Contagion (PC game) - Another zombie game

[Neil]

Only tried this a bit so far, but seems OK! Especially for the peanuts it cost on Steam's current offer! You definately need to play it with a group who are willing to work togethor, ideally with voice coms!

[Mr. Clean]

Seems pretty cool....also seems like an attempt to pick up customers left over from the self-destruction of The War Z.

[Trin]

Contagion is a pretty decent zombie game. I've played a fair amount of it and enjoyed it. But it has significant problems which make it a lot less fun than it could be. Pros: - The maps are large and well thought out. - The objective system (for objective styled maps of which there was only 1 as I played it) is very good. It adds a ton of replayability. - The game encourages teamwork. - It overall has a decent zombie atmosphere. - The inventory system is good. - There is a nice variety of weapons and utility items (nailgun/boards, fire extinguisher, etc.). Minor nitpicks: - The flashlight has some technical difficulties. I suspect they are related to how the graphics engine handles illumination. - The hit detection at point blank range is just awful. - The maps are dated looking. Textures look low-res and models look low poly. But most distracting is that everything looks generic and sparse on detail. - Zombies can climb things that the human players cannot and they can climb things that are implausible for a zombie. Here is my main beef... the zombies... The zombies look marginal. They move oddly with their little shuffle/run. They animate oddly and repeat the same bad animation across multiple zombies (sometimes at the same time so they appear to be in synch). They seem to bob their heads around in a way that is unnatural and I suspect is purely for the benefit of making headshots more difficult, which is frustrating. Worst of all is their pathing and swarming behavior. They just don't act like zombies at all. They act like bots on a pathnode. They run in single file lines from wherever they are to wherever you are. They navigate around obstacles and through complex maps to find you. If they have no path to you then they just stand there. It is very distracting. It undermines all the positives of the game. Example - My group was inside a prison in a secured room with windows that showed an area with about a dozen zombies in it. The zombies were standing around randomly fully able to see us, but unable to get to us, so they were doing nothing. If you hit the glass or fired your weapon it makes a loud noise, but the zombies would do nothing. Nothing we did caused them to care about us. However... as soon as we pressed the button to open the cell door the zombies ALL started moving toward that door and filtering through it. At that point we could see them moving through a hallway (again with windows between us and them) and exiting through another door. About 30 seconds later they appeared at the door to our room and we began shooting them. They basically navigated through this maze of hallways and doors to reach us. In addition, a whole bunch of other zombies came as well. They were ones that were inside the same area as the first group but off in other rooms or corridors. They couldn't see us or the cell door we opened. Our plan was to have one person distract the zombies and get them to gather around the windows (and keep them there) while the rest of the team opened the door and crept up behind them. So the game mechanics defeated what was otherwise a solid plan. Boo!!! All in all we had a lot of fun with it though. Where the game works it works quite well. I'd recommend any zombie gaming fan give it a shot.

[Neil]

Full release due Apr 11th - http://www.indiedb.com/games/contagi...unced-and-more We would like to start this announcement off by announcing our intended Full Release date: April 11th, 2014 Yes this means we plan to have Barlowe Square, Pioneer Express, All new mocap animations, all new sounds, new features, and a proper balancing and polish phase all done in roughly 1 1/2 months. This also includes an all new Main Menu/UI/Hud and sometime between now and then updated characters, each character with a complete voice set, localization for numerous Countries across the globe, and our Release Trailer plus quite a bit more. Have to say, we (a group of us) lost interest in it quite quickly, but I guess we should give it another go when the full release arrives!