Outbreak is an FPSC based Top Down Shooter by Hockeykid and Kravenwolf. Now, for everyone who came to this webblog without knowing what any of this means...you must be lost. The Porn isn't here, sorry! But here's an explanation: FPSCreator is a tool designed to create first person shooters ergo: egoshooters for fun without coding. Creating a Top Down Shooter with this impressive visuals, an inventory system coherent spawning, ally AI and more need scripting extras never seen before in an FPSC Game. Its so good, it received next to zero attention by its community... I don't even remotly understand this. Alpha Project, a rather generic Resident Evil inspried shooter... which is fucking impressive in the scripting and execution department but totally eats in the artistic realm gets quoted as one of the best FPSC games ever while this little gem gets completely overlooked. Probably because the gameplay is, at its core, fucking boring. (I get to that later... I'm going to be positive first)
THE GOOD
The effort
This game has been made for the "Defy the odds competition 2011" and I don't think it was intended to be a full length feature project but it turned out to be more than most other FPSC games. The sheer effort and skill put into making this happen is admirable and shows what a well organised team of coder and artist can do if they put some effort in their project. This game is a prime example of FPSC in good use and should be a monument to livingroom gamedevelopment. This game makes actual use of FPSC's scripting system aswell. No kidding! It actually uses it! (If you would play all FPSC games that get released like I do you would understand why I'm surprised... most people just put in stock entities, Jakes guns, Marcs Zombies and click build...if you are in this group. Well screw you!)
The visuals
Its a top down shooter so its a bit hard to judge the visuals but Kravenwolf did another outstanding job on them. Well, I have to point out a minor flaw here...its made by Kravenwolf so everything is held in blueish greytones. I like a coherent visual style but I'm not that crazy about the overly desaturated colorpallette. In fact, the only thing that seems to emit color are the lightsources which are creating a wonderfully believable cityambience btw. Its clearly the work of a skilled artist. I have to mention the use of shaders and effects is nearly perfect in this game. Nothing shines too much, nothing looks fake or too much like plastic. No dynamic object shines too bright and I didn't get annoyed by invisible enemies and the like. It all feels like forged out of one metal (if this metaphor exists in the english-speaking realm). This is a major problem I have with most other FPSC titles, including the more popular ones. They all have this feeling of a lot of incoherent media thrown in one map and done. This one really shines here.
THE BAD
The Gameplay
As creative and fresh the idea of a top down shooter in fpsc is...its not really a lot of fun. You just exterminate wave of zombies after wave of zombies while unlocking goodies in a pretty but confined space. (I'm really not crazy about the design of these greenish barriere planks) Its the Nazizombies gameplay mechanic. Survive and unlock goodies to survive even more. You start off with some kind of teammate that dies somewhere down the road....and I guess you kill zombies then until you dont want to anymore. Aiming at them is a bit hard to do and I wasted quite some ammo trying to get a zombie from a distance. Some kind of lasersight would be cool. Dead Zombies also tend to block the way and can be an annoyance here and there... My major problem with this game is its simplicity despite all the effort.
More complaints
Lets sum this up in one categorie. While the game at its core is a wave based zombieslasher, its really not supposed to be that much fun. The entire approach has a serious, cold feel to it. The visual style not even included. The story (yes! it has a story) puts you in the shoes of "Kevin Arkely" to clear a city of infected targets. Your usual zombiebaloney but with this kind of game, a more lighthearted touch would be desirable. The dark approach gets underlined by a, what I think is, postgrunge theme that plays along after a while. All of this would have been much greater in a game with a larger scope. I would have liked this better if your charackter would be some homeless dude and your sidekick a hooker trying to survive the zombie apocalypse to a rocking tune.
Yeah, I guess I got everything down I thought about this so far so now its time for a conclusion:
CONCLUSION
Outbreak is a damn fine, creative game that suffers from its monotony. I rate this thing a zombie out of ten...which is something along the lines of ... 7.5 // 10 on the fpsc scala. 5.0 // 10 on the general scala. I would love to see Hockeywolf and Kravenkid work on something with a larger scope...and maybe in first or third person. They made an awesome team on this and are far too talented for a nazizombies wave based game. Best luck to these two with their future projects!
So if you like wavebased games, zombies or just want to play a fresh indie title...
You can download the game here
You can keep all typos...no charge ;) Also: If you think any of this is offensive to you: blow me ;)
you guys have a great day and see you next time.
-Adrien
