By James L. Boyle
1/4 : Absolutely Horrible
Where to even begin? It’s rare to find a game that manages to get everything wrong, even in the saturated indie market. However The Slaughtering Grounds, a zombie first-person-shooter, somehow manages to achieve this dubious distinction.
To be blunt the game looks utterly horrid. Even excusing the fact that this is a 1-3 man project (and that there are better examples out there), the game looks and runs like a PS2 that’s been hurled down a flight of steps. Textures, objects, even enemies flicker in-and-out of existence and the frame rate chugs like an asthmatic diesel engine even on minimum settings.
The actual gameplay further lets the game down. The content consists of a paltry three multiplayer maps, each filled with random clutter with no connectivity between them. The enemies range disjointedly from zombie Girl Scouts to escapees from a Quake mod, and all have the same two modes of behaviour. Either they stand around staring into space (even when you’re five feet away) or they run after you like a carnivorous conga line.
Other problems include totally random ammunition drops– sometimes only a single bullet; weapon models obscuring crosshairs; and progress being determined not by skill but by a timer ticking down until they are teleported to the next map on a continuous loop.
In the interest of fairness there is some fun to be had if played with friends, such as when a bug sends the player rocketing up into the sky like Wile E. Coyote.
The Slaughtering Grounds has been the most difficult game I’ve reviewed to date. It is absolutely horrible from start to finish, and trying to find anything in its favour has been like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The kindest possible recommendation would be to simply avoid it like the plague.
