Atom Zombie Smasher Review

[Trash]

<strong>[ Review ]</strong>

<p>Back from raining down death on little unsuspecting purple and yellow dots Trash returns to bring us his review on <a href="http://www.blendogames.com/" target="_blank">Blendo Games</a> zombie holocaust simulator Atom Zombie Smasher. </p><div align="justify"><blockquote><p><span class="postbody">It's countless zombies (or zeds as the game calls them) against you, your mercenaries and your nuclear powered orbital battle station. And yes, that means that the old Vietnam war quote 'we had to destroy the town to save it' is the key gameplay element. Well, that and having choppers swoop down to rescue as many people as you can from the ravenous horde. It's all very Apocalypse Now meets the fall of Saigon with quite some oddball narrative comic style sequences thrown in for good measure.  </span>
</p></blockquote></div><br/><br/><strong>Read: </strong><a href="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/content.php?id=71">Atom Zombie Smasher Review</a>

 

[Orgasm]

Game is crappy. Kills all the reward mechanisms in the brain with with the random troops assignment. No matter how well I do, I dont get to choose what to use. Instead they should have added some kind of resource management.

Review has random screenshots. Dude, at least make em vaguely relevant to the text you write.

 

[Trash]

For me the random troops and equipment assignments add to the challenge. Else everyone would just go for their fav combo and go to town. Now you'll have to learn how to improvise. Not to mention that what you use gets experience and you can also improve things by researching more ways of murdering shitloads of purple dots in addition to picking out what territories to tackle on a campaign map that gets more and more overrun. I call that resource management. To each his own though.

For screenshots that are more relevant to the text than a bunch of them showing the game being reviewed I would suggest you try one of the LP's in the LP forum.

 

[Angthoron]

Picked it up at some sale long time ago and finally installed it this week - really enjoying the game so far, it's lots of fun, and there's tons of mods and mutators ready to be downloaded right through the ingame browser (might want to mention it) plus you can easily write your own.

As Orgasm pointed out, the random troops can be annoying at times, I mean yay, how do you hold out an outbreak with three mines and two roadblocks on a Short Day L3 scenario? Hint: You don't (unless Z spawn near large/chainable Gas Stations). Then again, I think losing a battle is sort of part of the fun in this game, so, don't mind.

Edit: You can pick a starting condition: Chooser at the beginning of the game and be able to modify your merc selection, every month.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

As mentioned, I liked getting fucked over occasionally by random chance. Game would be too easy if you could ALWAYS take soldiers/artillery/zed bait/snipers on every mission.

 

[Daemongar]

As mentioned, I liked getting fucked over occasionally by random chance. Game would be too easy if you could ALWAYS take soldiers/artillery/zed bait/snipers on every mission.

Yeah, but the problem with that is that playing a level with "blockers" and landmines just is not fun. And the game doesn't allow you to leave a mission until you fail/succeed. That is, you can't pick another map. You have to plod through the dull map and accept failure.

The game itself and the theme are good, though. It is simple to pick up and challenging, but there are a lot of warts. Playing snipers and soldiers is entertaining, and there is some strategy. The author really put a lot of effort into making a good game. Really, he should add on some staff and make this a Great game. For one, it is sorely in need of balanced resource management and balanced game play progression.

Playing up to 6000 points a few times, the game:

• 1. Rarely leveled anything useful because of the random nature of troops. It just is not fun with certain combos. You can't win a map by killing all zombies with certain combinations. That doesn't fly with the perfectionist that wants to complete every map or feel it is possible.
  2. The leveling up of snipers and troops is a little overpowered, but you rarely level the more useful classes. It would be better to level more frequently but at a lower rate. The helicopter seems balanced, but the troops do not. Soldiers need 125 kills to go up a level. The soldier can take a 20% improvement in accuracy. From 60 to 80%. That's pretty significant, but you'll rarely see it.
  3. The arbitrary outbreaks speed up the game, but just make it all pointless. In C&C if Nod just got teritorries randomly, you'd say it was poor design. Here, it's kind of pointless having a strategy.
  4. The science unlocks: just did not see enough of them, and for the rare time you can buy them, they were pretty poor. The game does not take into consideration the science unlocks in relation to your position in the game. You unlock scientists and get 10 science points at about the games midpoint. However, everything is 15+ science points. You play a couple levels, and end up with something that would have helped you a lot earlier, but now is pointless. 2x Llama Cannons?! Great, however, that cannon is only usable once a year, so now you bought something you can't use.

Overall, there is a LOT that is fun with this game, and the price is low. However, the overall balance and resource managment is pretty bad. No one likes playing early on and feeling a sense of winning, yet have that snatched away by arbitrary outbreaks which you can't stop because the game arbitrarily gives you useless units.
5. When selecting a region, you can't un-pick it. Why even have regions if you get no benefit from having them contiguous, they are completely random units, and location has no bearing on score or outcome? There is a small benefit when dealing with level 4 Zed outbreaks, but it's too arbitrary.

This game could be very, very good if someone were to mod it a little and balance it out. Honestly, it has a lot of potential. Right now, it needs more love.