Zombies Ate My Neighbo(u)rs

NeighboUrs, thank you very much.

It's hard to take a horror concept seriously when you've a back history of campy, cheesy, badly-made movies that don't really play on people's fears but instead, simply become risible with the low budget special effects, the poor acting and the god-awful monster suit some poor sod has to wear. So what course of action can one take with such things? Quite simple, lampoon the whole thing, make fun of it and create a parody of the whole situation. That is exactly what Zombies Ate My Neighbours is all about. Take the old clichés of the film industry, throw them all together into a game and you'll come up with basically this, an interesting take on the top-down, 8-way shooter from Konami.

Chilling out by the pool, don't expect this to be safe later on.

Take your two kooky kids (or one nut job and likely his hot sister/unlikely friend, still playing on the bad B-Movies situations here) who realise there's monsters invading their place. Armed with the trusty water pistol, they're going to take on the monsters, the zombies, the werewolves, the blobs, plants, clones, hockey-mask-wearing-chainsaw guys, demonic dolls, giant ants, Martians, mad scientists, Frankenstein's Monsters and Dracula just to name a FEW of the creatures you'll find in this.

The variety and difference in levels is huge, but keeps the game fresh.

Your main objective, is to find all the innocents in the level and then exit through the magic exit (it just appears where you are...) without all of your innocents dying off. If you lose them all, game over right there and then regardless of the lives you have left. On some levels you're GOING to lose people and just hope you're not starting with just one person. In other levels you'd better be REAL quick on the task before some change into monsters and others are outright killed by the zombie you can see walking towards them while you're on the other side of a wall. A touch of unfairness in there but you CAN win some people back if you get sufficient scores during the levels. So a little bit of balance there.

Silverware for a one hit kill, nearly every monster has a weakness.

There's a LOT going on in this game. For a start, there's plenty of levels, plenty of items and plenty of weapons. Though in some ways there's TOO many. Aside from SOME of the monsters I named at the top and some more I just recalled, Mushroom people, Fish men, there's a lot of items to be found and used ranging from keys (more about that in a moment), inflatable clowns (decoys), Pandora's Box (the Big Weapon of the game, does a LOT of damage but rare), health packs, potions to turn you into an invincible monster, or a ghost, or random ones that can turn you into a zombie and kill the other player and innocents. Weapons range from water pistol, to soda can (grenade effectively), bazooka (great for blowing down walls), weed-whacker, tomatoes, plates, cutlery (silver... great for werewolves), ice-lollies, fire extinguishers (freezes some enemies, kills fire ones), bubble guns (great against ants) and many more including secret bonus ones.

It's the Blob! Where's Steve McQueen when you need him?

Therein, lies a problem... You've only one way to navigate through each list, with one button for each list taking you to the next weapon and not going backwards until you reach the end and come back to the start. So if you go past the weapon or item you're looking for, tough shit, you're going back through that list again. Not so great when you've rampaging monsters running after you, or, god forbid, need a health pack as you're on the last sliver of health.

Yes he made those holes, yes he killed the innocent, yes he's hard to kill.

Those aspects, as well as the unfairness of losing innocents to monster attacks you either can't see or they turn into monsters (nice going Konami, that's a half-foot floppy dickmove to the face...) some of the maps have wonderful little things called doors. These doors require either a key, being a monster to punch it (and damaged walls) down, or a bazooka to blow it apart. Unless it's a skull door, in which you either have a skull key or you're not getting in. Some skull keys can be found in hideaways, some in secret places (need a bazooka and knowledge of it BEING there) and some are on bosses. Such as the giant baby... Moves fast, flattens you and gives you NO chance to move once hit until you're standing up again, so it can railroad you to death it wanted. It also flattens innocents which then fucks your game up.

Either for fights like this or getting through lots of walls, monster potions are helpful.

