By Kieron Gillen on January 22nd, 2010 at 9:30 am.
John mentioned this last year, but we never talked about it being released. You can get it for 10 dollars, minus the five customary pence. But maybe you’ll need something to help you make you decision, either for or against it. Well, developers Exor studio have an idea which may help you. They call it a “demo” (pronounced “dem-oh”), and it basically gives you a small portion of the full game you can use to evaulate their full product. Crikey. Brilliant idea. You can get it from here or watch some moving magic pickytures below.
Bought this during the Steam sales for 2$ or something like that. Still got to install it though, too many other good games out atm.
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I too bought it in the steam christmas sale just for the hell of it. Finally got around to playing it the other day and that lasted all of 10 minutes until i got bored and uninstalled. Cars feel terrible to drive, zombies can inexplicably smash your car to bits very quickly with their bare hands and it just felt like it was all kinda pointless.
Shame really as i love zombies but i just didnt find this game fun =(
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Now you’ve done it. All we’ll be eating for the next 10 years is game-soup. ;<
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I don’t follow, you say it’s called demo?
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Yes indeed – I believe it is a shorthand reference to the “stration of demons”, an ancient and terrifying ritual which binds a demon to the will of man, forcing it to re-enact a small portion of one of his creations for all eternity. Truly a dread deed, many are those whose souls were not strong enough to subdue the demon, leaving naught but a husk behind.
’tis but folly, say I.
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I’ve heard Europeans call demos dee-mos. So there.
As for the game, tried it a month or so ago and I didn’t think much of it, too repetitive and a bit of a wasted opportunity.
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oh my hell. someone please tell me this plays like blast corps
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A chap called Alex Mare or some such name gave this game a very generous score in a recent issue of a popular PC Gaming themed magazine. I’d beg to disagree though. The camera swirls about like crazy and made me feel icky. Also, only one weapon at a time and picking up a boost replaces your weapon? Wha?
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I believe that prescient individual also strongly noted the piddling £6 pricetag. Don’t remember the camera being an issue either.
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£7 isn’t really piddling these days; you can get a lot of game for that kind of money. In my opinion the pricetag didn’t make up for some weird design choices which spoiled the game.
@choconutjoe The camera options were patched in after I’d finished with it.
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I had this problem aswell. got insta-motionsickness from this game. and also complained about that on the forums. they went and did some additional camera options and modes for us few people who experienced this vertigo since the previous 1.04 patch version (no idea what version this demo is, but that stuff must surely be in there)
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Camera issues have allegedly been fixed, but I don’t know whether the different camera options are available in the demo as well.
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I picked this game up cheap over Christmas and really enjoyed it. Their website gives the impression that they’re still working on it, adding new game modes etc. It definitely has potential imho. Hopefully the game will improve over the coming months.
@Paul: You can select different camera modes in the options menu. You can set it so that you can control the camera with your mouse, which might help with the motion sickness.
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I got this in the christmas sale for about £1-2 and i’ll say it was worth but, but not really any more. I completed it in about 3-4 hours and it was a bit tedious at times. Since it was so short though i somehow ended up at the end.
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Not half as great as I thought/hoped it would be. Still, the engine is pretty cool and I hope it’ll be used for a GTA-like game.
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The developers have been really good with updating and patching this. They were quick to add better camera controls and a gamepad option. I think it’s a pretty decent game, from what I’ve played.
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Its a very average game, i love all things zombie but this title is really lacking. The camera (even after the addition of two new ones after the patch) angles are just terrible and playing with the static camera just feels wrong, its the sort of game that feel like it needs a carmageddon style camera but then it’d just be a cross between Carma and Crazy Taxi also the handling of the cars themselves is pretty poor as well.
If the game had of been thought out more and had a better physics engine it would be worth playing, the style reminds me of the original GTA just minus a whole bunch of the fun. The thing that made the original GTA for me was driving at breakneck speeds and handbreak turning around corners but the handbreak in ZD is lacking to say the least.
Also the fact there are only 4 (i think its 4 anyway) zombie really doesn’t help with the overall variety in the game.
In summary its worth picking up in a sale but i would have never paid full price for it
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I picked it up during the Christmas sale and was very well worth it. I had fun smashing zombies, racing against the clock, upgrading my vehicles, memorising the city and being an achievement whore. It’s a cool little indie game.
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worth it for the 2p that valve pumped it out for around chrimbo but doubt i’d have been happy to pay much more. nice enough game to waste 30 minutes with here and there.
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Demo camera is horrible, as I see others have agreed.
Looks purty though.
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i found that a gamepad was necessary to play this. Fun but needs a lot of work. Still, it is their first commercial game so I’m more than willing to cut them some slack.
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I’m surprised at all the complaints about the handling. I’m of the opinion that the handling is what makes the game worth playing despite all the annoyances, like the camera (“static” is better than the default, but still very slow to change direction when you reverse or J-turn), lack of a map (only a static briefing map, with no “you are here”, though that does add to the challenge), single choice of a weapon, with too strict of a limit on ammo, and lack of a free play game mode. But the cars handle in a very pleasing manner, lots of arcadey slidey fun but still very controllable. It makes taking out zombies with a slide, or weaving past them down the road at high speeds, quite fun.
Is it just that I’m using an XBox 360 controller (it automatically supports the analog triggers, which do always make driving games better), or is it just personal weirdness?
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a small portion of the full game you can use to evaulate their full product. Crikey. Brilliant idea
Yes Kieron, it’s called shareware.
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…you realize he was being sarcastic, right?
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They could improve it ten fold by allowing the mouse to have full camera control.
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I loved this game when it was called Carmageddon and it wasn’t zombies you were running over … (unless you lived in Germany)
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I actually enjoyed the demo a lot, the camera didn’t affect me at all, in-fact I don’t get motion sickness in any games. I don’t think I’d pay full price but I’d have got it in the Steam sale.
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