Oh boy oh boy oh boy, where to begin with this game?

Look at the logo there, nice and cartoony, and probably the thing they spent the most time on, it seems to imply over the top zombie shooting fun, and while the forth and fifth words are certainly present, the first three and sixth words got off around part way through the production phase.
Fort Zombie is the mutant offspring which occurs when an admittedly nice idea for a game meets someone with little commitments to his ideas.

Before I could play the game

Fort Zombie is a 3rd person survival horror shooter with rpg elements and a dash of management game to it, it does all of these things with a surprising amount of quality, very little.

Now, this game is simply broken to an alarming extent, it's actually a bigger part of the game than the graphics (however in some cases these two aspects collide) And to learn this in the first minutes of the game shocked me.
I installed the game and hit the exe, the tool bar symbol to show the game was in action was there and yet, nothing, no screen displayed, no lag, my computer did nothing for a minute, then nine more.

It finally came to life, at least in that time I decided that I may as well give this game some publicity during that time, but best to play it first and decide whether I should be positive or otherwise, and so I began, after setting my character presets, deciding not to spend long fumbling around with the stats so I can make up the ten minutes and have a run at the game, I start the game.
The game loads an empty road, devoid of enemies, I hit it W and the camera pans forward, not a surprising detail that the traditional key for forward moves you forward. (+1 point to the game on that note)Yet for a split second I believe I've bought a zombie survival real time strategy.
No, I learn after finding a weapon in box and equipping it that either I'm levitating the gun from off screen or the game left my player model behind.

So, before consulting with the internet on these problems I reset and see if the old on/off rhetoric would fix my problems, my player model was loaded when I got back on. (So ultimately, it didn't fix my problems.)

I must note I had heard little about the game before release, I had some knowledge it was trying to be a tense survival game and some saying it was meant to be a fun zombie blaster with ammo conservation, so I decided to approach the game I can now review as a 1 life run survivalist.

Bugs, gameplay, looting, AI and more bugs.

If it were possible.

After loading, creating a character with stats of my customization (good at shooting, stabbing, clubbing and looking), accepting the tutorial, the game shows its first problem, collecting loot.
To collect loot in this game you cannot click on an obvious box right away, you must first hold F while your character stands still for about five painful seconds and scopes the horizon to spot a box that I had been spawned directly in front of, all while the tutorial dialogue insults me for being blind, I'm not complaining about trying to throw in a bit of humour, but still.

After my character picks up that there is indeed a box in front of him the game allows me to do what I should have been able to do in the first place, simply click on the box and take everything out, the game is merciful enough to allow you to notice multiple boxes in your vicinity.
So, it gives me a gun, some ammo, and no way to arrange it easily on the inventory grid to allow me to carry much more and the tutorial tells me to head for the fated Fort Zombie.

And so I can finally play it, and with the controls and aiming system in mind let me tell you this, the game does feel at the very least enjoyable, and it lends to some tense moments, the aiming system aims around the whole screen and A and D turn you left and right, it's awkward and not too well thought out, but with some play time you start to grow accustomed to this, it shouldn't be put to much use elsewhere but it feels right for a game that's trying to be hard without too much fake difficulty.

For the most part you can outrun zombies, and for the part, you can OUTWALK them, the regular zombies attack delay means you can simply keep the most prominent members of the horde at bay by simply going for a stroll around town.

But then come the other enemy types, built to make the smaller horde an actual threat, among them you have the charging football zombies, gun wielding police zombies, and larger gun wielding army zombies, for the most part they aren't in any way too hard or too easy, the zombies with guns are so wildly inaccurate at the worst of times they aren't worth your own bullets, and the football zombies are the classic one direction charge enemy.

The AI is a blithering idiot, I say that in the sense that if there were real zombies they would be offended to be affiliated with these guys, a zombie will spot me, run for me, I'd outwalk their delayed attack, run around a corner, and I'd be forgotten in an instant, zombies will batter in a door to get to me, finally break it in, then completely forget I'd existed while staring right at me, leading me to feel awkward around these creatures rather than threatened.

The sprint system at least works well, kind of overshadowed when you can literally walk away from your problems, this game gives you staggeringly little sprint to begin with, and that's assuming it improves, not to mention, the game makes you walk when you run out of stamina, which ultimately causes no problems, kind of defeats the purpose for now.

Collecting loot only gets worse when you're not prompted, little indication is given, you just hold F, and hope something is given to you, nearly every building is devoid of supplies, and it isn't made easier by the way it is spread around, there are several objects commonly (near enough everywhere) repeated in the game world, and they can hold an object, it's just that most don't, I wouldn't have minded this problem if they cut the looking stat and made me rely on my personal looking stat, it does kill immersion rather well.

