Zombieville
Dungeon of Shame Entry #4

Developer: Psygnosis
Publisher: Psygnosis
Release Date: Summer 1998 (Europe)

Introduction by Randy Sluganski
Dungeon review by Jaromir Król

    
	

    Bad adventure games know no boundaries, and their slimy tentacles have 
been known to spread their putrid stench across the civilized world. Such 
is the case with our newest inductee into the Dungeon of Shame.

    Zombieville by Psygnosis has not been and, if there is a God, will not 
be released in the United States. This game first attracted my attention 
when I noticed posts on the newsgroups vociferously attacking this new 
release. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the posts were all from 
European countries. Unable to acquire the game myself, I then started to 
e-mail some of the newsgroup posters.

    As luck would have it, I had the good fortune to be answered by a 
fellow from Poland, Jaromir Król, who agreed to do this review of 
Zombieville for Just Adventure. Jaromir is a respected reviewer of 
adventure games in his country, and we are proud to present his 
contribution. This review presents what are two firsts for the Dungeon of 
Shame--this is the first "new release" to be instantly entered into the 
Dungeon, and it is the first entry to be reviewed by someone other than 
me.

    So sit back and enjoy(?) and, after having sufficient time to recover 
our facilities, we will return with another journey to everyone's favorite 
Dungeon.

This Is What Happened

I saw Zombieville on a lower shelf in a game shop. I haven't heard about 
it before, which was the reason why it intrigued me. The box had an 
infantile, lame drawing on it, but the story and the screenshots seemed 
tempting. They promised a nice, haunted house story--something along the 
lines of Alone in the Dark, The Legacy, or Resident Evil. Something came 
over me, and I decided to give it a try. Now I can say that it teaches me 
not to trust me feelings, but only the reasoning ... sorry, Obi Wan 
Kenobi, you were wrong.

According to the text on the box, you play in a "pseudo 3D 
environment"--yes, Psygnosis seems to be proud of it, instead of hiding 
this fact in an era of Quake and Unreal 3D engines. Zombieville is a DOS 
game, which says something about its age. But if you think that being a 
DOS game means that Zombieville loads faster and crashes less frequently 
than a Win95 application, you are wrong ... this game is an exception. As 
a matter of fact, it's an exception in almost everything. And this is no 
praise.

It Starts

The intro seemed interesting enough. A military base in an old "cursed" 
city has apparently been running illegal experiments, and, as usual, they 
goofed. Now there are zombies and all other sorts of nasty creatures 
running all over the place, and it is the player's duty to stop them.

I start the game. The "hero" doesn't look promising--an aging, balding man 
with a beer belly. For reasons unknown, he is wearing red jeans. Not 
exactly your typical action hero. But I cannot check his looks any 
longer--the zombies appear and approach me. I instantly begin to hate the 
game controls--they are quite possibly the worst controls ever created. 
You can control the guy via keyboard/joy/pad, but can only shoot and use 
object with a mouse. And you cannot reconfigure it.

Anyway, the zombies are too close, so, just like the manual says, I hold 
Ctrl and run, in hope to get to the base without the need to fight the 
creatures.

What ...? What's this ...? As I start running, the zombie sprites begin to 
move about 10 times faster than normally. They literally fly through the 
screen and have my character in their clutches in less than one second. 
Amazingly, their animation is still as slow as usual. As Mr Black dies, 
spurting ridiculously large amounts of pixelated blood around, I begin to 
wonder if what I have just witnessed is a bug.

Random, Random Everywhere

I'm starting the game again. This time I use the gun--hooray! The zombies 
are dead! Well, all right, they were dead already, but now they are dead 
for good. But wait ... the zombies reappear. Randomly. At random times. 
Sometimes they spill something that looks like confetti all over the 
place. Sometimes they don't spill--they just kill. Randomly. Randomness 
seems to be the favorite attitude of the game makers. Soon I discover that 
some vital objects that you must collect in order to progress in the game 
are also distributed randomly. A zombie I shot in the first minute had a 
door pass on him. Having collected it, I got my character killed; next 
time I had to run around for 20 minutes, shooting about 30 zombies until 
one of them dropped the pass. Actually, it was quite interesting; later 
on, I found the pass on a skeleton, and then again on a zombie, but this 
time in a different location.

