By Jim Rossignol on October 26th, 2009 at 5:36 pm.
Some rather juddery in-game footage from Fort Zombie has been released by publishers Paradox Interactive, and you can check it out below. We talked to Kerberos, the creators of the forthcoming zombie action-RPG (and 4X classive Sword Of The Stars before that), about their plans in this brains-filled interview. The game will apparently be available on digital distribution portals on October 30th, for just $10.
EDIT: Devs release another video!
Basically, this was the original one from Paradox, which is somewhat iffy quality…
Which lead to Kerberos releasing a new video, which isn’t as shonky.
Hurrah for the internet!
To be honest, this looks pretty shitty. I expected something a bit cooler after their first announcement.
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Who in god’s name approved this project to go forwards?
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Good lord, they would have gotten more sales with just the name and the excellent price. That video didn’t make me like it at all.
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I’m sorry it may be a good idea, but that looks like a horrible implementation.
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Whatever happened to “gameplay before graphics”? It’s a budget title – did you complain about Hinterland having bad graphics as well?
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Nobody said anything about the graphics…
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Yeah, seconded. This game looks like shit, and the graphics are not what I’m talking about (though admittedly they look like shit too).
It’s too bad because after reading the initial interview I had been looking forward to this.
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Um… hate to be negative, but this needs more work I think; and putting out a promo video recorded with ridiculous lag was probably not the best idea.
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represents actual framerate?
if this was like mount & blade but zombified or something, it would be awesome
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I’d love to charge through a zombie horde on horseback, skewering them with a lance or bashing in their BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS with a mace.
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A sloppy presentation that does not awaken any interest in the game whatsoever. Hopefully the developers will be able to learn from their mistakes and re-try harder instead of instantly going down..
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I’m afraid to say it looks like a low-poly zombie slideshow.
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Woah woah woah — are you being facetious? Gameplay before graphics? What gameplay? It’s a slideshow, and looks unplayable, period.
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Wow, that is NOT how you make a trailer.
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It looks like hastily recorded footage – the kind that you get when your video recording app doesn’t exactly agree with the game engine, resulting in a crawling framerate. I’ve encountered that problem recording stuff before.
Now, if the actual game looks like that in motion, that’s terrible, but it’s pretty dumb to pass judgement on the game based on this.
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For a zombie game, that trailer was a complete and utter shambles. :P
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Pfffffffffffft =-P
Good job I read that before I started eating my curry, otherwise I would have sprayed that over my new screen. x-D
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Ok, I seriously thought this was some kind of bog-standard youtube fan video or something. I can’t believe a studio would release that as a trailer! Still, apart from the graphics (which look absoloutley horrendous) the only problem i could see was aiming/shooting – it looked tremendously awkward. But maybe it’s a good game. I tend to look past graphics so maybe it has good gameplay.
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Yeah, it reminded me of some kind of old school SWG handling mixed with some twitch-based combat. It almost felt browser based the way they had to basically click an arrow directly over their enemy to shoot them.
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A zombie survival horror game made with the Stalker engine would be cool.
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Gameplay video with framerate abotu 2FPS needs to be released…
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Hinterland sucked pretty badly you know.
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Hinterland severely lacks longevity, isn’t a quarter as good as Children of the Nile, has nothing of the ‘living village’ experience that they promised, but what was left (Diablo-Lite) plays fairly smooth. From what I can tell, Fort Zombie at least has more ambition, but god that game-play looks rough.
On the other hand– 10$ for even a meh zombie game, so long as it’s /stable/, isn’t bad. Personally I wouldn’t pay 10$ just to play the action I just saw, or even free, but if there’s a superb meta-game attached it would be quite worthwhile, or at least better / cheaper than Hinterlands was.
If I felt fair judging it based on one video, I’d give it a thumbs down … But I said the same thing about Left 4 Dead. (albeit, L4D was by chance delayed significantly afterward and polished up after)
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it’s the sword of the stars developer so I’ll give them the benefit of doubt, but that trailer was pretty bad.
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SotS is awesome, truly. But this trailer is bad, very bad.
I’m honestly going to pretend I didn’t see his and wait for a demo, I trust Kerberos to produce quality games even if they apparently have wild animals managing the marketing.
