3. Clutch (Armageddon Riders)
Taking a bit of a break from the shooting world, we travel to the land of motorized 4-wheelers. Clutch is set at the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva where the Large Hadron Collider suffered a catastrophic failure, turning its surroundings into a wasteland, roamed by zombies and mutants. The Harvesters, a group of treasure hunters set up camp within the established quarantine perimeter, in attempts to collect artifacts and hunt for the biggest prize located inside the Collider.
Gameplay and Features
Clutch comes with a wide range of cars, weapons, vehicle skins, nitro boosters and challenges. As used by now in the most of this generation’s racing games, you start with a tuned vehicle followed by a downgrade to the bare version of the starter car. In order to upgrade your vehicle you need to complete races and other challenges to get money and unlock the parts.
However, the third part of customization, the vehicle skins can be obtained by roaming the city and finding AI players with the same cars as yours. They will often have different paintjobs which can be obtained by destroying them. The newly obtained skins will be available in the garage.
Another interesting feature is the possibility to quickswitch through random side quests, challenges, main story missions and the garage, by pressing Tab / Shift+Tab causing the GPS arrow to turn automatically to the next selected target, while it’s blip will flash on the radar.
The world also features a number of colored spheres called ‘bonuses’. Each type of sphere provides a certain bonus like more ramming damage, complete repair or a refill of the nitrous. Also, in the free world ‘artifacts’ can be found which, if collected, will give an amount of money to the player. Unfortunately, they require a keen eye on the radar since there’s almost no obvious indication besides a small white blip on it or an arrow that shows its position if it is outside the radius of the radar.
The position placement is categorized like the ESRB ratings with Children (3rd position), Teen (2nd position) and Mature (1st position). Some of the challenges include the classic hunt of zombies where you have to reach a certain number of deaths in order to advance to the next level.
An artifact hunt where you and 3 other opponents battle in the attempt of reaching the prized item first, arena battles and even the races won’t be missing from the game. As you go up in the challenge’s level, its difficulty but also its reward will increase exponentially.
Weapons, Vehicles and Boosters
There is a wide range of weaponry for each vehicle available that can either be attached to the sides of the car or in front of it, meant to cause a lot of damage to your brainless foes. All the side weapons include a zombie detector, causing themselves to appear from within the car when an enemy is near the vehicle in order to bring it to its gory demise. The biggest differences between the side weapons consist in their design and range.
The front weapons range from simple claw-shaped grills to a rotative spiked grinder meant to vore the brain-eaters. This weapon includes a zombie animation where the victim tries to claw onto the hood hopelessly trying to avoid its imminent death.
The developers were careful in adding as many various vehicles as possible, giving us imports, exotics, muscles and even pick-up trucks and 4×4’s in order to bring as much destructions as possible to both our enemy drivers and the undead.
Maybe the most visible car modification you will see (depending on your camera view choice) will be the nitrous booster. Starting with the normal exhausts, ending up with the magnificent jet fighter booster. Upgrading the boosters will grant more boosting power, making your car faster.
As a note, there has to be added that the purchased parts are specific to every car, new parts needing to be purchased after a car has been bought.
Pros:
– Nice visual graphics, soundtracks
– Wide variety of vehicles, customization and challenges
– Destructible environment (except for buildings)
Cons:
– Poor story
Genre: Vehicular Combat
Price: 9.99 $/€
Steam Store Page: Click Here
2. Dead Pixels
Continuing the article with the word ‘Dead’ in the front, we go now in the world of side-scrolling 8-bit with the very presentable name ‘Dead Pixels’. No, this game will not kill pixels off your monitor, everyone knows that it’s a gamer’s worst nightmare. What you will do, though, is kill pixelated zombies of all kinds in order to reach the safe point. And it will take you some good hours to do it, if you’re the exploring type.
Gameplay and Features
Dead Pixels presents itself as a typical apocalyptic scenery where zombies try to take you down and you try to keep yourself alive by taking them down. But it’s not that simplistic, so various aids in form of medkits, weaponry and vendors help you along the way towards the escaping zone. The scavenging mechanic is also available by going in unprotected houses and garages which will give you a list with everything inside. Though you may be tempted to get everything from there, you have a weight limit that, if crossed, will reduce your speed by at least 50%.
Another RPG system integrated in the game is the skill level up, where you can purchase upgrades of pre-existing abilities like speed, melee damage and strength. Each can have a different price value depending on the vendor you find.
A crude quest mechanic is also available, mostly depending on your luck. All you have to do is to scavenge various items from the empty houses and hope that the vendor wants badly one of those things. The rewards are great so if you’re in a bad state of empty pockets, it would be a good time to believe in your God.
The game has 3 playable game modes:
Dead Pixels – The classic one: You have to survive each area, loot everything and kill zombies. Last 2 things are apparently optional. The number of areas that you have to pass through depends on the selected difficulty; you start with 10 areas to pass at easy then 10 more added with each higher difficulty, except for the ‘Hardest’ difficulty where you go through 30 streets.
These are like on ‘Hard’ difficulty, but as the game mentions, the A.I director hates you. The weapons found here represent about half of what’s available through the entire game. The ultimate objective is to reach the safe zone. The Solution – Coming as free content after the cliffhanger of the original game, this one can be said that it’s a bit weird as in, you have to go back through where you came after you reached your objective.
