We all can agree that there are alot of zombie games but imagine a game using Max Brooks's rules from The Zombie Survival Guide or World War Z. This means, one slow moving, two only a head shot will bring them down and only one that penatrates the skull, three weapons act as they would in reality they must be maintained or they will stop working and have real life stats so some guns will jam more then others and finaly the zombie's bite is fatal meaning you must not let them get close enough to bite you or its game over. Yes I know this sounds unfair but in my mind it seems better and more of a challenge.
Poll: A Max Brooks Zombie Game
- Thread starter emh204
- Start date
Recommended Videos
I hate to break it to you, but you definitely are not the first to think of this great awesome idea.
The problem is that it would have to be well done, or else it would just be too damned frustrating to continue playing.
I think it would be pretty interesting. It would be pretty hard with headshots-only and guns that act realistically. But I think that since the zombies would be slow it would be interesting since it would't be some "Quick fire bullets into the crowd!" game. Instead you'd have to take careful aim and headshot each zombie as they slowly approached you. It would add a great level of tension.
As fun as this could be, it would also be incredibly difficult to pull off.
The biggest problem is the "one bite=death" rule that Brooks established. To counteract this, you could give the gamer lots of Player Characters who do not *have* to live through the storyline (Fire Emblem did something quite similar, I believe). It could be very emotional if your partner whose been by your side for the last three months months falls to the Solanum virus and begs you to put him out of his misery. Or, you could let him live on on fight in a heroic last stand until he fully reanimates as a full-fledged ghoul.
Finding supplies would also be difficult to handle. Part of the experience would be traversing the terrain and gathering food and drink, not just zombie genocide like in Left 4 Dead. I've never played Fallout 3, but having watched some of the footage, I would imagine it vaguely like that: gathering food, materials for fire, managing ammo, etc. Another thing that could make it interesting (not sure how good of an idea this is) would be to *make* the player have to eat food to stay healthy: if they go too long without eating, their aim wavers, stamina for sprinting and such drops faster, and their strength stats take a penalty. Go without eating too long, and players start to lose health, eventually dying.
It would also be really hard to define what the endgame would be. Maybe there could be an in-game calender where that determines when certain events happen. If you play with a Last Man On Earth (LaMOE) style, after several months the military could roll in to clean up your territory. Or you could join the military, survive the Battle of Yonkers, and proceed to wipe through the USA with the rest of the military (SIRs and Lobos could be fun!) Or you could hole up in a fortress of some sort with other survivors and wait out the siege until help arrives, dealing with dwindling supplies, keeping defenses up, keeping relations between survivors friendly, etc.
There's a LOT that could go into a game of this sort, and I think that it'd be a big challenge for any studio that would try it. Then again, I also think a team of heavily ambitious Fallout 3 modders could pull it off, if they create it in a separate continent form the main story (like how the Shivering Isles isn't a part of Cyrodill in Oblivion).
In short, though, I really like the idea. It may be a bit too ambitious of a project for today's technology, but if done right (and with co-op gameplay!) could be a fantastic experience.
The biggest problem is the "one bite=death" rule that Brooks established. To counteract this, you could give the gamer lots of Player Characters who do not *have* to live through the storyline (Fire Emblem did something quite similar, I believe). It could be very emotional if your partner whose been by your side for the last three months months falls to the Solanum virus and begs you to put him out of his misery. Or, you could let him live on on fight in a heroic last stand until he fully reanimates as a full-fledged ghoul.
Finding supplies would also be difficult to handle. Part of the experience would be traversing the terrain and gathering food and drink, not just zombie genocide like in Left 4 Dead. I've never played Fallout 3, but having watched some of the footage, I would imagine it vaguely like that: gathering food, materials for fire, managing ammo, etc. Another thing that could make it interesting (not sure how good of an idea this is) would be to *make* the player have to eat food to stay healthy: if they go too long without eating, their aim wavers, stamina for sprinting and such drops faster, and their strength stats take a penalty. Go without eating too long, and players start to lose health, eventually dying.