But while I did encounter all of these problems on my way to the first fort, I was enjoying it, oddly enough, the games oddly poor controls make it quite a rush when you enter a house, scramble the mouse awkwardly back to the door, slightly annoyed at it, manage to close it behind you, leaving your pursuers behind, only to fully turn around and be assaulted by the zombie you didn't take note of as you madly entered.

The annoyingly long not before mentioned reload time on your starting weapon becomes less annoying when you're finally loaded and firing into the approaching zombies, the bad AI actually allows you to save ammo as most forget you've simply entered an alleyway, all the small annoyances actually feel purposeful when playing as a newly thrown in survivor and don't cause too much problem, but ultimately would be better if improved, or at the very least made to feel more intentional.

Graphics and lag
Before I go on to the fort itself I'd like to take quick note of the graphics, simply put.

Now, I don't care much for graphics, if it plays well I'll ignore them, I don't care that the game itself looks like it has come from 2003, what makes me really take note of the graphics is this, I have LESS lag running GTA 4 on medium graphics, I run this game on medium, which looks a wee bit worse than that picture up there, and when the game does clear up and stop lagging to a point where it hinders how well you can play, then it's fine, on from that.

Fort Zombie
Once you arrive and claim your fort, the game kicks off for real, after clearing your fort (this will take long if you play on the bigger forts) it's here you learn the game wants you to work on your own, you're given a prompt you must click away, a short congratulations message, then left with no objective or new button presses, until you realize the unmentioned DONE button on the bottom corner of the screen.

After this, you get the screen which will become your management hub, this is a small part of the game, you can assign survivors you get tasks within the fort, put items in a fort based inventory so they can be automatically consumed by your character later, admittedly that's only food items so it's little problem, and the mission and fort buttons.

this is where part of the survival gameplay gets killed, your fort is now an individual map, cut off from the town, there is little discernible reason as to why, also its where I saw the third big sign of shoddy production work (thus proving how unobservant I am.) the map has no built in invisible walls, if you walk to the edge, you're dropped into a never ending pit, luckily, the fort button will just drop you back in your fort and save you from having to start from the beginning, had you forgot to save, had you not realized the game has not given you the option to save yet.

So I spend a few minutes learning the way the fort works, you can set where barricades should be rather simply, and they are added to a rather simple task list you can set your survivors to do, I then find the again awkward to use mission screen, at first you click on your hub icon and then one of several colour coded pegs denoting the location of either survivors, weapons or supplies, and no you can't go out to town and do these missions in sequence, the game works under an admittedly slow time limit, and along with that the ultimate objective.

In twelve in game days a massive zombie horde will hit your fort, so you've got to organize using whatever you can find, so to do a mission you must go to your map mission screen, choose a peg, an unsettlingly long amount of time is taken away from you (it also goes down in real time as well.) and allows for only that one objective to be fulfilled, and this may have been intentionally done to make you decide how to spend your game time wisely on what you should have prepared for your final battle, but then when you consider how little stuff your character can hold in one run it starts making more sense that you can only make for one objective at a time.

But then I learned why I could not make my first run an intense try to survive game, the game is so poorly made that it could turn into an insanely crippled lag fest of which I've never seen in a game before, when trying to change levels, it seems to do it randomly and it gives me no indication of what is causing it, changing my graphical settings and new games don't seem to cure it.

So in the end of it all

So I had to hit the end of this game, I tried a few more characters and hoped the flaw had been a one off, this game is for the most part bad, I wouldn't say buy it, definitely not at this point, my PC is considered a fairly decent high-spec computer and I've heard from others it is even more crippled on theirs, add the fact the game requires software and service pack add-ons and updates it does not supply in the installation, I was merely lucky to avoid the issues and actually play the game to the degree I did, apparently.

In the end it feels like a bad zombie MOVIE, cheesy and poorly done, but in the end it is enjoyable.

I'd say that most shouldn't buy it now, for it's sheer brokenness, I still feel ripped off of the 7 pounds I had spent on it considering how unplayable it can be, but maybe if the developers are paying attention they might go about updating it and making it possible to play, so I'd say keep an eye if you ever hear of an update, and read carefully as too how much of it has been fixed, I'm hoping I'm not blindly optimistic when I say the devs update it, I hope they try to make this game at the least playable, because I do see some potential in the material, I hope you've enjoyed reading.

Edit: Actually, allow me to change that simile, it feels more like watching a bad, cheesy zombie movie in a DVD player filled with jam, if it actually somehow works you'll at least find some entertainment value, even if it stems from how poor it all is.

We can wait, haha.

I can't. I didn't realize it was out already.

Quote me so i don't miss this, teh.

Thanks for the consideration AkJay, and it's finally done, felt under a time limit when I cocked up there, haha.

teh_snakerer:
snip

Hey! You never quoted me to bring me back to this review!

For shame!