Because of that, the time required to finish a round almost doubles. Also, some of the elements are changed: there are no more vendors to which you can go, but you can still loot the places, though the scarce amount of ammo will make you change your tactics a bit. Also, you cannot your upgrade your character anymore but choose from 6 pre-customized ones, each with different set of skills.
The Last Stand – This one is split into 2 other mods: The first one is called ‘Time Attack’ in which you have to go through 6 waves of zombies as fast as possible. The second is ‘Survival’ and lets you try your luck in surviving with unlimited waves and time at your disposal. You have all the weapons available to choose from.
Types of weapons and enemies
As used in the Borderlands series, there are several types and manufacturers for each of them. Each manufacturer (or prefix if you’re old-school RPG player) gives the weapon several advantages and disadvantages (in order to keep it balanced), allowing the player to use the kind that suits him the best instead of a pre-made weapon.
Weapon types are of both real and science-fiction elements, starting with pistol, shotguns, carbines and ending up freezing and tesla rifles. You are also allowed several types of throwers like grenades in Molotovs in order to keep the oncoming hoards in manageable numbers.
As we’re used with lots of zombie games, there are common zombies and special zombies, though here the line that separates them is a little blurred. The ones we know as specials in other games like spitters or fast ones are actually quite common here.
The special ones are usually based on extremely high speed (some people compared it to having a sneeze or even a blink) and incredibly high damage, but certain weapons can stop them in their track and even prevent them from attacking you, but I will leave this crucial information for you to find out by yourself.
Pros:
– Merciless enemies
– RPG features nicely implemented
– Support for 3rd party controllers and Xbox controllers
– Local 2 players co-op fun (One keyboard, one controller)
– Procedurally generated city (You’ll never see the same city twice)
– Extremely cheap
Genre: 8-Bit Side-scrolling Action RPG
Price: 2.99 $/€
Steam Store Page: Click Here
Score: 4.8/5
1. Dead Island: Riptide
I have already wrote about the first Dead Island right here, but I believe that its sequel is a much better realized zombie game. In Dead Island: Riptide, the 4 immune characters continue the trip on a boat when a storm appears out of nowhere, causing it to crash into rocks.
After a while, you wake up on a shore with a local checking on possible survivors around you. Once you pull yourself back together she attempts to bring you back before finding out that her safe area has been overrun by the zombies you thought you left behind.
What’s new in Riptide
Since the game is basically a continuation of the prequel, the players have the possibility to use their Dead Island characters in the new game, meaning that all the weapons and skill tree choices will be imported to Riptide and allow you to increase your level further to the new level cap which is 70.
While the game still has many of the first game’s mechanics like the Fury action skill there are some upgrades made to some other existing ones like weapon expertise which, when upgraded by doing its objectives you gain perks like more damage or health. Another greatly improved feature is the weapon stats making it easier to understand when upgrading it.
Also you can find a lot more weapon mods laying around in the areas and there are some new weapons like the Nail Gun and Flare Gun which can burn the enemies. Also, the fire weapons are a lot more common here so don’t worry about wasting lead here and there, in those bastards that hurry at you in the attempt of having a snack out of you. Players can now also install fences as mission objectives in the defense against waves of enemies.
A few new boss zombies have been added as well, increasing their variety. A new vehicle has also been added, an inflatable boat equipped with engine to traverse the jungle’s waters, filled with even more zombies. The entire user interface has been reworked to provide easier readability, the most noticeable being at the quest receiving interface, replacing that ugly paper with a normal RPG-like display.
Also there are far more people in distress that can be randomly found through the map from which you can make a quick buck by just killing the zombies around them. Another new addition are the bosses, 13 in number in the entire game and each of them possess unique abilities. Of course, the rewards for defeating them are quite big.
Maps and Enemies
As previously mentioned there have been added a number of special enemies, the most noticeable in my opinion being the Screamer, an entity with an instrument on her head that immobilizes the neck and holds the eyes open.
Other honorable mentions include Grenadier and Wrestler (which is similar but more deadly than the Thug). The only new addition in the common zombie area are the Drowners, which will always be found in or near a water area. Their style of attack includes the attempt of drowning the player or climbing the boat while he operates it, though using the boost will make them slip away.
The maps differ a bit from the prequel’s design, adding in Amazonian jungles, lakes and some research labs. You can also discover bungalows with vendors in them, items to scavenge but their repetitive design gets boring sometimes: same furniture placement, same items to be found.
Pros:
– Addition of new weapons, enemies and vehicles
– Redefined mechanics and updated interfaces
Cons:
– Some of the fights can be overwhelming.
Genre: Action Role-Playing, Survival Horror
Price: 10.99 $/€
Steam Store Page: Click Here
Score: 4.3/5
Similar Games: Dead Island, Dying Light.
So, there you have it, 6 zombie games with which I’ve had great fun and still am. There is not much to add here, with the exception that this article represents only my opinion and it doesn’t need to have the same preferences as yours. Some of you might ask why I left Left 4 Dead 2 outside the list; the answer is simple: I don’t like it that much, it doesn’t make you go into survival mode as often as other games like Dead Island and Killing Floor.