It would also be really hard to define what the endgame would be. Maybe there could be an in-game calender where that determines when certain events happen. If you play with a Last Man On Earth (LaMOE) style, after several months the military could roll in to clean up your territory. Or you could join the military, survive the Battle of Yonkers, and proceed to wipe through the USA with the rest of the military (SIRs and Lobos could be fun!) Or you could hole up in a fortress of some sort with other survivors and wait out the siege until help arrives, dealing with dwindling supplies, keeping defenses up, keeping relations between survivors friendly, etc.
There's a LOT that could go into a game of this sort, and I think that it'd be a big challenge for any studio that would try it. Then again, I also think a team of heavily ambitious Fallout 3 modders could pull it off, if they create it in a separate continent form the main story (like how the Shivering Isles isn't a part of Cyrodill in Oblivion).
In short, though, I really like the idea. It may be a bit too ambitious of a project for today's technology, but if done right (and with co-op gameplay!) could be a fantastic experience.
This idea is so awesome that bumblebear does not begin to cover it.
Co-op would be a must, I´m not sure about weapon degration, but loudness and muzzle flash would(and should) definitely be factor: noise = zombies.
And hopefully the game would not be subject to the inverse law of conservation of zombijitsu?
Co-op would be a must, I´m not sure about weapon degration, but loudness and muzzle flash would(and should) definitely be factor: noise = zombies.
And hopefully the game would not be subject to the inverse law of conservation of zombijitsu?
Would be interesting to see a full-blown MMO zombie sim, with the ideas that Nooners put forward
Player cooperation would be entirely optional - a twitch MMORPG where the strongest and smartest survive, whilst the others restart. Griefers would run rampant in the early zones, dragging zombie hordes onto the unsuspecting, backstabbing other players for supplies - but ultimately they would meet their end and restart just as everyone else would.
Death wouldn't mean a re-spawn with your gear, or a run back from the nearest graveyard - your character would die, their possessions dropped and decaying, their corpse reanimated. You would return to the start anew, armed only with the experience of what lies ahead.
Food would be the most important resource: tins could be scrounged from apartments and shops, and once out of the city small farms could be established by the dedicated for a more long-term solution - though naturally, the establishment of a permanent base anywhere is going to wind up with zombie problems sooner or later. The lack of food would cause strength, stamina and focus to drop; its importance in a post-apocalyptic world should not be underrated. Perhaps there would be no currency system, only a barter system with the intrinsic worth of things being hammered out between players. That could only lead to hilarity, but it could, in a small way, actually help players develop real-world skills.
Weapons would be important as well. Perhaps firearms should be scarce? Ammunition certainly would be, and maybe weapon degradation would be a better way of limiting firearm usage than there not being enough to go around - after all, what's a zombie game without guns, right?
The overarching objective would be to progress through the game world searching for the promised safe zone - a military fortress or peaceful Eden, set apart from the ravaging hordes. Countless 'side quests' would present themselves along the way to aid your journey - the establishment of a farm to sustain your journey, with the opportunity to trade some surplus for supplies from other players. The discovery and defence of a lab where anti-viral drugs are being researched to counter the virus, with the opportunity to gain partial resistance to the zombie disease and thus increase your chances of survival if you were to get bitten. Raiding an overrun military base for hardware and transport. I'm torn on whether to have checkpoints - places to restart at, rather than being returned to the starting city, but on balance it's probably better to avoid checkpoints - keeps the playerbase from migrating to the endgame content en-mass, and eventually you'll potentially start seeing philanthropic players escorting restarters through the early sections to aid them protecting their crops or to bolster the defences at their forts.
The key would be flexibility and freedom - freedom to build and destroy, to work together and against each other, with as few game rules as possible. I have to say I've been a bit inspired by Caprica's 'V World' with this, but that's only a good thing. [If you've not seen any of the new BSG spin-off series Caprica and like anything sci-fi or like good drama with character and have an open mind about tech GO WATCH IT!