The levels themselves however are bright, varied and intriguing. There's a few running themes in the levels, you've your backyard suburbia, malls, factories, hedge mazes (with those hockey guys... you either know what I'm talking about or you'll learn quickly to fear them), swamps, football fields, pyramids, castles (usually with vampires and/or Frankenstein's monster, or worse, a BIG boss), with some levels set in the daytime, some in the night-time. The music accompanying the levels ranges from the chirpy upbeat numbers that bounce jauntily along, to the sombre and ploddingly paced themes that would accompany a long hard slog ahead, to the downright fear inducing which usually goes along with any level that's got Hockey Mask guys. And then there's the giant baby music, which just sounds hilarious and would be were it not for the fact you've a giant baby with which to contend.

I'm the one in the far bottom-left.... maybe...

It's a long game, it's a hard game and in many places it becomes unfair and unwinnable. But if you're lucky, and you're careful, you can get through this but good luck trying to get to the real bosses and even more luck to you if you're heading for the secret bonus levels. Grab some codes off the internet or add in some Action Replay stuff and you'll still find this a tough one to crack. But still worth a good long look if only for the references and overall fun this game initially gives you before it ramps up the difficulty until it's leaning over you and coming down like a tonne of bricks.

Rage

Now for a more modern, more recent, First Person Shooter. ID software seems to fall into a trap of their own making in which each game they make looks nice, looks lovely in fact, is developed on a very impressive engine (aesthetically impressive at least) and falls down with the game in so far as plot/story and the delivery of which. Doom was a wonderful little game with atmospheric delivery, doom 2 was very similar and became and much more action orientated game with cut scenes/text plots. Quake was more of the same but in full 3D mapping and modelling. Quake 2 had the same with more detail and animations in models; Quake 3 was a fast and fluid multiplayer experience of dropping the single-player mode in favour of bots in multiplayer. Doom 3 was a wonderful experience in a technical engine but still falling flat with the delivery of storyline and plot development. Quake 4 was a more open Doom 3. I'm Not going to touch Daikatana, for now... I'll suffer that one another time.

So what's RAGE got to offer? More of the same. But at least there's an attempt at doing something with some plot beyond "Turn up and shoot stuff until everything's dead". Doesn't sound like fun but works well in Doom and Quake, in this case there's more than that available to everyone playing.

The game kicks off with you, Captain Anonymous, unrecognised regenerating hit-point wonder with an affinity for carrying lots of weapons and ammo types, making things from scrap (if you've the blueprints) and mad driver extraordinaire from buggies to quad bikes, cars and more, including able to operate guns, rockets/missiles and weapons from the future (by your perspective). The Buck Rogers of this game, waking up in the future and being attacked by assholes and then in turned saved by John Goodman. (Genuine Celebrity Voice).

With Mr Goodman's guidance, he'll help you as long as you go and slaughter locations filled with fuck-heads. John kills 2 mutants and in exchange for helping you, he wants you to (as a one man army) kill an entire tower block of ass-hats with a crusty old pistol and some of those bladed boomerangs from Mad Max 2. It's in this first area that a rather interesting element of the game comes to the fore in the form of your regeneration and health. Not only do you have the red-mist of damage descending over your screen, but in being taken down, you can force your heart to restart itself with a small mini-game of push the analogues in the right place, then hitting a button. The more you get right, the higher the health regeneration will be and the more powerful the output, meaning you can electrocute people with your own personal defibrillation kit.

After a while it'll regenerate sufficiently enough to let you do it again. Though oddly, getting blown up with a rocket sometimes bypasses this. But a shotgun round to the face won't bypass the heart restart. At the risk of becoming far more cardiologically focused, I'm going to move on to the game again.

The first act of the game is John Goodman asking you for help, getting you new weapons, medical supplies and opening up routes and access points where everything is very 'by the numbers' in the form of gaming, go to point a, do mission, go to point b, do mission, go to hub b and do missions c and d, get cards, shoot guys with bad accents in the face. It's not until the big breakthrough into the 2nd area that the game opens up a little more (not entirely free range but sufficient enough a step up from Doom games) where players can visit a lot of locations and do very little until they're supposed to be there on specific missions.

