Giveaway of the Day - Zombiemurder

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of ‘potential’ cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain what your reasons were for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with more block types for the levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.

Regards

Whiterabbit aka Stephen

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Problems installing, activating and running today’s game:

If you have difficulty downloading or activating the game you can try again later or do one of the following – for example once downloaded when you click on the dual activation and set up file you may get the message “Failed to connect. Please try again later” Check to see if your internet explorer isn’t offline (thanks to MrSnoozles/Mike and GMMan for that fix). If the previous suggestion doesn’t work go check out previous comments from the last several weeks and look for comments from GMMan and Mike. They have also posted their possible fixes for this problem.

Mike suggests that you check to see if Internet Explorer is offline (even if you use firefox). If it is make sure that it’s online thn try again. I’ve always tried re-booting my modem and/or router with some success, though Mike has said that doing that does nothing. Still, it’s worth a try if all else fails.

If you are getting the black screen problem right click on the games executable and select properties then click on the compatibility mode and select the disable visual themes. This should fix the problem, if not try disabling the display scaling on higher dpi settings and disabling the desktop composition.

Other fixes include changing your screen resolution, installing the latest direct X (remember that XP uses DX 9 or earlier only, Vista uses DX 10 or before and Win 7 DX11 or before). Also try updating your graphics drivers. The main two chip manufacturers are NVIDIA and ATI both of which offer driver downloads for free. Just go to the respective manufactures home page and you’ll find a link to the driver download page. To find out which graphic card or graphics chip your computer uses type in Dxdiag in the search field (Vista or Win 7) or the run command (XP); this opens up the DirectX diagnostics panel. click on the display tab and look to the left panel. You should easily see what graphics card or chip you are using. (This is required information when selecting the correct download from the developers site).

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Installation:

Zombie Murder downloads to a 49.3MB zip file that unpacks to a read me and dual activation and set up file (for those that are new to the game giveaway project this means that once the game has been installed it should automatically register. If you have any problems please read the problems section above. If you still fail to get the game to work, you can get this game from MyPlayCity 24/7 together with the sequel called Zombie Murder 2: Hell Arrives. (I’ve posted links at the end of the review in the alternatives section.

Once installed you’ll have to create your own shortcut so make a note of where it installs to. To delete the game just manually delete the games installed folder. You won’t find the game in the uninstall a program section (add or remove in XP) .

Introduction:

The sun had set over the horizon, and darkness enveloped the town. They suddenly appeared from the darkness – half dead, half alive – Zombies!

They are coming at you, red bloody eyes bulging, and they think only about one thing – to eat your heart. Are You ready to deal with them? Scared? Don’t be afraid! You’re far from defenceless. A big battle robot with two huge guns is under your control. His firepower can sweep the crowd of zombies, using machine guns, rockets, flamethrowers, lasers and other weapons. But not so fast… Zombies with chainsaws will appear, Zombies spitting acid, giant Zombies…and more and more keep coming at you! It’s a fight to the finish, may the best man win! Zombie Murder – A brutal shooter with good graphics, special effects and hard-edged music. A large arsenal of weapons, crowds of monsters, seas of blood and explosions…

Reference http://fly-games.com/content/view/60/37/ accessed Oct 2011

The Game:

Today’s game giveaway is a top down zombie shooter with excellent graphics and loads of different weapons to use to try and keep your character alive. Fight through 30 progressively harder levels using several different weapons ranging from your usual guns through to rocket launchers, flame throwers, plasma guns and death rays as well as bombs . If you’ve ever played Nation Red or one of the many Alien or Zombie Shooters, you’ll know what to expect with this zombie hordes style of game play. Basically you are a lone character protected by a futuristic robot like body trying to survive endless swarms of zombie hordes that will follow you around the games arena. You get a decent selection of weapons to shoot these slow moving zombies. Beware though, for if they touch you too often you will surely die , thankfully when you lose all of your lives you get the option to start a new game or carry on where you left off. Zombies range from your average looking zombie, through to chainsaw wielding zombies and giant zombies that wield massive clubs. As you’d expect these are harder to kill, so avoid them if you can. Apart from a generous supply of weapons that appear as glowing circles you can pick up extra lives, tohugh I think you are limited to only one extra live because I picked up several while playing yet I only re-spawned once after I’d died before I got the message to restart.