]
Maybe an expansion set in a country without firearm possession laws should follow - a progression from the initial US scenario which got the players used to this new, serious type of RPG. Just think, you survive a hellish journey across the US to hole up in a mountain secret military base with the other survivors on the continent, then evacuate to the other side of the world where, rumours say, the virus has died out. Jet lagged and weary, the first sight from the plane are the haggard faces of Eastern-European zombies, pressed against the airport fence... and so begins the European survival-fest, with even fewer guns, even less ammo, and even more zombies
To be honest, I have no idea if I'd play a game like this - I've never played anything like what I've described here - but I do know that I've sunk FAR too many hours into pointless, simple flash games over the last few weeks, games that don't reward perseverance or offer any reason to play again and again, and yet I still do. if the starting city was fun and expansive enough, that might well be enough for many players - just playing in the city, with little personal consequence for dying. Then, when they feel they've explored that area enough, they can set out into the unknown, explore at their own pace, or try following one of several plot lines that could thread the areas together with personal stories.
The beauty of restarting when you die, rather than respawning is that you can expand the early game content continually and always have people to experience it, and you can have as many major plots as you want as players can experience different ones on each play through
Damn, I've written a small thesis on this now, so I think I'll stop. I only wish a games company would hire me as a gameplay or creative director or something... my brain's not going to shut up about this to me all night XD
Perhaps a huge land, sprawling cities, forests, swamps and grasslands, accurately populated by wildlife and man-made objects. Everyone could start in the city, the tutorial being to survive the exodus from your apartment, introducing you to aspects such as sustenance, minor injury patching, and zombie killing before throwing you out onto the streets for a no-holds barred survive-fest.Nooners said:
Player cooperation would be entirely optional - a twitch MMORPG where the strongest and smartest survive, whilst the others restart. Griefers would run rampant in the early zones, dragging zombie hordes onto the unsuspecting, backstabbing other players for supplies - but ultimately they would meet their end and restart just as everyone else would.
Death wouldn't mean a re-spawn with your gear, or a run back from the nearest graveyard - your character would die, their possessions dropped and decaying, their corpse reanimated. You would return to the start anew, armed only with the experience of what lies ahead.
Food would be the most important resource: tins could be scrounged from apartments and shops, and once out of the city small farms could be established by the dedicated for a more long-term solution - though naturally, the establishment of a permanent base anywhere is going to wind up with zombie problems sooner or later. The lack of food would cause strength, stamina and focus to drop; its importance in a post-apocalyptic world should not be underrated. Perhaps there would be no currency system, only a barter system with the intrinsic worth of things being hammered out between players. That could only lead to hilarity, but it could, in a small way, actually help players develop real-world skills.
Weapons would be important as well. Perhaps firearms should be scarce? Ammunition certainly would be, and maybe weapon degradation would be a better way of limiting firearm usage than there not being enough to go around - after all, what's a zombie game without guns, right?
The overarching objective would be to progress through the game world searching for the promised safe zone - a military fortress or peaceful Eden, set apart from the ravaging hordes. Countless 'side quests' would present themselves along the way to aid your journey - the establishment of a farm to sustain your journey, with the opportunity to trade some surplus for supplies from other players. The discovery and defence of a lab where anti-viral drugs are being researched to counter the virus, with the opportunity to gain partial resistance to the zombie disease and thus increase your chances of survival if you were to get bitten. Raiding an overrun military base for hardware and transport. I'm torn on whether to have checkpoints - places to restart at, rather than being returned to the starting city, but on balance it's probably better to avoid checkpoints - keeps the playerbase from migrating to the endgame content en-mass, and eventually you'll potentially start seeing philanthropic players escorting restarters through the early sections to aid them protecting their crops or to bolster the defences at their forts.