Eventually you'll become saviour of a town, move on to another town, save that one too and then go fight the big bad group that has a lot of futuristic tech and beat them at their own game. In the meantime you'll get to play an odd form of cards akin to battle cards, racing cars and upgrading cars (limited options in the form of engines, wheels, armour etc, and very limited in that there's an obvious BEST to have and you'll just use that), stab your own fingers in reflex games, play duelling banjos and do a few missions consisting of turn up to a place and kill dudes. One particular mission is to turn up to a place, grab the things someone stole and kill everyone, the mission provider doesn't even want those things back and you can sell them. So basically you turn up to slaughter a load of people on the whim of some guy who could easily have said that inside location X is a Thing that was stolen.

Great. Freedom to kill based on generic bullshit. But at least it's more of a reason than some other games provide.

The driving in the game is simply a means to get from one location to another because doing it by foot will get you killed quickly when the first cars turn up and either run you over or cheese grate you out of existence quickly and regenerating will get you stomped shortly after again. Though at one point I was successful in running myself over and having to regenerate back into my own car, score 1 for Twit Of The Year. There are races against other players in the online mode or races against the AI which thankfully doesn't do the whole rubber band difficulty thing and if you're a big distance ahead, you'll STAY a big distance ahead unless you just stop still like a prick. All of which gains you tickets to buy more things so you're forced to win races if you want upgrades and forced even more to win races to progress the plot at various points too.

This is never fun. "You must do this before you can kill more dudes!" makes me wonder why there isn't a response of "....fuck off" and then smacking him over the head and stealing all the fun toys before driving off into the sunset laughing like a nutcase.

There's an odd duality in the game too, there's this fun side of the game that's rather jumpy and fun, light hearted despite being about killing things mercilessly and then there's the darker more foreboding side of having to wander through derelict cities and being attacked by the dying remnants of the world's infected/mutated individuals. Some of the settings and scenery really conveys the sense of depression and hopelessness while you're scavenging through a dead city. Given that until a few moments ago you were running around a town pissing off the Mayor and playing games of "my card kills your card", it's rather a sudden twist and the shock can come a little too suddenly, breaking you out of the atmosphere and plunging you into another one.

In fact that's this game, two halves that are one side light and peppy despite the apocalypse and the other just full of doom, gloom and depression and the switch between the two is an express elevator to hell. Almost immediate switches with little build up between and as the game goes on, becoming further and further apart from each other with the darker side of the game taking almost the forefront until you're saving the day up to the cliff-hanger that few will expect to happen.

Yes it ends on NO closure at all. Pods open, you're stood atop a light-barrier tower and ... that's it. No final boss, just a final gauntlet. I'm tired of seeing shit like this in games, where designers couldn't find a suitable ending point so they just don't use one. It's annoying. When the first few games did it, it became edgy, but when it becomes the standard it becomes fucking stupid and unfulfilling. Try cooking a meal, the best meal you'll ever taste, you get to sample the ingredients, slap it in the oven and cook it to the point you open the oven, smell the finished dish and slice it perfectly to place onto a plate and then you leave the shop after paying and not eating it. That's how these kinds of endings feel. Anticlimactic and I really shouldn't write a review just before dinner.

The game looks impressive, not great because we've gone the route of the doomed world in brown and grey, which is a great reason to NOT throw in lush green fields, flowers bursting into colour and instead pretend everything is doom and gloom and slap a few brown filters atop the lenses to make it murky and dank. Movement in the game seems to suffer the Doom experience of feeling like you're running slightly too fast but that could just be down to not having faster movement in other recent FPS games, I'm not going to criticise there on being different, it just takes a little period of adjustment.

