Nation was made on an etch-a-sketch
One things Dead Nation had that was amazing was a melee attack, and while it was over powered, it was a great additon to the game to be able to cut any zombie who got too close in half. However if F.E.A.R taught us anything it's that as soon as you're given 1 hit ko melee attacks all guns are rendered usless. I feel if Dead Horde could have used this and tweeked it a little, it could have been improved a great amount.
One thing Dead Horde is lacking is an armour system. Dead Nation's armour system was a joke and I feel like if any other top down zombie shooter ever wants to out do it, they really need to improve this aspect.
Dead Horde looks like it should have a very interactive world, but it really doesn't. You can't shoot cars to make them explode like in Dead Nation, there are invisible walls everywhere. It really limits where you can go. In a number of cases there are warehouses with wide open doors, but you can only enter the ones with no roof covering it. It's not that hard to make a roof fade away when you enter a building, fucking Diablo did it, so it's not fucking rocket science.
There are parts of the game where you drive a big army hummer mowing down zombies along the way, which sounds amazing until you realize it handles like all the wheels are put on sideways and you're really better off driving as slow as possible.
Some of the camera work is shit. It gets horribly shakey and support beams for bridges get in the way, it's just a huge cluster fuck sometimes
As I already stated, if there is too much going on, like a car on fire or rain, the game tends to lag like you're trying to play Starcraft on dial-up
You have a flashlight that you can turn on and off. Other than attracting zombies I have not found any actual use for every having it on.
Overall:
Overall, I can't say I not having fun playing Dead Horde, I mean it's only about 8 levels long and I'm on the 7th level and I've already burned about 4 hours. Although 90% of my motivation is to beat it so I never have to touch it again and possibly justify the $9 I spent on it. People praise it for it's difficulty, but I find that unjustified when it's normally bugs in the game causing it to be hard. Others scorn it for it's horrible programing and pretty much theft of Dead Nation, and I can't completely disagree.
6/10 Thanks to Little Caesars hot-and-ready pizza, it's not the worst thing I've ever spend $9 on.