Review of Zombie Panic comparing to Brain Bread

As Brain Bread isnt released and there are limited information about Brain Bread a comparison is difficult and subject to change. I just wrote down my impressions and I hope I dont displease the Brain Bread dev team because I writing about Zombie Panic .

Most of us know about the other zombie mod out there called Zombie Panic released at Halloween.

The overall theme is the same as in Brain Bread. Theres a group of survivors and they have to fight off the zombies.
One player gets randomly picked in the Zombie team while the others play the part of the survivors. The start is a run for ammo and weapons as there are very limited and everybody tries to get a share of them. If a player gets killed they drop their ammo and will be spawning as a zombie. So with an easy start because theres only one zombie but as more players die and join the zombies theres a pretty good feeling of hordes of zombies and its hell of fun to see the last defence of the remaining survivors getting rushed by 10-15 zombies.

But there are some flaws within this system. I like to have very limited ammo because it promotes team play but on some maps there is such less ammo and weapons you always running around with your pistol only having 7 bullets and thats just enough killing one zombie if you archive some headshots. It would be a better system if the amount of ammo and weapons available would be dynamical changed based on the amount of players and maybe increase the zombie spawn count.
Another problem is that everybody can pickup every type of ammo even if he never need it. That way valuable ammo gets horded and lost. Theres a key to drop ammo but its to difficult because you have to select the ammo type first and afterwards you can drop ammo. It may be a better system if you can only pickup useable ammo and assign the drop ammo key so it just drops ammo of the selected weapon.
There are only 7 weapons. Your start weapons are a crowbar and a 9mm pistol with 7 bullets. The next weapons are placed on the map for pickup like:
- a .357 revolver killing a zombie with 3 shots maximum
- a shotgun with a 6 shell tube magazine downing a zombie in two shots maximum.
- a AR15 with a 30 box magazine
- a satchel chare with detonation trigger
- a bundle dynamite with fixed detonation

Zombie Panic comes with 10 maps but they are quite half-life standard quality and some are even quite ugly. Another downside is that there are only two player models, one for the survivors and one for the zombies. Also the weapon models are quite Half-Life standard.

So what are the differences?
The main difference is that Zombie Panic has a more competition outfit like Vampire Slayer. So in Zombie Panic you have a limited amount of different weapons you have to master to maximize your surviving chance while Brain Bread has a more fun outfit with 18 (?) weapons to play with. Another plus for Brain Bread is that there are better and more player models and a much better map quality with the downside that theres currently only one map but we all know good maps take time.
Based on the current information it looks also Brain Bread can deliver a much more varying game play with more weapons, AI controlled zombies and AI controlled friendly soldiers, policemen, a tank and a helicopter. Also Brain Bread has some kind of experience system to earn new skills and weapons (?) and it looks like there are mission driven maps like Sven Coop.

But Zombie Panic show that visual quality is not the main point for a game to have fun its always the game play and you can have a lot of fun in Zombie Panic Its pretty funny running around the map searching for any ammo or weapon while 10 zombies chasing you, dodging a zombie to get ammo lying behind them or see 15 zombies coming forward you last defence line while you are pretty short on ammo.

Both mods have potential. Zombie Panic needs to improve their overall quality especially of the maps and Brain Bread needs more maps on the long run. They are quite different enough to attract different players. I personally like more the fun/coop outfit of Brain Bread.

But this is only my 2 cents

PS. A funny thing is that on a Zombie Panic server I joined were a lot of regulars of the Natural Selection scene and if I got it right even Waldo of the DoD dev team showed up. Even new Half-Life 1 mods can get a lot of attention and I hope the same for Brain Bread.

Mhh ... i have no fun if i play ZombiePanic!

Okey, its funny to hide itself and to hear the Zombies walk.
But the biggest Problem is the Ammo.
Its crapy if 2 Zombies run on me, and i have 7 Bullets.
I know that i die and so its no surviving fight.

Right, right I agree in all points with you, Scylla. Gameplay is more important as grafic. But I think BB is the funnier mod too .

Thanks. Nice review. ^^

As i often repeat; there´ll be more maps for BB if it would be a success. Zombie Panic was meant to be a real mod; BB is a funmod (i created the map in 2 weeks), although it has potential. We don't want to have another PE experience (created a big mod, but nobody's playing it (anymore)).
And you can create your own maps with the FGD.

I like ZP its decent fun
BrainBread will be a success, don't worry Max
When the fgd gets released i'm going to start on a huge city or something else and work on it to its perfection!

Good review Scylla!
Maps in zp arent that good looking but its fun to play.
Also i think it should have more weapons :x Brainbread has 20 weapons! It will be fun! :)
Same thing annoys me,good ammo gets wasted when one player pickups everything :/

QUOTE

if I got it right even Waldo of the DoD dev team showed up.

WHAT? He was from DoD team? lol,i played with him on same server D:

Thanks for the review! I'm going to test it for sure

QUOTE ([PE]MadMax_FMM @ Nov 1 2004, 03:18 PM)

As i often repeat; there´ll be more maps for BB if it would be a success. Zombie Panic was meant to be a real mod; BB is a funmod (i created the map in 2 weeks), although it has potential.

That's why i said "need more maps on the long run" .

QUOTE ([PE]MadMax_FMM @ Nov 1 2004, 03:18 PM)

We don't want to have another PE experience (created a big mod, but nobody's playing it (anymore)).

Yea I think that was a really bitter experience for the dev team. I found a link to PE just 3 months ago and downloaded it but found no server. I downloaded it because the screenshots (esp. of the maps) were looking very good and the game play sounds interesting. But I found no server so I wasn't able to play online.

I think beside the features and technical and visual quality theres always one other point making a mod (or commercial game) successful or not and thats the overall theme.

For example much of the popularity of Day of Defeat is based on its WW 2 theme esp. if you consider that the game play isnt that creative with Capture the Flag and Mission Based modes. Another plus for Day of Defeat is for sure its technical and visual quality.
Natural Selection has his atmospheric Alien based theme (beside technical and visual quality) and surly a very good game play.

Brain Bread has also its own addictive theme. We will see if this theme can build and run a larger user base. It looks like the visual quality is given and if I assume the same technical quality as PE there a pretty good chance Brain Bread will be a successful mod. At least I hope it for u (and me )

QUOTE (Scylla @ Nov 1 2004, 07:45 PM)

...a pretty good chance Brain Bread will be a successful mod. At least I hope it for u (and me )

I totally agree!

ZP is good fun for a few minutes but it just wares off.

Aye... long enough to explore the map, kill maybe 20 people, try the guns... then the boredom strikes, you see how ugly and simple the maps are, and keep saying to yourself 'That would have been better if they'd done it this way' and 'this should have that' etc... It's just badly designed.

Very little inspired thought has gone into it.

For once...