Co-operative mode is entirely disjointed from the game, which is disappointing, it'd be nice to run through the game with a colleague/partner but instead you get a series of 'legends' about events that happened before the proper game takes place. Rather than having to bring in experience or setups from the players, the level itself determines the weapon load out, and inventory load out (and places things in different places on the quickslots... Left on D-Pad will be bandages in one level and sentry bots on another, with similar for the weapons too!). Players will have to work together to kill lots of dudes and score points and multipliers to boost themselves up onto higher echelons of video game scoring.

I'd rather have had a colleague with me in the main game, because once the levels are over, there's only the harder difficulty to try and that's it. Co-Op done, dusted, finished and completed. Thanks for playing, sod off, now drive cars at each other for hours. It's a lacklustre addition and while there is the possibility of using DLC I shouldn't have to wait for someone to add it when they feel the need to later on, just so I can get the full experience once someone gets off their fat arse and types a few keys on a keyboard.

I'm done here, now to drive off into the sunset, laughing... for some reason...

Strife

Strife is one of those games that was forced into a situation without realising it. The promise and prospect behind the game is let down mainly by the limitations of the engine in which it was made. Strife is one of the last games made commercially on the Doom engine and it pulls out all the stops to become something far more than just another first person shooter.

The premise is simple, Earth fucked itself up, life got shit and then a meteor hits to really slam a great fat throbbing fuck-you into humanities throat and blow it's alien invasion load down its throat for years to come. You are someone growing up in the aftermath of all this with humans living under a pseudo cyborg-cum-religious order that are steadily offering stability and enslavement in the same sentence. Humans are steadily being oppressed and the ruling factions are locked in an inner conflict of "entities" that are trying to outdo each other and defeat each other to rule over everything by themselves. Naturally, you'll have to take down each of these "entities" and in doing so you gain access to more and more pieces of a weapon that does huge damage but drains your health when you fire it.

The story unfolds with you joining the resistance, getting roped into other plots and plans and trying to determine who to believe and follow while being mindful of back-stabbed by other key players in the grand plot. Eventually leading armies to conquer other opponents and taking control of the resistance, before duking it out with the big nasties of the game, and some of the larger and more powerful opponents, that Strife has to offer. Various towns and locations initially will be friendly and accept trade though with enough hunting around inside other locations, you can acquire enough weaponry and ammo without the need to go the whole barter route.

The game can glitch up big time and if you set yourself on a course, backtracking upon yourself (i.e. realising two characters are about to fuck things up, you'll have to side with one, but if you go midway through that storyline and then opt to kill the other, you'll end up stuck with nothing to do and no progression), may cause issues the game hadn't been programmed to anticipate. A huge mood killer in a game with only one save slot and auto saving will cause everything to fall apart if you decide you don't like which new direction the game is going.

As a new arrival you're given a dagger/blade fist and that's it while someone is about to kill you for being you. What's not apparent straight off is that this game can't be played like doom. You can't run around killing everyone as you'll trigger alarms. Which stops the game from letting you trade and function, the first person you meet is going to kill you if you don't kill them, which is the wrong tone with which to start this game as playing on that line will just have unlimited enemies spawning in until you're brown bread. Likewise, some missions are designed to be traps and if you save along those missions and go the wrong route about it, you'll never be able to progress even if you escape the death-trap.

IF you can look past these bugs, you'll find there's a rich environment, carefully and in many cases, wonderfully designed areas that really do the most with the doom engine, a full inventory of items to help the player along and a fair selection of weapons with which to get the job done. In some cases you're planting rocks to blow up force fields, fighting giant mechs, infiltrating various dungeons for prisoners to save, fighting mechs... and fighting clouds of eyeballs that launch lightning... Ok so the variation isn't great and some of the opponents you'll fight are hugely overpowered compared to the things you as a player can do.

Engine wise, it's more in common with Hexen in that it utilises a hub system and quite an expansive one at that. There are a few quick movements and teleports but otherwise you'll find yourself running through a large part of levels with newer opponents and enemies in your quest to get to the bottom of the invasion, stop the plans and force back the alien invasion. You'll find yourself running from one area to another, through missions based around that area, then through a channel-level to get to another hub with more quests to do there. Thankfully the HQ moves depending on the point of the storyline you're in so there's less running about to do, though this breaks down when realising that there's teleports put in to move you around and leaves you wondering why they didn't just use them from the start.

