“Asymmetric gaming” wasn’t a term that I had heard all that often (or ever, really) before Nintendo made it the buzz word of E3 this year. Nintendo uses the term to describe multiplayer gaming that involves very different experiences for each user. It involves different technologies, different vantage points, and different gameplay mechanics.
After my hands-on with Ubisoft’s ZombiU multiplayer mode, I can safely say that I understand it much better.
ZombiU‘s version of asymmetric gameplay involves one player using the tablet-featured Gamepad and another using a Pro Controller.
The multiplayer is completely off-line, which is a bit of a disappointment in the common era of video games. For this mode, which was heavily based around traditional capture the flag, the player with the Pro Controller played the game as a random Survivor trying to make his or her way to one of the four flags. It felt like every other FPS game, with the helpful button mapping of firing a weapon and meleeing used the same right trigger button. Holding the left trigger activated aiming of the gun weapon, which would let you fire the shotgun, assault rifle, etc. It made for an easy defense if I was overrun by zombies and panicking, as always having my finger on one attack button meant that I could always defend myself, not search for the correct button to push. On more than one occasion I had zombies shamble up behind me without much warning as I was restocking weapons, and having a quick reaction speed helped me survive.
It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
The Gamepad, on the other hand, provided a very different experience. With it the player becomes “King Boris”, the main antagonist of the game who aims to stop the survivors. In this mode the player uses the Gamepad as a top-down vantage point, tapping and placing zombies in strategic locations. The image on the screen is a direct video feed showing zombies, items, and the flag locations, and can be zoomed in and out. The only areas where a zombie cannot be placed were painted in red. Why wouldn’t I just spawn all ten zombies on top of my adversary? That general vicinity is also painted red and follows the survivor in a 10-foot bubble of safety. Things can’t be TOO easy for the walkers.
There were four different kinds of zombies available to us during the demo — three were aggressive biters and one was a flag capturer. Each zombie costs a specific amount of “zombie points”, and as a meter gradually (and automatically) fills up on the left hand side of the screen the points can be used to purchase one of the infected walkers. Only ten zombies can be on the stage at a time, and they have a mind of their own when shambling about. Should one not do as told, or if a situation arises when a different zombie is needed, they can be recalled back into the points bucket. Using the Gamepad resulted in a much more tactical, tower defense style of play that one could see enjoyed by more casual players.
The only playable level was a centralized square area behind several buildings, with both high and low areas that can be reached by climbing up stairways or jumping off of ledges. It’s set in London, and this resulted in some of the zombies wearing British police uniforms or palace guard jackets. It didn’t hide their ugly faces, as the gray and splotchy skin and broken teeth were rendered with almost too much love.
In nearly every match I played the zombies were the victors, leading me to believe that they might have been slightly more overpowered than the survivors. Taner, the representative that guided me through the game, mentioned that there was still a ways to go in balancing everything and that there were more asymmetric aspects to the multiplayer that were yet to be revealed.
Also: some of the zombies had asymmetric patterns on their shirts, but that apparently wasn’t what he was alluding to.
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