Boxhead: The Zombie Wars

Boxhead, that zombie shooting series has it's fifth game out and this one just keeps getting tougher and better. In Zombie Wars, you have more weapons, more zombies, more of everything waiting for you in this shooter.

This game is tough. The number of zombies quickly gets out of hand. You need to learn how to react quickly, strategize (barrels, barricades, etc...) and more within the first few levels or else you will be dead and buried before you know it.

There are plenty of battlefields to choose from, but it all comes down to your reaction time.

Play Boxhead: the Zombie Wars at kongregate.

Update: Now that I've played this game for a few weeks, I have a few pointers and tips. First, the basics.

There are two scenarios as you start out. On the left side is the basic, and on the right side is defense. They are the same game, it's just the 'defense' is how things should look for you after a five or six rounds (if only a little bit neater). You have a defense set up, with turrets and barricades. You also have access to some more weaponry (as if you had worked your way through the earlier rounds).

The difficulty ratings also place you further along. It's as if you start off at round 10, instead of round 1. You have access to more weapons, but the demons are already out to get you. So if you're a newbie, place at beginner until you can get past the first few rounds. Then up the difficulty. It's as if you're restarting at a later level.

Scenarios. The scenarios don't really matter all that much to me. Different landscape doesn't really affect gameplay all that much. The smaller the field, the faster you have to deal with the hordes that come upon you. Also, you don't want to get trapped behind your defensive bulwarks, so the direction they come at you isn't all that important either.

Basic walkthrough strategy: Set up a defensive perimeter using turrets and barricades. Place more turrets and barricades as you can. Replace those that fall. Other than that, stay outside of your own perimeter and blast away. If you stop for even a moment, the devils will flame you to death. It only takes two quick shots from them to finish you off. Plus, you need to get out there and pick up the boxes to restock and replace your health. With a good defensive perimeter, you can last for a very long time. Once I have a good setup going, the only reason I lose is because I end up setting turrets around myself, trapping myself.

Barrel laying is great. If you start laying out barrels in a trail behind you and set them off (or they get set off by the turrets or by the devils), you can lay waste to hordes at a time. It's also great as a more offensive weapon. Once the barrels are placed behind you, they can set off the next one in line (sort of like dominoes). If you keep running ahead and placing more barrels, you can basically charge into a crowd and clear them out with explosions.

The minigun is great at clearing out a line, but I find it hard to select it. Instead, I usually use the barrels then the shotgun (once it's been sufficiently upgraded). The air strike is fun (it will clear the whole screen). The handgun is actually quite useful for a while, but won't help once it becomes too crowded.

Cursed Winds

Cursed Winds from freeonlinegames is a fun sailing shooter. Take your pirate ship out and attack the other 'cursed' pirates in 15 levels of mayhem. Either take out the ship below them by blowing it to smithereens or board the vessel and take the crew on (make sure you can take them, or they may just take your ship!). Either way, make sure you plunder their ship before it floats away.

The best strategy is to upgrade your reloading capability first. This applies on every level until its fully upgraded. Then go for upgraded damage and boat speed (avoiding their cannon fire is a priority).

A great way to start a level is to move into the up-right corner. Unless something comes out from the right side (it does happen occasionally on the later levels), you should have a free shot until they turn around and make their way back across.

If you can get above the enemy ships, you also have a free shot, but the slide upwards very quickly, so you may get stuck in a boarding action when you're not ready for it.

If you can get past the second level, you should be alright, but I would still save between every level. Spend all your money in between levels to upgrade your ship.

Play Cursed Winds at freeonlinegames. At admiral level, I had a final score of 854805. Have you beaten that?

N3wton

More fun than it first appears to be, N3wton is a short and sweet game applying Newtons Laws of Physics. You control a simple tank. Shoot at all the black tanks that are either firing at you or are firing at predetermined angles. Knock them off the platform or get yourself knocked off to lose. Just be careful of the recoil.

To play, move around with the arrow keys or with aswd. Aim and fire with the mouse. The longer you hold down the left mouse button the harder your shot will be, but that also increases the amount of recoil you should expect.

The levels do get harder, but there are only 25 of them. You should be able to finish the game fairly quickly.

Play N3wton at kongregate.

