Beaten: Zombie Driver (7/7/13/)

System: PC
Status: Beaten

Zombie driver is a strange little game, but I found it quite fun, once I got used to the camera style making me a bit ill. In all the game modes, you drive a car around a city, running over zombies while trying to reach certain objectives. It is very arcade-y in execution, which isn't a bad thing. It is quite fun to play for short stretches, and isn't too frustrating in any particular aspect.

The game helps the variety by having three game modes. Story, which has your character going through a fairly short campaign, rescuing civilians from places and doing side objectives to get new cars. It isn't too difficult, though the rarity of healing items makes some parts a bit frustrating as you really can't avoid damage from zombies at times. The only part I really struggled with was the last mission, where you have to race at blinding speed through the city with a time limit. It was very easy to make small mistakes and have to start over.

The small mistakes at  high speed problem also applies to Blood Race, which makes the mode itself a bit more difficult than it needs to be. It is very easy to get stuck on a piece of scenery and have to spend precious seconds backing out and around to get back in the race. Blood race mode has more than just racing though, though the other events are basically 'Go fast because of X', such as 'Go fast because you have a bomb on your car'. Overall though its still a fun mode to play, just might be a bit frustrating for me to ace it for completion.

The last mode is slaughter, which basically gives you a circular arena and zombies to kill. Each wave you finish upgrades your car or weapons. Not too difficult, other than the exploding zombies, which like other modes, can take a huge chunk from your health if you run them over (you are supposed to run right beside them, so they explode after you're gone). Again, the mode is very short, so any frustrations are temporary.

I finished the story mode, and need to finish and complete both Blood Race and Slaughter modes, along with some achieves from the story mode itself.

Quick Fixes: Some games I've been touching on

So my issue lately is that I've been playing a few games in small amounts, and don't have enough thoughts on them to do a full on review post. Instead, I decided to cram a few into small little blurbs, with my thoughts so far about them.

A few missions in to this. It seems ok, though its clearly designed for controller use, despite only having 3 buttons you actually use during the game. At the same time, I just can not get my controller to synch up with the game ( a nice standard logitech controller), and thus I'm stuck using the keyboard. With the keyboard, the driving is all kinds of slippy-slidey, and I hurt myself more often than not slamming into objects because of the top down view and limited sight range. You really can't go that fast without slamming into something outright. The game itself isn't bad with the zombie crushing, but the controls and view distance really make it frustrating. You get guns and the like for your car, but its so hard to aim them properly while driving, I often just drive through zombies, then drive backwards and shoot at them.

I downloaded the free DLC "You have to name the expansion pack", which has added some more classes and a bit more variety to the game...and for some reason, wells that completely block hallways. Odd. Anyway, the game is growing on me a bit, I'm still playing with permadeath on because that is how I roll. Still, at the easiest setting, its very easy to get yourself killed on the first floor via bad luck...or on the 20th floor due to bad luck. Either or.

I actually played a bit of this, and I am on the second city. It seems more like a puzzler than anything else, figuring out how to destroy everything with limited tools. Still, the slowdown is horrendous on my computer, and large stages are all kinds of herky-jerky. I can run Dawn of War II with fairly nice graphics, but this thing bogs me down?

I'm actually a big fan of the Metal Gear series, I enjoy the stories and the boss fights are always a blast. My main gripe has always been the stealth elements are boring and tedious, with little midway between that and just dying. Crawling across a large map, inch by inch, stopping and starting to avoid patrols, is just tedious, and the shooting controls are often shoddy and make for poor fighting. This is...pretty much the same. The sneaking requires you crouch and walk slowly across areas, hiding when necessary. Too bad walking slowly requires you press your thumb ever so slightly on the PSP's tiny joystick, and hold it there for up to a minute at a time, praying you don't shift slightly further and accidentally run. The shooting controls are junk too, on the most natural setting you have to hold down the right bumper, use the camera controls to aim (which is the right buttons) and then press the down key to shoot...if you want to move while shooting, you have to use the joystick at the same time. I may fiddle with the control settings a bit, and there is a tiny bit of auto-aim, but dammit, if you don't have twin sticks, you need -way- more assist, or fewer buttons to press to hold it like this.

Almost forgot this one. Bought this a long time ago when I first got my PS3, and haven't played it in a long time. Finally started to sit down and play one game at a time, slowly learning the later stages (already have the first rhythms basically memorized) and earning more points for more lives. A simple game, I'll call it beaten when I finally beat all the stages, and complete when I unlock everything.