The key would be flexibility and freedom - freedom to build and destroy, to work together and against each other, with as few game rules as possible. I have to say I've been a bit inspired by Caprica's 'V World' with this, but that's only a good thing. [If you've not seen any of the new BSG spin-off series Caprica and like anything sci-fi or like good drama with character and have an open mind about tech GO WATCH IT!
] Maybe an expansion set in a country without firearm possession laws should follow - a progression from the initial US scenario which got the players used to this new, serious type of RPG. Just think, you survive a hellish journey across the US to hole up in a mountain secret military base with the other survivors on the continent, then evacuate to the other side of the world where, rumours say, the virus has died out. Jet lagged and weary, the first sight from the plane are the haggard faces of Eastern-European zombies, pressed against the airport fence... and so begins the European survival-fest, with even fewer guns, even less ammo, and even more zombies
To be honest, I have no idea if I'd play a game like this - I've never played anything like what I've described here - but I do know that I've sunk FAR too many hours into pointless, simple flash games over the last few weeks, games that don't reward perseverance or offer any reason to play again and again, and yet I still do. if the starting city was fun and expansive enough, that might well be enough for many players - just playing in the city, with little personal consequence for dying. Then, when they feel they've explored that area enough, they can set out into the unknown, explore at their own pace, or try following one of several plot lines that could thread the areas together with personal stories.
The beauty of restarting when you die, rather than respawning is that you can expand the early game content continually and always have people to experience it, and you can have as many major plots as you want as players can experience different ones on each play through
Damn, I've written a small thesis on this now, so I think I'll stop. I only wish a games company would hire me as a gameplay or creative director or something... my brain's not going to shut up about this to me all night XD
Wow, Wicky...lot of interesting ideas there.Wicky_42 said:
To be honest, this would be a very, very difficult game to do as an MMO. Using shooter mechanics on something as susceptible to lagging as an MMO with one-hit-killing-enemies that can only be killed with a headshot makes for a lot of upset players. I initially viewed this as a LAN, system-link, or split-screen game...maybe even only single-player with bots for allies. Makes for a more intimate experience, IMO.
I like all the ideas about different environments and/or countries-absolutely LOVE the potential for replay value implied-but how freaking hard would it be to cram all that data onto one disc? Even two or three discs? Even if it were a direct download game to your PC, imagine how much room that would hog up.
I like the idea of using food and other supplies as bartering materials rather than money: opens up a new world of possibilities. Imagine that the fuel you so desperately need for your car (did we both forget to mention vehicles? whoops) is being held by a man we'll name Desmond. Desmond wants your gun. Your only gun. Do you make the honest trade and rely solely on your ability to out-drive or melee the ghouls? Or you you kill Desmond, keeping both the fuel and gun but losing the trust of some of your team, who might leave you if your morals don't improve?
Your "death" concept is interesting...I'm still not sure how to feel about it. Starting over completely from scratch makes sense in theory, but where in-universe would this new character come from? The zombie-overrun city where everything started, with no defenses or military left, almost no supplies after everything's already been raided, and people just as helpless as you for allies? Or do they magically appear at a military base near the place of death, where they have access to powerful weapons, armor, shelter, and allies from the get-go? If you're using bots as NPC allies, maybe you could just "jump" into one of them, retrieving all your gear from your old character's corpse (presuming the horde hasn't demolished everything already).
Wicky...you and I could have some fun together if we think about this too much...
Why the hell is everyone complaining about being too hard? The realism makes the game more intense and i've been waiting very long for this kind of game.
I'd be interested in seeing it done kid of like WWZ, where the game writes down your progress in a diary, sort of like a narrative, and when you die, you become a new survivor, and you can pick up and discover your old survivors diary as a sort of memento. Make the story be primarily day-to-day survival based, perhaps in a mall like Dead Rising, or something. Damn, now I'm going to be messing around in the Source SDK to see if I can make anything.
sounds like L4D mixed with SS2emh204 said:
l..l..l..look at you meatbag... pathetic brain to eat, panting an-
okay ill stop