StormWinds

Stormwinds is a new turret defense game that is pretty generic in nature. If you like games like Bowmaster or Battle, you'll enjoy this game. Just don't expect too much.

Place your turrets in your cliff fortress and fire away at the oncoming waves of enemies. The first few levels are very easy, but they do get tougher. There are 25 levels in all, with each one getting progressively more difficult (not completely linear, but a general trend of increased difficulty is there). The boss is not too hard to defeat once you get to him.

No sound effects is a detraction, but the music is good. Repetitive after a while, but it does set the stage nicely. I wish the hot keys would work for me. Switching guns is a pain, the hotkeys would be nice.

Basic guns are the heavy turret (good for taking damage) and the machine gun (good for long distance fighting). Place your heavy turret in the first slot to take the most fire. The sniper gun is useful for quick take downs. One strategy is to have two snipers and one heavy turret. That will get you pretty far. The lightning gun is fun, but slow to recharge.

This game is pretty basic in nature, fun, but like I said, don't expect too much.

Play StormWinds at herointeractive.

Boxhead 2

Boxhead 2, like Boxhead, is a zombie killing game. Wave after wave of zombies come out at you and their only thought is to get to you. Collect your weaponry and start clearing them out.

The graphics are better, and so are the controls and the sounds. Overall this sequel is a big improvement over the first, but it still isn't perfect.

To be honest, it's not much of a challenge. Most often, I end up dying from making some stupid mistake because I tried to liven things up by trying to kill some the oncoming hordes in a different manner than before. For the most part, I rely on the shotgun and grenades to carry me through.

Play Boxhead 2 at kongregate.



You may have noticed I've been playing a lot of games at kongregate lately and there's a reason for that. For whatever reason, a lot of the best game creators are now hosting their games there and the community is a lot of fun. So I am definitely recommending kongregate as a site to find all the best games.

The Last Stand

The Last Stand is a zombie killing game. Last the night and you can go in search of new weapons and allies during the day. Spend your time wisely, or you may be overrun when the zombies come back.

You can move around inside your barricade, aim (head shots work well) and shoot your weapon. Once they get close enough, you should use the chainsaw.

Spend more time looking for survivors at first (8-4 survivors to weapons). Then switch the amount. Otherwise you won't get past day 2. Try not to aim for the chest when taking down zombies. That does the least damage. The closer they get, the better your aim, but it's not worth the wait. Even if you don't get a weapon when searching, the time still counts.

I played this game a while ago, but was amazed to see I never did a review of it. So here you go. Play the Last Stand at kongregate.

Luminara

Luminara is a clone of geometry wars, with all the eye-splitting fireworks that go along with it. The music is fun, the gameplay is simple, and the action is fierce.

You are circle in the midst of oncoming squares, triangles and circles. Use your mouse to aim and shoot (just hold the mouse button down) your enemies before they close in on you. Each attacker has their own style, from random movement up to charging right at you. Some will break apart and come at you in smaller pieces while others will work together to come after you. You can dodge using the arrow keys or the wasd keys.

As I said, the gameplay is simple, and there are only 50 levels to beat (they go very quickly). My second time through I beat the game and got 572,345 points. It's not very challenging, but served as a nice break (hint: try not to move around too much. Its too easy to lose track of your guy in the mess).

Play Luminara at armorgames.

Spamalot, the game

Spamalot lets you pick. Shall you choose the English or the stinky French? Defend your castle from attack by flinging whatever comes to hand, whether it be a cow, a chicken, shrubbery, or a rabbit with a vicious streak.

With not much else to recommend this game, if you like to go around saying "none shall pass", or "bring out yer dead" or even "Some call me Tim", you'll like this game. Otherwise, you'll get quite sick of "spam, spam, spam, ..." over and over again, so just "run away!"

Categorize this under: Defend Your Castle

Play Spamalot at addictinggames.

Sploder

Sploder is a flash game with a straightforward objective. Either destroy all the enemies on the playing field, or capture all of the crystals. But playing this game is only half the fun.

Make a Free Flash Game

I tried to make a simple level that demonstrates the various options, including obstacles, reloads, various enemies, wingmen, turrets and repel/attraction points. If you don't like the level you see embedded here, go make your own. Set up your main fighter, give him some wingmen, then place all the bad guys you want to help destroy him.