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Yea, SotS is fantastic. But this just looks horrible
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Kerberos has a gigantic line of credit with me in light of Sword of the Stars (especially after Murder of Crows and Argos Naval Yard), so I’m content to give them any benefit of the doubt I can.
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Even if the framerate in that video was not representative of the actual game, that control scheme looks like hell. They couldn’t have just made it standard TPS?
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seems fine. looks like right mouse button to camera around and otherwise the cursor is free.
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the horror… the horror….
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Gosh darn it!
A really great idea but if you can’t afford a good 3d engine then do not use a 3d engine. Looks worse than Bonetown.
At first I was really upset that this was the ex-Obsidian guys game (Double Bear). But as it’s not I’m not too let down. Though I will go back to playing Real Time Settler
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7070
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Oh god, why can’t there be a professional game that plays like Real Time Settler? It’s so buggy and frustrating, yet it’s one of my favourite things to play at the moment.
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Darn it! Lost the end of my post.
I was going to say that I hope the Double Bear game turns out like a polished Real Time Settler with my party leading a band of followers as we try to reach safety and hole up for the night. There’s huge potential there and I would love to see some one have a pop at it in a purpose built engine rather than a cobbled together mod.
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I bought Zombie Bowl-O-Rama today, so that should be my zombie fix for a while… I’ts rather good actually, it’s from MumboJumbo I think, they created some nice bowling games. In parts it’s much better than the Elf Bowling 7 1/7: The Last Insult (graphics, music, levels..), but a bit worse in other parts (REALLY stupid AI, nearly no story in between matches, logic (zombies bowling against You smashing zombies..well..)). But it’s fun so far.
Up for grabs over at Big Fish Games (7 dollars) or Steam
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I’m fourthing the “Kerberos has done good by me before so I’ll overlook this” sentiment.
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I’m “fifthing” it. I don’t think this trailer faithfully represents the actual game.
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Terrible trailer aside, I can’t wrap my head around why they went with a 3rd person over-the-shoulder shooter that has controls like an RTS.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have WASD and mouse look rather than a free mouse and click to move? I was really excited about this game until I saw this.
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It’s not controlled like an RTS. It’s TPS with free-aim instead of torso-rotate-aim – a PC control scheme instead a gamepad control scheme.
Infact, here’s what the game actually looks like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12H9tH-7Bbw
That’s from the devs, instead of the publisher who put out those jaggy stumbly trailers for whatever reason.
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Gotcha. That makes more sense – particularly in light of the second video. Watching the guy trying to get through the doorway in the beginning of the first video made it look as though you had to click to move… yikes!
Thanks for the clarification.
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I’ve always wanted to a play a zombie survival scavenging game and this looks to be very interesting. The video however makes it very cumbersome looking. I don’t mind rpg stats but just shooting looks horribly awkward. I’ll wait to see what people have to say about it first.
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Well. The video is very bad, and uninsping. the control setup feels like one of these horrible things you see in “adventure games”, for something with zombies… ..
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PS: I’d be REALLY glad for another Stubbs: The Zombie…it was sooo much fun
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I was really hyped about the concept for this game… what a shame it looks terrible. I wasn’t expecting (nor does it need) top end graphics… however, I do expect a working engine.
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Eee gads, that video is worse than that Duke Nukem trailer…
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Am I the only one who thinks that that trailer was pure gold? I mean, it’s not like they were putting it up as a serious trailer, clearly they were looking for laughs.
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And it got laughs, all right. But I was laughing at them, not with them. I’ll check out the demo for sure, but this does not look encouraging. For $10 I don’t expect much, but I can’t imagine what they were playing it on to get those framerates with those graphics.
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Oh ‘eck, they can jog and they can use guns. That’s like the scariest shit ever, right there.
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I still have a feeling that the video was just miscaptured video. The crawling framerate suggests an incompatible recording app more than anything.
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Oh God I laughed at the Burger King drive-in zombie.
If I’d be into zombie games I’d be getting this the instant it becomes available.
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Oh god 3rd person. Why do they do that. 3rd person only works in Tomb Raider, Spyro and Grand Theft Auto.
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Man! Another on the ‘Let’s just pretend this never happened’ bandwagon, here. That was an anti-trailer.
