Recent reviews by Mighty Idea

When I originally tried out this game, I had no idea it would become one of my all time favorite games ever.
When you first start playing, you join an online lobby or make a lobby with friends on a map you're not familiar with. Nothing makes sense and everything is confusing. The default controls aren't incredibly intuitive, melee feels like it's worthless, you run out of stamina as with as little as two or three swings for some weapons, and although the guns feel great, good luck finding a decent amount of ammo (especially if you're playing online). But if you just have a bit a patience, remap some of the controls and understand that this isn't meant to be a fast-paced guns blazing action game, you might find yourself enjoying the game a little. Or a lot.

Someone, maybe one of the curators, I can't remember, said this game is similar to Resident Evil 2 only in first person, and I just love that comparison. I mentioned earlier that generally you might have a hard time finding a decent amount of ammo. If you're playing online with strangers, this pretty much always applies, however if you're playing with some friends, it's very possible you could get a nice stockpile of ammo going, especially if you're playing a survival map. In objective maps, however, ammo is very scarce for the most part. Occasionally, you might be blessed with more ammo than other runs, but the thing that makes this game always interesting and stressful (in a good way!) is that it's not usually very efficient trying to take on a horde of zombies, even with all the ammo you have. You're standing there, unleashing all of your might, but the longer you stand in one place, the more zombies start to come your way. It becomes too much, so your best chance is to try and run through and dodge as many zombies as you can, saving any ammo for when you really need it. It's really satisfying making it through the small openings you're given in a horde and potentially saving tons of ammo.

I also mentioned above that guns feel good, which is very true. Guns are a lot of fun to use in this game, and popping heads with bullets into a bloody burst feels as good as Resident Evil 4. They even made the piece of ♥♥♥♥ Ruger gun sounds way more satisfying in the last update they did, so even though the guns are still a piece of crap, at least they feel nice to use.

One thing that I love about this game is the difficulty. It's not easy. My friends and I have beaten every single official map, with one map in particular taking what seemed like weeks to get through (FEMA) and others taking days of attempts (Junction, Zephyr, and... Most of the survival maps, actually). This might seem like a weird comparison, but this game almost has that old "NES Hard" feel to it, because even though a lot of the times your plans are foiled by zombies growing elastic arms and somehow hitting you after you shoved them away and blasted them point blank in the face with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shotgun come ON HOW DOES THAT NOT KILL YOU, there's still an incredibly rewarding feeling from beating a map that kicked your ass tons of times. Oh, but uh, get some friends if you can, at least one, because I don't think most maps can be beaten solo. Also adding to the NES hard feel of the game is that most survival maps can actually be beaten in 10-20 minutes once you know what to do. They're fun to replay through too, because every single weapon in this game has an achievement, so if you're not playing with greedy scumbag strangers online, you and your friend(s) can decide over which weapons to use, changing how the run will go, even if slightly. Also adding to the replayability factor is that a lot of the item locations on maps are randomized. Some might dislike that sometimes you can get a fully loaded FN Fal on a table and other times a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flashlight, but in most cases, it's just different kinds of ammo, so it's nice to have some variety for the many times you will have to try to complete certain maps.

Speaking of maps, there are a lot of custom maps for this game too, which is awesome, because sometimes you just want something different. Truth be told, a lot of the custom maps I've played, survival ones especially, are easier than official maps, so if you're new to the game and having difficulties, it might be wise to try out some of the more lenient custom maps there are. I personally recommend a map called Museum, as it has a LOT of supplies to start you out with, and I really do mean a lot, and there are supply drops every few rounds as well. Plus the map looks good.

...And if you REALLY want to have a good time, download a map called "Mansion." You'll know you have one I'm talking about if the spawn point is always around a poker table on the second floor. Here's what you want to do, open the console command with the ~ button and bind the kill command to a key, preferrably one that's away from most of your other commmonly used keys so you don't acidentally kill yourself. Anyway, jump off the balcony towards the small railing and kill yourself in midair and watch your ragdoll smack against the railing and spaz out while it does flips and twirls as it flies off. Pure comedy gold, I promise you. Even better if you have a buddy to watch/join the fun.

Aside from that, do what you want! This game has a lot to offer, and it's FREE! This game made me buy Contagion, a $20 game also about zombies and survival. It's a piece of ♥♥♥♥, at least compared to this completely free game. A darn shame, but now you have $20 bucks that you didn't spend on ♥♥♥♥, you could buy TWO copies of the soundtrack for this game if you wanted.

A couple things to mention if you're still reading and are interested in the game:
"Mastering" melee combat is essential. First off, everytime you swing, SHOVE IMMEDIATELY AFTER. This will almost always hit the enemy and push them back, stopping them from attacking you, because you see, melee hits don't always stagger zombies, so you could swing a giant fubar at a zombie, crack its skull, and it's still swinging at you. Don't let that ♥♥♥♥ fly. Shove, shove, and shove again. Also, melee attacks can be charged by holding down the attack button. If you charge a melee attack for a full 3 seconds or longer and aim for the head, it will almost always kill any enemy with the exception of armored zombies. This works with nearly every weapon, even the wrench, but not your fists.

And finally, some good maps to start playing are
Objective:
Lakeside (Easiest objective map by far. It's short and pretty straightforward and gives you a decent amount of supplies.)
Chinatown (Not exactly easy, but a very fun map to play because overall it isn't very long and there's gun shop!)
Cabin (Also not extremely easy, but short.)

Survival:
Flooded (Supply drops after every second round and wide open ranges for melee attacking.)
Midwest (This map might seem hard at first, but if you search for the key to the locker in the gun shop, all of your problems are solved.)
Silence (Great atmosphere, lots of areas that you need to find keys and blowtorches to get into for more supplies.)

I've put about 30 hours into this game from a week of playing. I'm not trying to say that's a lot by Steam standards, but as for me, I've been having a lot of trouble finding new games (or just new to me) that can hold my interest for a while. I always seem to just go back to my favorites (I replayed Resident Evil 4 for probably the 50th time again a couple weeks ago). This game surprised me, especially because I did NOT think I would like it. I got it because a few of my friends had it, and it was on sale. But man, it's pretty great.

I would like to point out a couple things I don't like though. I mean, it's not perfect. For one, I find the attack animations to be incredibly lazy. It's hard to put into words, but you know how you can tell the difference between flash animation and hand drawn animation? It's kind of like that. In a game like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Or Aria of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, etc. etc.), the attack animations are done by hand for each weapon. Weapons of the same type, like swords and whips use the same general direction of attack, like in Terraria. But in Terraria, there's one animation for most weapons (the overhead swing) and they use the same sprite as the weapon icon and just turn it around, skewing all the pixels and making it lose its... Pixel-ness.

On the topic of attacking and weapons, I honestly don't enjoy combat that much. For the most part, ranged seems just put melee to shame. I haven't gotten to hard mode though, and according to my friends, the game can change quite a bit from there, so who knows what I'd think of that. And even though I don't like combat that much, getting new gear is probably the most enjoyable part of this game to me.