Zombies and Pirates and Guns and Grenades!

cstanton — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:55:00 GMT

Zombies Vs. Pirates 2009, or ZP2K9, is a badass sidescroller game that's available under the Indie section of the Xbox Live Marketplace for about $3. I downloaded it while trying to spend some extra Microsoft Points after I picked up another Ska game, "I MA3D A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES IN 1T."

ZP2K9 is a 2D platform-scrolling shooter in which you run around as either a human or a zombie, pick up guns, and blast bitches into the dark ages.

There are several different game modes including deathmatch, team deathmatch, king of the hill, and capture the flag. You can play all of these game types either with bots or on Xbox Live. Its pretty cool because you can start a game with bots and allow real players to join in so you don't have to just sit there and wait for real people. There really aren't that many people that play online but if you have patience and wait a little while you can get a full game going. You can edit what other players see you as by customizing your avatar. You can choose your race, zombie or human, and then select out of 7 different skins. Most of them are pretty stupid but there's a viking and a ninja that are pretty cool.

I've really only been playing the free-for-all deathmatch since that seems to be what most people play, so that's the only thing I'm going to talk about. You're dropped in an invulnerable state that lasts for about 3 seconds into a 2D world in which there are crates and floating guns scattered all around. The crates contain suits that give you special abilities. There are 9 suits: the phoenix suit which makes you impervious to fire and grants you an extra life (you are reborn out of fire when you die), hedgehog suit that makes the player deal double damage, cat suit which allows the player to run faster and jump higher, the cyborg suit that allows for faster firing and reloading, skunk suit that poisons anyone that comes near, tesla suit that makes you really sparkly and shoots electricity along with your gun, bat suit that lets the player drain health and grants invisibility when the player is upside down on the ceiling, chameleon suit that gives invisibility as long as the player is not moving, and the bee suit that allows the player to fly. The floating weapons can be picked up by just running through them. There are 13 different weapons: the pistol you start with, the grenade launcher, rocket launcher, fire pistol, ice gun, shrink ray, SMG, assault rifle, electricity ball shooter thing, flame thrower, machine gun, kitana blade, and last but not least, some badass sword that looks like Cloud's sword from Final Fantasy. An Inventory of your weapons is available on the bottom left of the screen on a small D-Pad icon. This is to show you which direction you should press to select the proper gun from your 4 slot inventory. You can switch out guns if your inventory is full by pressing Y (you can do the same thing for suits).

The game is a two stick shooter, but it isn't from the overhead view that is typical with these games, so it will require you to occasionally tap the A button to jump and the left trigger to sprint or roll. You run around with the left stick and aim with the right. What I like about the game is the fluidity of movement. You can run on all of the walls and the ceiling so once you get the movement down a lot of possibilities are left to be explored.

There are a couple of different weapon combinations that are a little unbalanced, but for the most part the game is pretty much equal opportunity from the spawn. The hedgehog suit and either of the swords together makes you a one hit killing machine. The bat suit or chameleon suit with the shrink ray allows you to wait in stealth and then just shrink and step on the opponents as the walk by. The bee suit and the rocket launcher allows you to fly up in the air and rain explosives on the opponents. There are a bunch of different effective combinations that can be made.

The goal is to kill as many people is necessary to reach the score limit. The score limit on the standard deathmatch is only 10 by default, but when you create the game you can set the score limit as high as 100 frags. When you create the game you can have up to 5 bots to play with while you wait for real humans to join your game. One kind of annoying thing is that whenever a human player enters the game you are automatically respawned. This has happened to me, snatching my potential for mass murder on a cluster of scrubs right out of my hands.

The bots are relatively intelligent, but definitely not like the people you will meet on XBox Live. There is a lot of strategy to this game, and a few different places and weapons can be exploited a little bit.

All in all the game DOES get a little bit repetitive, but I'd have to say its a steal for $3 bucks. Get on there and see if Smokescreen420u is on, he'll school you real quick.

The Loris Bite : zombies vs pirates

Zombies and Pirates and Guns and Grenades!