The Undead Continue to Take Over

This isn’t the first time the COD franchise included zombies; while World at War included an unlockable zombie mode, the first COD Black Ops game updated this feature. Gamers were placed in a moon base where they fought their way through undead zombie hordes to survive. It’s considered one of the best parts of COD Black Ops. It makes sense COD Black Ops 2 Zombie Mode has garnered a lot of attention on gaming sites, like GameFront.com, for going above and beyond the first COD zombie installment. GameFront.com has nearly 100 articles on the Black Ops 2 and many of them focus on the new horrifying delight of killing zombies.

Instead of playing it safe for Black Ops 2, game developers worked to push the series forward in exciting ways, like the Zombie Mode with 3 different ways to play the game. There are several different playable characters and new types of terrifying zombies.

Multi-Player Mode

Tranzit game-play in Zombie Mode features up to four players traveling through a big sandbox style map. Players choose to travel via bus or on foot and fight off hordes of zombies in the process. There are multiple locations in the game world that allow for gamers to use different strategies to attack the zombie infestation. COD Black Ops 2 isn’t a static game-play experience; rather, it’s dynamic and lets users be creative in their attack.

Survival Mode and Grief

There’s also survival mode and grief mode. Survival mode is just that, trying to survive an onslaught of zombies. Grief mode, however, is one of the many unique features of Black Ops 2. It’s comprised of two teams of 4 each trying to last the longest. Humans can’t attack one another, but they can make it more difficult for the opposing humans to survive.

Game developers didn’t just add new maps and replace ‘bad-guys’ with zombies; Zombie Mode offers a compelling new take on traditional COD game-play. Experienced COD players will find this game to be a fun and innovative use of the platform. Though the game has just been released, the reviews are out: Black Ops 2 is a worthy addition to the COD franchise. After all, who doesn’t enjoy killing some brain hungry zombies?

I first came across Zombies!!! 6 years ago. I’m not sure how I came across it, but Boxing Day 2006 or 2007 saw me at a friends where 6 of us spent 3 hours playing that first game and immediately went back to play a second. The next year we all chipped in and bought up to Zombies!!! 4 (I think that was what we were up to) and played the different expansions all day. Every year since we’ve bought the latest expansion(s) and 4 – 6 of us would play on Boxing Day; it’s become a tradition.

That said, it was never as much fun as that first time but we came up with house rules or incorporated other people’s that made it more enjoyable and got rid of most of the broken parts.

So, when I was in Forbidden Planet browsing and came across the card game, I bought it without hesitating and headed to the pub for a quick game with some friends.

After 4 (admittedly quite quick) games this has retroactively made all of the other Zombies!!! games worse by forcing me to no longer overlook their flaws.

The game mechanics aren’t too bad. You have your own deck, you play cards and fight zombies, and you play card effects. All good in theory. There’s enough cards that your deck will end up being varied each game, though not necessarily fair (but then again neither’s life).

However the problem becomes that it’s impossible to go a turn without having to wrestle with the rules to figure out what’s supposed to be going on. Literally every turn that someone plays a card to mess with the other person there’s some arguments as to what the card is supposed to do.

The rules are incomplete for just the basic game turn, the terminology inconsistent and confusing, and trying to figure out how a card interacts with the rules or other people is primarily down to the individuals on the day. Not what I look for in a game.

Bear in mind I’ve wrestled with TCs idiosyncrasies with their game rules before but if you gave this game to people who haven’t I doubt they’d even make it through a single game.

While I’m sure the cards made sense to Todd and Kerry while they were playing I have to wonder what sort of play testing has gone on when we were encountering so many issues.

The cards and effects were primarily rehashes of the Zombies!!! cards, in itself not a problem as that’s what you’re paying for, but the nature of the game is significantly different and becomes much more a game of exceptions like Munchkin or M:tG which necessitates a different way of player interaction.

Ultimately this will get played for 1 round on Boxing Day again, then consigned to the cupboard and never looked at. Zombies!!! 11 will also likely get the same treatment and we’ll probably move on to a different franchise for next year.

PROS

• (technically) Portable version of Zombies!!! (though why it’s in such an unwieldy box I don’t know)
• Games are fast

CONS

• Unplayable

So you like to cruise around in a mini-van and support your child’s every whim. Maybe you gave up your dream of being the next news anchor or surgeon so you could be around little junior constantly, either way, you’re sure as heck going to make sure he has every opportunity to succeed- he’s your main job right now. But unfortunately for little junior, the pampered life you have provided him won’t help so well when zombies attack. You, on the other hand, have some uniquely honed skills that could make even the most neglectful husband clamoring to be near you.