I've seen some limited information that a series of bug fixes and patches were released; I was wondering if you had patched the game and fired it up again to see how it compares.

thiosk:

teh_snakerer:
snip

Hey! You never quoted me to bring me back to this review!

For shame!

I've seen some limited information that a series of bug fixes and patches were released; I was wondering if you had patched the game and fired it up again to see how it compares.

Sorry, I posted it and slept, then came back and made some thread modifications without looking at the posts, either way it miraculously started working better soon afterwards, I did reinstall SP3 for a different piece of software and suddenly this improved dramatically, note I later realized I'd already had SP3 on the computer so I can't say with any real knowledge if this effected whether it works or not.

Either way, while I did say the gameplay at least felt enjoyable, when I could actually play further the game became even less intuitive, the ambushing zombies and slow travel times, it all felt preposterously slow and the fun travels through the map felt less and less fun as it went.

Basically, it dies really quickly, feels like the game cutting me off was rather fitting.

Thank you for the review. I had Googled for reviews (because I had found the game on Gamersgate for about two bucks only a few months after release) and this was the best that I found.

whatever you do dont listen to him. Ive bought fort zombie and it is really fun. yes zombies forget you whenever you turn a corner. However if they followed you when you did that you would run out of stamina and die. because almost every place has atleast one zombie in it. The only zombie free zones are some housed and a few backyards.

Also if there was an exclamation mark (which there is if you find somehting) over everything lootable the game would be too easy. You would be able to get all the supplies you need with no work. Plus just because something is their doesnt mean its what your going to loot because it shows the chance something will be there. for instance if their is a stack of beans on the counter. several might have been opened. a few gone bad and some whatever conditon they are in. the system in incourages scavenging and looking for stuff. you know kind of like what you would do in a real looted city in a zombie apoclypse.

Also about the enemys. you obviously havent played long enough to meet the jogger zombies or get heashotted by a cop or military man. or run out of stamina after being chased by a hoard

about the graphics. GTA 4 doesnt have every building accesible, hundreds of lootable items, and alot of zombies while it is loading.So yes your graphics card is going to go through strain.

About the being cut off. its so that you cant go out to the city and get a bunch of supplies in real time in effect cheating the system. Basicly its to stop you grom getting all of the (insert zombie survival supplies here) to last till the end of the game in half a day

But then I learned why I could not make my first run an intense try to survive game, the game is so poorly made that it could turn into an insanely crippled lag fest of which I've never seen in a game before, when trying to change levels, it seems to do it randomly and it gives me no indication of what is causing it, changing my graphical settings and new games don't seem to cure it.

simple answer. you need a better graphics card.

If you want my review of the game (ive even completed it) here it goes

You start creating your character, you can choose one of 8 previous proffesions determining your skill and adjust the skills as you like. then you get transported to the town and can choose to take a tutorial or not. you then start of with a crowbar or pistol. according to your skills you have 5 options. run like a jogger zombie to the fort. use your pistol to kill your way to the fort. use your crowbar to kill your way to the fort. sneak past the zombies. loot and slowly advance to the fort.

getting to the fort is VERY VERY hard in the latest patch. expect to die atlest 2 times before you make it. once your their you have to clear out all of the zombies. when you clear them out depending on the fort you can get weapons and supplies.

Once youve done everything with your fort you press done and go to the fort screen thing. i dont know what to call it,but you can do a few things with it. view fort inventory, turnon and off generators, drop off items, equip items, set jobs for survivors, and go on missions. when you get their there arent any missions so you press end day and there are color coded pens for the missions. blue= survivors green=weapons purple=supplies= food or building materials.

you need all of these things to make it to the last day. like the other person says it take alot of time to travel. this is because it would be boring to watch yourself travel through the city in real time or go there manually. Also zombies can attack your fort or ambush you along the way.

The survivor missions are what they sound like. follow the blue pin on your compass until you see some boraded up house or circle barricades. the survivors are VERY varies, including 7 year olds at the youngest and 96 or 98 at the oldest. Yes, you can give both of them guns, no not just pistols, i mean m1 garands, M16s, axes, etc. each survivor also has a backstory and special skills. like a formor nurse will be perfect for your camp nurse or not so perfect but pretty good for your camp doctor. soldiers and cops will be good for the raiding party and mechanics and electricians will be good for building traps and barricades

Weapons missions are basicly go to site. get weapons and ammo. come back

supplies is the same as weapons missions but with food or materials.

When youve got alot of supplies and the final day comes all your hard work is fuffiled and you either repel the zombie invadors or die trying.

This game is terrible. i got it thinkin that it would be fun. Yeah, i was WAYYYYYYYYYYY out of my mind. The game sucks and the zombies like dont die. u cut off their arms legs heads and THEY STILL ARENT DEAD. you are left with a stupid living torso. This game gets a 0.5 out of 10