Sploder is in Beta, with hopefully more to come. There are already some good suggestions, such as ammo counts, teleporters and doorways, so hopefully there will be more to come. Also, I found the following description of the various obstacles you will find:

• Wingman: Pretty tough, good all round defense and offense.
• Obstacles: Indestructable, they are obstacles. Useful for cover and general display.
• Items: Pickups. Careful you don't blow them up. Wingmen can use pickups.
• Cruiser: Fires missiles, tough enemy. Beat with any weapon.
• Guard: A guard. Normal craft.
• Speeder: Speedy nasties that fire bullets. Weak.
• Crystals: Adding these makes your game collect the crystals. Indestructible. Hopefully, I mean- I have not been able to blow one up yet.
• Missile turret: The turrets sometimes bug and don't shoot. However, when they do, this inflicts high damage at a high ROF. Take care of with ray gun from behind, or cannon.
• Turret: Fires bullets. Try blowing up with missiles.
• Cannon turret: If you just get up close at moderate speed, it can't hurt you. Fires at one range only. Kill with laser.
• Magnets attract, repellers repel. Take care of fast.

Issues I had: The more complicated games slow down drastically. Also, some of the turrets are pretty buggy as well as the other fighters. It's almost like they would rather run into the wall rather than come after you.

The game creator (I assume it was him) left a comment asking me to review the game, and I'm glad I did.

Categorize this under: Shooter, Arcade, Action, Adventure

Play Sploder at sploder.

Boxhead

Boxhead is a zombie shooter. With five levels of gameplay you can try different scenes, but it all comes down to one thing. Shoot them down or get overrun.

With multiple upgrades of your weaponry, you would think you could last longer than you do. I prefer the shotgun (upgraded) and the grenades to blast multiple zombies at a time. The problem is you can blow yourself up with the grenades. Rather annoying to die after getting up to level 82 by killing yourself.

Controls are basic. Fire with the space bar. Switch weapons with 1-8 and move with the arrows. A bug in the game causes you to start out at the same level you died at, but without the upgraded weaponry.

Categorize this under: Shooter

Play Boxhead at crazymonkeygames.

Aggressive Attack

Aggressive attack is a vampire killling game. Chase down those pesky nuts in capes and kill them, before they kill you.

You have a group of hunters at your disposal (you get more hunters each level). This allows to separate them into subgroups, bringing in some opportunity for small group tactics (but not much).

Use the left mouse button to point out where you want your hunters to go. Use the mouse to aim and the space bar to fire. Vampires tend to stay hidden until you get close, so move cautiously.

Categorize this under: Shooter, Action, Adventure

Play Aggressive Attack at armorgames.

Phosphur

Feel like getting fragged in an online first person shooter (FPS)? Then phosphur may be the game for you. Five different weapons with headshot capability should keep you occupied for a while.

Phosphur is written on SHockwave 3D, so make sure your computer can handle the drag time. Jump with the space key, move around with wasd keys. Look around and fire= with your mouse.

This is the first public beta, but multiplayer is supported. So get in there and frag someone.
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Categorize this under: Shooter, Action

Play at rasterwerks.

Star Wars Rescue

There are three levels to Star Wars Rescue. Finish them all if you can, just so you can see the cheesy ending.

Star Wars Rescue is a side scrolling shooter, with very little to recommend it, except that its Star Wars. Avoid getting hit in level 1 and you can pass on (not a lot of points, but hey...) Level two requires some sharp shooting as you need to destroy the buzz droids attacking obi-wans ship. Level three requires avoidance of the super droids fire as you rescue Palpatine.

Switch weapons using the space bar, control your ship with the mouse and fire with the left mouse button.

Categorize this under: Shooter, Action, Adventure

Play Star Wars Rescue at

Rescue Mission

Rescue Mission is a side scrolling shooting adventure. Free the hostages from the crazed military forces that have them imprisoned in tiny cages. Pick up weapon upgrades along the way to make your life easier.

Tip: Learn how to dodge effectively. When the guy with the dynamite throws a stick, it may be better to charge forward under the throw than to try to back off. Also, if you free all the hostages (stars in the upper left keep track of hown many you have freed on each level) you get a free life.