I’ve posted some videos of game play which should give you an idea what you can expect plus a load of offers that are available via steam at this time check out Didamatic for deals from other providers such as GOG, Direct to Drive and Impulse. There’s always games for sale these days, but the ones I’ve listed over on Steam are specifically Halloween orientated. You’ll find some amazing bargains on some triple A games as well as loads of arcade games. 

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_yJyEY4FMI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otJJu-XrCl0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv802CldvQA

System Requirements:

• Windows 98/ME/XP/Vista
• Pentium III processor
• 256 Mb RAM
• 50 Mb hard drive space
• 32 Mb video memory
• Sound card or chip
• DirectX 7 or higher

Conclusion:

If you like the old Alien shooter and RIP games you’ll love this game. It’s more on the lines of last year’s Nation Red zombie shooter. If you don’t like colourful zombie shooters, then you’ll probably hate this. Personally I’d rate this at a decent attempt to emulate the best of the top down shooters, but it’s not got a lot of substance other than manically mashing your keys to survive onslaught after onslaught of largr than life zombies.

If you want something mindless to do for a while then this is definitely a game for you.

I’d score it a 6.4 based on the scores below, tohugh personally I liked the game and gave the game play a 7 out of 10. The score was lowered due to it’s lack of originality replayability and audio (which would be a little too heavy for the average user, plus the sounds were all or nothing)

Game play – 7
Graphics – 8
Audio – 6
Re-playability – 6
Originality – 5

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Alternatives:

Generally Zombie Murder is usually around $7, but you can download it for free 24/7 from MyPlayCity. when installing MPC games be sure to uncheck any toolbar or home page hijacks. that said i installed a game yesterday and even tohugh i unchecked all of the check boxes I still ended up with a MPC toolbar, though it only seems to be the most recent additions that do this most games are tool bar free.

Zombie Murder

http://www.myplaycity.com/zombie_murder/

Zombie Murder 2: Hell Arrives

http://www.myplaycity.com/zombie_murder_2/

Steam have a Halloween sale on at the moment where you can get the following zombie games for knock down prices:

Nation Red – (£2.72)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/39800/

Trapped Dead – (£3.99)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/46540/

Ghost Busters: Sanctum of Slime – (£3.49)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/9990/

Atom Zombie Smashers – (£2.04)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/55040/

Burn Zombie Burn – (£2.38)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/50510/

RIP Trilogy – (three Games only 75p/$1)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/2540/

Zombie Driver – (£1.75)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/31410/

Terraria – (£2.99)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/105600/

Woody Two Legs: Attack of the Zombie Pirates – (£0.87)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/49320/

Zombie Shooter 2 – (£1.75)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/33180/

Zombie Shooter – (£0.99)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/33130/

Plants & Zombies – (£3.49)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/3590

Dead Horde – (£5.35)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/27940/

Plus a whole load more including Bioshock 1 & 2, Dead Island, Dungeons, Overlord complete Pack, Zombie Bowl ‘o’ Rama, Painkiller collection, Nancy Drew Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake and Curse of Blackmoor Manor, Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the ripper and The Awakened Re-mastered, Left 4 Dead 2, Limbo, Devil May Cry 3 & 4, Pound of Ground, Train sim 3 with Trains v Zombies DLC, Dead Space 1 & 2, Penumbra collectors pack , Amnesia: The Dark Decent, Rock of Ages, Bunch of Hereoes, Zombie Pirates, Space Pirates & Zombies, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, Stalker bundle (three games), Scratches: Directors cut, Killing Floor Bundle, Resident Evil 5, Haunted House, Silent Hill homecoming, SAW, Ghost Master, Dracula Origin, Dark Fall: Lost Souls, Cthulhu Saves the World, Borderlands, Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, and finally Fear 3. You can check all of this fantastic deals via the following link:
http://store.steampowered.com/sale/scary_sale_2011

I don’t play shooter games, so I am passing on this game. However, the graphics I saw in the screenshots were pretty good, and I felt they deserved some kudos.