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Oh gosh, I wish I hadn’t seen that. I can overlook low-poly poorly textured graphics, and even a hideous set of animations, but the person playing the game made it look like it controls like a drunk belligerent donkey.
Which is actually impressive in that they managed to convey that in a video.
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Awww! I’m not impressed at all, I’d rather play house of the dead.
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zombies ate their brains….
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Trailer looks great! =D
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I think this is one of the worst trailers I’ve ever seen. And what is the point of zombie game that has max. 4 zombies at the time? Alone in the Dark did that better in 1992. Trailer looks like it’s early alpha version of some game that is not going to be good when it’s ready.
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Clearly if recent trailers are anything to go by, making “live gameplay” trailers is harder than it would appear. Either that, or the people making the “gameplay” trailers are gibbering baboons who fling excrement at the controller/keyboard/mouse instead of using hands and declare it done.
Why can’t they use footage of someone who is good at the game? Or is that someone “good” at the game, and the game is so uncontrollable that facing within 180 degrees of the door you’re going through requires skill?
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Add me to the list willing to give this the benefit of the doubt. Even if it’s released in a less than ideal state, Kerberos have proven they have what it takes to hone it into an excellent experience over time.
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Apparently this video was not released by the devs.
A much, much better video can be found here:
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I’m still not sure about the shooting mechanic, but it at least looks playable!
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One of the RPS writing crew need to take that video and replace the one in the article with it.
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DomWhite: Done!
KG
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Oof. I’m still interested in trying this out, but that trailer was atrocious.
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So, that new video pretty much confirms my theory. My guess is that Paradox were trying to use Camstudio or some other freeware capture app, and it ended up freaking out the game engine. End result? Unplayable game, unwatchable video.
The new video confirms that the game has a weird interface, but it makes sense in the context of it being a defensive RPG, rather than a straight shooter. Also, little kids battling the undead. I do hope this means zombie children, too. Zombies do not discriminate. They love the brains of the old, the young, the tall the short, the thin, the fat, and every colour under the sun. Brains is just good eatin’ wherever you go.
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No Zombie kids for a story reason that won’t be quite revealed in Fort Zombie.
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I’ll be buying it just to get a look at the Northstar engine.
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Wow, the proper trailer looks infinitely better. The characters still have that blocky look to them, but the whole engine looks so much more impressive when it’s running as intended. The difference between those two trailers was really night and day.
Definite day one buy for me, for sure.
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Isn’t the town itself supposed to be randomly generated, too? That, combined with the $10 price-tag would explain why it doesn’t exactly look like a million bucks. I’ll gladly trade fancy details if it’s a different town and a different set of challenges each time.
Gameplay-wise, it pretty much sounds like a realtime, third-person version of Zafehouse, which is a pretty damn good thing in my book.
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The town is partly random, but with fixed “chunks”, so to speak. That’s what I’ve heard.
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Hurrah! Just found out Gamersgate have it up for pre-order. Hurroo! Those system requirements can’t be right, surely? A Core2Duo 6600, 2 gigs of ram and a 512 meg video card? That can’t be the minimum spec.
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the dev video is a huge improvement over that horrible first one, I still have some concerns about the controls though. That said this game definitely bears keeping an eye on.
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oh god, oh god, how I wish this game had a massive budget..
its everything ever dreamed. just the concept of a survivalist zombie game, that plays as a sandbox is brilliant. imagine this: you have to pick a house (or whatever structure you want) as a stronghold, you barricade yourself inside with the rest of the survivors, use whatever you can find to ‘upgrade’ the stronghold, and then have daily missions to go and get food, water, medicine, weapons… during the day, you roam the streets looking for survivors and supplies, during the night you fend off zombie attacks..
that + a decent storyline (say, playing as a goverment employee inflitrating a group of survivals, because a doctor travelling with them has had a massive breaktrough in a cure against the disease) and you have a game of the year winner.
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I um…hmm.
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Just realised this came out on Friday – anyone try it?
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Nobody?
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This is cool. As a gamer, I don’t find anything wrong with my parents knowing what type of game I play. Who knows,
maybe they can join me with my raids in Ulduar ^^
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this game is good , feeling very Excited
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wow gold
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