I’m sure we’d all like to think that in a zombie apocalypse we’d be the gruff, grizzled survivor. The one that descends on a sea of undead monsters with nothing more than a machete and a sense of grim determination.
In reality, most of us are more likely to spend the first hour of a zombie outbreak crying/soiling our pants in a cupboard before one of the creatures hears us sobbing and breaks in for a snack. It is, to quote Thanos, inevitable.
Thankfully if video games are good for anything, it’s fantasy wish fulfillment and letting us pretend to be who we think we are in real life. Pandemic Express: Zombie Escape is a new multiplayer FPS that gives you the chance to prove if you’d be the cool dude or a plate of food.
Each game starts with 30 players, who need to get a train that’ll help them escape the zombie menace. Unfortunately, one of the players is already infected and their job involves spreading the infection to the rest of the players as quickly as possible. It’s basically zombie bulldog, which I’m absolutely down for.
Zombies can work together and tag the human players so that they become visible to all undead in the area, and can even throw each other to build up speed and reach areas humans might otherwise think they’re safe in.
Humans, meanwhile, can pick up weapons and do their best to fight back. Unfortunately, once a human dies they go over to the zombie team, while the zombies can respawn as many times as needed, with each death granting them an increased chance to get a deadly “ultra” ability.
While the brunt of each round will center on as many humans getting to the station as possible and escaping infection, once they make it to the train they’ll have to carry out one last stand as the zombies respawn in front of their only means of escape, leaving the survivors to battle it out until the train is safely clear of the station.
Naturally, this means its in the original zombie player’s best interest to spend the game building up an army of fellow zombies as quickly as possible. Whichever side has the most players will surely stand the best chance in each game’s climatic battle, after all.
At the time of writing, there’s an alpha test going on for Pandemic Express: Zombie Escape, but it’ll be entering early access on May 2. If you fancy learning a little more about the game, head over to the official website.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.