This game is similar to games like A.L.I.A.S. (ALIAS 3), so if you liked that game, you'll probably like this game, although I would have to rate ALIAS higher.
Categorize this under: Shooter, Action, Adventure

Play Rescue Mission at gamesheep.

De-Animator

De-Animator is a nice shoot the zombie flash game. With a six shooter, defend yourself against the hordes of oncoming zombies. The best part of this is the graphics, so take a close look at the details.

It's not enough just to fire in the right direction. You need to put the pointer on your target to hit with any kind of reliability, so make sure to aim before you fire. Also, it takes an extra click to reload, so keep track of how many shots you have left, and make sure to reload before the next zombie appears.

Once you get the hang of it, you should last a while, but more and more zombies will start to appear, making it harder to take them all down before they get to you. Tip: Zombies coming up out of the ground seem to be more vulnerable to a one-shot kill.

Categorize this under: Shooter, Action

Play De-Animator at artscool.

Red

Red is a defend your turret game. But instead of blowing up the targets, you need to deflect them away from your gun. Keep an eye on your ammo level and your bonus turrets. Plenty of bonuses float around so take aim and make your job easier.

You can pick up a shield, extra turrets, bigger shots, etc... through bonuses that float around. You don't need to knock the balls (meteorites?) off the field of play, they just need to miss you. Also, you won't run out of ammo, but when the ammo gets to the bottom, your rate of fire will slow.

Categorize this under: Shooter, Action

Play Red at gamegecko.

Ellipsis

Ellipsis is a defend yourself center game with blocks. Just shoot any blocks that fly around the screen, making sure none of them run into your circle that starts out in the center.

Strangely addicting, this game is a slight twist on an old type of 'defense' game. Your circle will be beset by various blocks ranging from the those that are just plain hard to see, those that are hard to hit (avoids your mouse), quick moving, shatter into 10 new targets, etc... There are even some blocks that will start pulling you out of the middle (closer you get to the sides, the harder it becomes to shoot down the blocks before they get to you.

Hint: If you want an easier game, turn off the 'debris' with the small button on the top right. Without the debris to distract you, you'll have an easier time picking your targets.

Categorize this under: Shooter

Play ellipsis at armorgames.

Onslaught Invasion: Shoot the little army guys

Onslaught Invasion: Shoot the little army guys is a well designed shooter. Your being invaded by little army guys and its up to you to defend the beach. Defend your spot against the hordes of invading army men, planes, tanks, etc...

I really enjoyed playing this shooter, but the little quote that pops up fairly often got annoying after awhile. I was hoping to find a button to shut off just the quote, and leave all the other sound effects.

The planes don't necessarily shoot at you, so if you're feeling cramped by the invading men, choose wisely. If it drops a bomb, you can still shoot it down before it hits you. Also, you can sink the ships dropping off the men if you hit it enough. They are tough nuts to crack, but you can do it.

Use the mouse to aim and fire. Each level gets progressively harder, so don't expect it to last forever.

Categorize this under: Shooter, Action

Play Onslaught Invasion: Shoot the little army guys at gaingames.

Toon Crisis

Toon Crisis from killer viral is a fun shooter. Use your best weapon from when you were a kid (your pointed finger) to take out the bad guys (toons). Get blasted by some manic music (gets annoying after a while, but you can shut it off) and, if you finish (and you should be able to fairly quickly) you get a nice download screensaver (if you want).

Take out the worms quickly. The shots they fire at you can hurt. Also, hit the boxes for power-ups and extra lives. The final boss takes quite a beating to kill off, but I'm sure you can do it.

My final score: 42980.

Categorize this under: Shooter, Action

Play toon crisis at tooncrisis. (Thanks to jayisgames for pointing this game out).

Clock Tournament

Clock tournament is a sidescrolling clock-themed shooter with Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Defend the Base, and Team Deathmatch modes. Inspired heavily by Soldat. Similar to a sideways Counter-Strike.

I've never been good at these types of games, so I can't give many tips. Just frag the clocks as quickly as you can. You get to choose between six different weapons, the respawning rate is fairly quick. And it's just plain fun to play.

Categorize this under: Shooter, Action

Play Clock Tournament at briancable.