Sadly, the levels do become less plot driven and less interactive as the game progresses, compared to the first few levels where you'll meet and encounter people, trade items with them or threaten them for answers, do various missions and submissions before the game soon becomes, "Hi, go to point B, kill dickface C, come back" upon which you get "umm... now go to point D as it's really important, then kill G go to H kill P eat J and take a dump on Y" and you're just running through landscapes killing everything. Especially jarring when you consider that earlier levels had a large focus on stealth, not alerting people to your presence and making silent kills rather than alerting the guards. In fact in some levels you're even given the opportunity to dress up and re-stealth the mission from there on; though some levels also have a compulsory alarm sector you have to walk over. You could run through and kill everything with a gun, but you could try harder to not have to.

But then that defeats the point, it's too difficult in places to try the stealth route that ends up with you going murder-death-kill spree on everything.

It's as if the game can't make up its mind as to what it wants to be and then just decides to say bollocks and become a generic shooter. Which is a shame as the potential here was fantastic. The first half of the game, up until the death of the Programmer, is very plot driven. The levels are very well designed and you get the sense and possibly the feel of actually doing something towards helping to overthrow a controlling faction. The push towards attacking the enemy base is done with the support of other rebels, making it rather surprising the first time you see it, given the previous games hadn't had things like this in Doom, Doom2 etc (but had in Marathon), to see AI supporting you was quite the shock. Though they're shit at actually getting to the boss and help in no way at all.

Ignoring the dullness of the storyline towards the end, the game is rather expansive and harder to gauge on the account of hubs changing and levels adjusting as you progress through the game. Of the 31 maps, some of those are hub levels, some are just missions stemming from the hubs, and a few are changed for other maps depending upon the plot, such as the programmers lair being a point of destruction and battle, then becoming a HQ for the rebellion and looking like it's been torn apart through warzones while the old HQ is left very empty even going as far as to remove all the parts of the level that resembled storage crates and boxes. It's a very unique aspect and the surprising attention to detail is impressive to realise. IF it's realised at all.

That said, the game does take the doom engine into a much larger field than just grab guns and ammo. There's a whole host of items you can collect from suits and hazmat, health packs and targeters, gold for trading, quest items and so on. Some of which are really useful while others are just there because someone thought "let's put that in" and someone sadly, agreed. It does make for a rather redundant system in places but it also allows more choice on the player's part rather than just running over an item and automatically picking it up AND using it. Given that in some levels, hazmat suits are used to avoid poisonous areas found IN that level, stealth suits however can be used later in the game assuming you're not up against enemies that can negate the effects. (Read: Most of them by that point)

There are problems with the game, it can be very hard to work out where to go in a level and the waypoint guidance only informs you with written instructions which can be misunderstood or misleading. However it does make you explore things more thoroughly and when you check the map you'll start to identify where somewhere has not been seen or explored properly, at very few times will it be a case of "hit all switches" to progress but when it does, it reeks of the old Doom style of gaming that Strife has tried hard to distance itself from, then falls back to it with enough force to kill any engrossing sensations you might have had.

Having said that, it is rather surprising to hear a full audio accompaniment for the entire game with everyone's speech, which can get a little annoying when your built in ear-piece squawks off your mission like a parrot needing its head shoved up its arse, though given the scope of the game and effort put into the production, there's evidence of a LOT of work involved in taking something like the Doom engine and putting up and beyond expectations, while still a flawed piece of work, those with a keen eye on Doom and its engine's limits, will respect the work gone into this.

Otherwise it's an RPG that can be rather unforgiving and have a case of some of the most nasty traps of all time where players will need to start over by making a wrong choice at a wrong time, even as far as quite late into the game.