Zombie Trends

This is now the United States of zombieland and it won’t be long before flesh-hungry corpses engulf this big blue planet of ours. It was only a couple of months ago that a deranged cannibal killed off some Miami homeless man by mauling his face. Or in Canada, police are still searching for that gay ex-porn star junkie on a comedown who allegedly killed a fellow with an ice pick, then raped and ate his corpse. Stories like these make a mockery of this whole world, but also expose the truth. I hope we make it alive. I hope we survive.

Preparation Tips

By this point in time, you’re probably a suburban idyll. All the hours spent attending school events, finding Halloween costumes at Buy Costumes website, and making cupcakes makes you ready to outfit an army. You’ll want to make sure to keep all the floral wire, paper mache supplies, and craft blades for creating weapons and diversions. When you go on your weekly grocery trip, stock up on some extra non-perishables. You don’t want to spend precious post-zombie moments hunkering behind collapsible safety guards while the military loots the local grocery store. It also might be time to start allowing little junior to play with toy guns and arrows. You may think you’re protecting him from a violent world, but in the event of a zombie apocalypse, these skills might be the only chance he has fighting off a zombie attack.

How You’ll Fit With a New Society

In the post-zombie apocalyptic world, your skill set can transfer into a number of useful functions. Your ability to weave a large vehicle through hoards of school children will make you an ideal candidate to shuffle resistance to and from outposts. You’ll also get to put those spinning classes to good use, making all those listless gym hours finally worth the small fortune you’ve spent on them. In the postapocalyptic zombie society, your matriarchal nature will also endow you with the skills and panache to organize search and scavenger hunts.

In this society, your helicopter parenting will serve you well. You’ll be able to boss people around while utilizing what today’s world sees as a vastly unprofitable skill set.

Can you recognise these Zombie films – “Zmblnd”, “Dwn f th Dd” or “Cln”?

Popular Android word game Missing Vowels has added Zombie films as a guest category. If it proves to be popular they may well keep it permanently, and add to the list of films to guess. There are over 50 films to guess and it’s free to download. Missing Vowels is available on the Google Play marketplace.

People mocked us for talking about zombies and a possible apocalypse as though it was something that could never happen, but this latest heat map suggests an outbreak is happening in the United Kingdom as we speak!

The new Zombie Invasion site has been designed to help Brits survive the zombie infection this Halloween. Users can zoom in on the zombie heat map to find the feeding frenzies across the country and also plot the best areas to run and hide or escape overseas.

The secret is most definitely out and the zombies are mutating – fast! The heat map is driven by sales data of zombie related outfits and accessories from independent UK fancy dress retailer allfancydress.com, highlighting the areas of the UK that have caught the zombie bug in readiness for Halloween.

As well as being able to use the map to plot your escape, Zombie Invasion also gives you four useful tips to survive a possible attack. From good running trainers and a baseball bat to a face mask and a clever zombie disguise, you can avoid becoming part of the offal trail!

Take a look at the zombie invasion in the UK and see if you have enough time to save yourself…

It seems as if everybody wants to get involved with zombies these days so it’s only natural that flower delivery company Arena Flowers have decided to give away a day battling zombies through the awesome guys as wish.co.uk.

It’s easy to enter, use their zombie film generator to find out what the name of your zombie movie would be and then tweet about it. It’s as easy as that!

For full terms and conditions see the competition page here.

Not just in use as our URL shortener, ZomCo is a new film from Ash Tidball which asks the questions about after the zombie apocalypse, what would we do? How would we get back on track?

The film premieres this Thursday at the Odeon Manchester, UK and we may bring you a review not long after.

Zombie Wasteland Goners is a new, free game being developed by Jason Ozubko. It is an online zombie board game of survival and betrayal. The game will be played by 4 players who take turns roaming the zombie wasteland, killing undead and sabotaging each other.

Every player will be randomly assigned a secret mission and tasks at the start of every game, and so every time you play you will be given new motivations and aims. Sometimes you’ll be trying to keep your best friend alive, and other times you’ll be trying to get him killed. Sometimes you’ll be desperately seeking the chopper and escape, and other times you’ll be trying to detonate the nuclear power plant and end it all. Still other times you’ll be ready to give up, become a zombie, and start killing your former friends.

ZWG is still very early in it’s development with a public alpha to come later in the year but drawing on inspirations such as Zombies!!! and Dead Rising as well as gameplay modelled on the excellent X-COM series it’s sure to be fun. However, it needs your help!

Jason is currently looking for sprite artists as well as card artists, so if you think you can help contact him here.