I told myself that this week I wouldn’t do yet another mod that involved zombies, demons, or anything in the same vein…

Damnit.

In my defense however, it IS Halloween, so I guess one more mod featuring zombies would be keeping in the spirit of things. And hey, this one also features fabulously dressed cowboys. So juice up the truck, grab some ammo, load up the booze and let’s kill some zombies! Western style.

Shotgun Sunrise is – again – a survival modification for Half Life 2, but this particular mod really plays like no other I have found. Taking place on one map – an Old West style town that has been overrun by zombies, two teams of players must complete a set of objectives to successfully escape.

Upon first connecting to a server, you are given a small menu to choose your ‘class’ of cowboy, essentially just choosing which of three weapons you would prefer to use out of a Winchester rifle, a pump-action shotgun or a double barrel shotgun. This also determines what kind of fabulous clothing your cowboy will be wearing. They also get hats.

The two teams in the game are comprised of Survivors – players who are trapped in the town with only a six-shooter and a hatchet to defend themselves, and the Rescuers – players who have to drive their pick-up truck into town to rescue the survivors. Once Survivor players make it to a certain radius around the truck, they are switched to the Rescuer team and are given the weapon they chose at the beginning of the game. If a player on the Rescuer team dies they are moved back to the Survivor team. If a Survivor dies they have to wait a few second to respawn, and if all Survivors die during this time the game is over. I personally find this to be one of the biggest features of the mod that sets it apart from others that I have played. It is a Jailbreak-esque style of gameplay used in a very different setting.

The objectives you are required to complete are also outside of the norm from what you would expect from a survival based game – although quite frankly, they make complete sense and I don’t know why other games haven’t gone this way before. The objectives are based on a very simple premise – there are three things necessary in a zombie apocalypse. Plenty of ammunition, vast amounts of booze, and a vehicle to escape danger.

Once you have your fabulous, hat-wearing band of outlaws assembled, your first stop in the zombie-ridden town of Sunrise is the local gun store. Once you’re in there, head downstairs and you’ll find a precious crate stuffed with ammunition and Tommy Guns. However, since coming down the stars in this building causes them to collapse, you’re going to need to find another way out. A few sticks of dynamite later (and a few accidents discovering that they have a ridiculously short fuse time) to blow a hole into the wall hat lets you escape into the mines that run under the town – take a buddy with you by the way, as one of you is going to have to carry the crate whilst the other fends off the ravenous fast zombies that populate these caverns. The mines lead over to the far end of town, so have somebody run the truck over to the mine entrance so they can pick you up. Once the ammo crate is thrown onto the truck, the Rescuers can use the Tommy Guns to help fend off the shambling hordes of the undead.

Alright, now we’ve got some ammo, it’s time to find the booze! Drive the truck over to the distillery on the other side of town (then have a few more accidents with dynamite attempting to blow the doors open) and make your way into the Booze Vault where you will be greeted with a very extravagant display of a giant barrel of booze descending from the heavens (well, an elevator at the top of the room, but we can dream). Then it’s time to set up the keg to dispense the alcohol from the truck, which can be used to heal yourself if you need to.

Alright, now we have the booze, it’s time to blow town! Let’s ri-oh, wait. The truck is now so overloaded with guns and beer, that it doesn’t have enough power to get itself moving. Now it’s time to trek across town to the Shotgun Electrocombobulatory Power Facilitron to get a big-ass generator to hook up to the truck. Once this generator is hooked up to the truck with some hardcore do-it-yourself wiring, it’s ow time to blow town! Drive that truck through the town gates and park it in the back of the Last Train Out of Town and let’s get out of here! YEEEEEEEEEEEE-HAW!

The zombies in Shotgun Sunrise are fairly standard, slow-moving affair cut-and-pasted from Half Life 2, just minus the headcrabs and given Western-y cl0thing. The development team are working on new zombie abominations to add to the game, such as the F***ing Hardcore Evil Zombie Bull, the Zombie Plant, Zombie Spider, and Zombot (or Zombie Fruit F***er Prime). It’ll be interesting to how these work in future releases, as the lack of variation or challenge form the zombies can cause you to just end up ignoring them after a while.

The town of Shotgun is very well made, with some obviously good talent behind the mapping for this mod, with a lot of little nooks and crannies that look like special care and attention was put into creating them. It’s also huge, which is no easy task for creating a Source engine map and keeping things running smoothly. There are some missing textures in a few places, most noticeable of which is in the Booze Vault, which has garish reflective bright pink walls (the missing texture colour for Source engine games). I’m sure in near future releases this will be taken care of.

The real fun of this mod, however, is on my next point. The truck, which an absolute blast to drive around the town. Games of Shotgun Sunrise will almost always end up with players spending at the very least half an hour burning around the town, boosting up the sides of hills and trying to fly off of the makeshift ramps they can find around the city. It is also very important to sound the horn whilst doing this, a sort of ritual every time you manage to get the truck to take off. There is also a huge jump before getting to the train that in every game I’ve played, we at least spend ten minutes or so seeing what kind of crazy stunts we can pull off.

In its current state, Shotgun Sunrise isn’t any more than an hour or two of fun, but you’ll have an absolute blast during this time. The design direction for the mod is also worthy of applause, as Impromptu Games obviously have a great sense of humour, and their ideas for the mod are some of the most fresh and original I have seen in a while. It is also just possible that they also have epic dress sense.

I highly recommend giving Shotgun Sunrise a download, and grabbing a few friends to join you in a quick blast through the Old Western Zombie Apocalypse Town of Shotgun. Also don’t forget your fabulous clothing. You can grab the mod from the ModDB page here.

I understand that this was a fairly short article this week, but Borderlands managed to eat up almost all of my time. I also promise that next week, the mod will have nothing at all to do with zombies! I’m thinking something more… vehicular.

UPDATE: It seems we’ve heard of the head of Impromptu Games, LaCabra before. Apparently he was the guy who had Gabe Newell fly out to Australialand to show him Left4Dead 2 and why the boycott was nothing but paranoid fear and silly doubts. Coincidentally, I completely agree that Left4Dead 2 is so vastly different from the original after playing the demo, they’re two very different games that pretty much run parallel to each other, but I digress. Just thought this was some interesting news worth sharing!