The game is so difficult it's ridiculous. At that moment I start to 
suspect that its makers were afraid to allow the player to see the rest of 
their "genius," so they decided to kill him in the very beginning. I would 
use one of my good ol' cheatin' tools to get more objects and make the 
game easier, but I don't have any items at the beginning, so I can't even 
try. Damn.

Suddenly I recognize the music in this stage--a very nice MIDI tune, but 
somehow familiar. It sounds almost exactly like the main theme from an 
'80s horror flick, Return of the Living Dead. Coincidence? Or perhaps 
plagiarism?

Did You Miss Me?

Perhaps you have just thought, "At least there are no deadly bugs in this 
game." My thoughts exactly ... or at least they were, until I entered the 
army base. Bugs can be really annoying, but until they are so dangerous 
that they prevent you from completing the game, you can live with them. 
Zombieville has never crashed yet, nor has it caused any serious problems 
...

... However, I have just started it. Inside the base, I decide to check 
the time I spent in this game. The manual says that the timer can be 
invoked by pressing "T," which is what I do. And then ...

    "ERROR: file M_4.HNM not found ..."

Hmm. Either the guys at Psygnosis have a different understanding of the 
word "timer" than I do, or the game crashed because one of its files is 
missing from the CD. Apparently, I will have to avoid using the timer, 
then. All right. Having restarted the game, I continue, meeting two 
soldiers with whom I am supposed to have a conversation. Very well, then 
... chit-chat, chit-chat, I choose an answer ...

    "ERROR: file T3.DAT not found ..."

That was rather unexpected. I run the game again, choosing different lines 
in the conversation. Success! The characters open a door, letting me in. I 
try to talk to them again, to see if they have any more info. At this 
moment I am transported to the door again, and have exactly the same 
conversation as before. Wait a minute! This time when I press "T," the 
timer appears and there is no crash! I won't investigate it, though, since 
the door is now open! I hear "All right, Sergeant, open the door," and 
then a sound of door being opened. Considering the amount of bugs I have 
found so far, I wouldn't be surprised if the door actually locked itself, 
or if the game crashed again. It doesn't happen! But I still feel I should 
exit the game and replay this fragment, just in case. I press "Esc" to 
invoke the main menu ... and am suddenly returned to DOS, this time with 
no explanation of the crash whatsoever.

Alpha, Beta, Gamma

At this moment I had enough and decided to take a closer look at the 
game's insides and also contact Psygnosis. Looking at the contents of the 
game files, I found a short text "Alpha 1.4." Things seem clear now ... an 
alpha version of an application is a pre-beta release, or, in other words, 
a version that has not even entered the stage of testing for bugs and 
other errors yet. Apparently, Zombieville is an alpha project that someone 
at Psygnosis released as a full game. Unbelievable? Indeed, Watson ... but 
when you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however 
unbelievable, is true.

At that moment, I remembered another peculiar thing about the game--I have 
never seen any ad promoting it, or, for that matter, any mention about it.

"It Don't Be Me Child, Sor!"

A look at the Psygnosis web site reveals yet another mystery--Zombieville 
gets no mention there. It's not among released products, it's not in the 
project section--it does not exist. The parents disown their child. Gee, I 
wonder why? And why is there literally no mention of Zombieville makers in 
the game or in the manual? Only Psygnosis can answer that ... but if I 
learned that my company wants to release my product whose testing I have 
not even started yet, and which I suspect to be still bugged, I would not 
sign my name under it, either.

Psygnosis and Psychosis

After all the "adventures" that I had with their game, I have e-mailed 
Psygnosis about Zombieville and the problems with it, but they ignored the 
letter. I was actually expecting that--after all, just releasing 
Zombieville was an obvious act of ignoring the customers. Psygnosis should 
remember one thing, though--companies are dependent on their customers, 
and if they go on ignoring them, the least they should is a heavy loss of 
profits. Customers can choose their favorite company, and they vote with 
their money, after all.

Final Grade: F