Zombie-licious

By Dimorphic

It seems that every weekend now I am writing up something on a new gaming experience that I’ve had that as been out of the ordinary from my normal gaming life and this weekend is no different.

While many of you will have already played Infection in Halo 3, this weeks Double XP Weekend playlist has been designated The Living Dead and as such I grabbed a couple of friends and headed onto what would be my first real dig at the gametype that was born from Halo 2 played using the honour system (as Halo 2 didn’t support the rules of the game).

The basics of the varient are that there are two teams, zombies and humans. When a zombie kills a human (zombies are equipped with swords, humans with a shotgun and a pistol) the human becomes ‘infected’ and auto-switches to the zombie team where they commence feeding on the brains of the very people they fought with a minute ago.

There are other varients though, Creeping Death, which is where the zombies are invisible and wield gravity hammers and there are also rocket varients. Aptly called CreepingRockets, the humans in this game type are equipped with rocket launchers and spartan lasers while the zombies are again wielding gravity hammers. The other varient is Save One Bullet where the weapons the humans spawn in with are all they have for the entirety of the round, no ammo refills either.

Where in Halo 2 you only had the normal maps to play with in Halo 3 and with the power of the Forge there are endless opportunities and Bungie themselves have tapped into this, with all the map varients in the playlist being ‘Forged’ to work specifically with Infection.

Out of the ones that I played tonight my favrioute ones were the infection varients of Standoff, Foundry and Last Resort. Standoff was by far the most fun, with the human base having a courtyard attached to the outside with a mongoose inside and a mancannon that shoots you out into the middle of the map. Gaining control of the mongoose can be the difference between being the last man standing or being a mindless zombie and flying around the map while you have an army of undead chasing you is enormous fun.

Foundary’s take on infection is a house built in the middle of the map. There are various boxes, wire spools and dumpsters litter the outside and the house blocks out the sunlight that normally shines in from the windows in the roof of the warehouse. Having darker lighting really adds to the mood of playing a zombies match and makes it all the more fun. The humans basically end up on the roof fighting off the closing in zombies and it becomes an epic battle in relativley small fighting zone.

Last Resort is probably the least edited of the maps and will see the humans congregating on the path that is connected to the far wall near the sniper tower. With the zombies able to attack from both sides team communication is needed to keep yourself alive as at any time you could be fending off a duel attack.

Infection is only avaliable as a matchmaking playlist until Monday so you should get your zombie hacking, brain eating fun filled matches in while you can. Though you can always play a custom game and we’re always looking for good Forge map varients so send yours to Dimorphic 360 via the contact email and we’ll all get together and have a game.