While Xbox owners enjoy paying for TF2 updates, and PS3ers crow over their “free” service – before having to pay to so much as throw a boll on a ridiculous minigame in Home – PC players can enjoy some amazing games for free. Hundreds might make midnight pilgrimages for the latest “Call of Duty: Slightly Different Setting,” we’re looking at two titles with incredible different approaches to the FPS.

Concept

Dystopia servers are Neuromancer: Source, a split-level shooter alternating between a grimy future nightmare and a Tron-tastic computer world lit up brighter than a rave on a surface of the sun. Computer terminals have to be hacked to complete objectives, forcing teamwork as the defenseless cyber-surfer is protected by “real” world gunners.

Dystopia defined in one screenshot. Except you’re not shooting anything, and in the game YOU WILL BE

Zombie Master servers are the ultimate crossover: Real Time Strategy vs First Person Shooter. A team of humans run and gun through the level, completing objectives and gathering ammo, while an all-powerful opponent spawns enemies and sets traps to destroy them.

Winner: Zombie Master for utterly unique versus gameplay. The very violent clash of play styles makes even the incredibly asymmetric Hidden look like bog-standard Halo.

Pick Up And Play

Dystopia is instantly enjoyable. The graphics are incredibly polished for a free modification, and official Steam support means it’s the work of a few clicks to install. No muss, no fuss, just running around in the future killing people for pretend money. The class options and cybernetic upgrades offer a lot of customization, but you’re still useful if you just pick a big gun and shoot the enemy with it. Even the hacking is easy to pick up, and hearing the faint echo of approaching real-world gunfire as you surf through an incandescent matrix is an almost cinematic moment.

You’re now either thinking of TRON, or should go watch TRON

Zombie Master is just as easy to pick up – on the FPS side. You’re still shooting the undead, and if that’s not already an automatic instinct then we don’t know what kind of games you’ve been playing all this time. Not fantastic ones like Left 4 Dead, that’s for sure. There’s a fairly steep learning curve on the Zombie Master’s side, as you’ll need to get a feel for the levels and the play style before you’re doing more than providing a shooting gallery for the survivors, but it’s still an enormous amount of fun.

As you can see, it’s fairly easy to work out what to do.  It begins with “Sh” and rhymes with “Kroot the dastards”

Winner: Dystopia, with a far easier pick up and play dynamic, and more impressive graphics.

Long Term Appeal

Dystopia’s class-based customization option means there’s plenty of tuning possible as you find your role in the group, but the hacking element quickly becomes a chore. In most maps it’s less the split-level gameplay they were going for and more an interactive progress bar: imagine having to navigate a very simple maze while defusing the bomb on a Counter-strike server. This reduces the appeal to class-based combat, and that means it’s up against TF2. Of course it would lose against that – but since it’s free, it’s an extremely enjoyable different style to play for a while.

Go on, guess who’s playing as a heavy. And about to kill you.

The long term is where Zombie Master truly comes into its own. Modern indie games like Limbo and Braid have been praised for their innovative use of art style, but ZM turns perspective itself into an incredible psychological tool.

Look at the little ants scurrying to escape. Those are real people, and you’re now a megavillain.

There is nothing like looking down on other players in isometric. You feel an intense need to destroy them, and to wear a monocle while doing so. Perhaps stroking a white cat. Whole chapters of AI vs human behaviour are revealed in how they move so differently from the usual AI units you see at that scale, and whole books of psychology are revealed in how much more fun it makes to CRUSH THEM.

Limited resources means the Zombie Master can’t just swamp the players, and the skil level of the Master massively affects the difficulty – but just as in Left 4 Dead 2 servers, this doesn’t make things bad. An easy rush is celebrated, while a difficult challenge is enjoyed. A truly effective team gives you a real Megavillain vibe, as even your best traps are simply punched through. To counter, picking apart inexperienced players is amazing fun, and there are still a few truly villainous locations where you can hammer the horrible survivors.

Winner: Zombie Master

Overall winner: Zombie Master

Zombie Master (available here) would win just for the sheer originality of the idea. Capcom act clever when they make a cross-over between two sets of people who punch each other in the face, while this pits two entirely different styles of game against each other. It’s one for everyone to try, and Left 4 Dead fans in particular because you get to be the director.

Then get Dystopia (available on the Steam store) anyway, because it’s slick as hell and absolutely free.

Left 4 Dead servers may be dominating the undead fray with twenty thousand players a day, but if you think it’s the be-all and end-all of zombie-blasting carnage then you’re sorely mistaken.  Sure, it’s got some of the greatest corpse-killing graphics ever made and the claustrophobic horror-movie feel is perfectly rendered.  You even choose between humans and Infected.  But there’s one person you don’t get to play as, and he’s the most fun of all: The Director.

The dastardly Director, spawning shambling undead to hunt and harangue the humans, triggering traps and delighting in their downfall.  Left 4 Dead reserves that right for the evil AI, and as far as we’re concerned anyone who says that only machines should plan the destruction of real humans is up to something.  And probably played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Which is why you should try a Zombie Master server, where you too can control the lifeless legions - and it’s even more fun than you think.

“Prefer being a Survivor” - the most pointless choice in the world.

When you join a Zombie Master server you’ll be asked if you’re willing to be the Zombie Master.  Your answer here should be “Yes”, “Very Yes” or “Oh dear sweet joy of videogaming by the Heavens and Earth yes Yes YES!”  Each round one player is chosen to be the Zombie Master, while the rest play as the human survivors, hereafter known as “amusing little targets” if you’re lucky enough to win the ZM lottery.

Zombie combat games have always been about the clash of styles, pitting the armed but outnumbered humans against the rangeless but relentless hordes.  Zombie Panic adds the one-way gate of death, always increasing the numbers of evil undead while depleting the defenders life and ammo, but Zombie Master is a full on clash between styles of game: FPS versus RTS.

The humans are First Person Shooters, sprinting from goal to goal while gathering weapons and ammo.  They’ve got quick reactions and powerful firearms on their side, but in this game they face a truly intelligent and vindictive foe.  Remember, the Zombie Master has played the map just as much as you have so they know all the nasty tricks.  If there’ only one way out of the pit?  Expect to find Hulks blocking the way.

Trapped in a toolshed by shamblers?  Expect an immolator or two at any exits.  Think things are just going too well?  They are - the invisible overlord is saving his resources for a massive strike, with traps and explosions thrown in.  This guarantees that every game is different, and gives a real sense of victory should you make it to the exit - you not only beat the level, but defeated the real intelligence on the other side.

For the Real Time Strategist it’s even better.  The commanding thrill of producing hordes of units and having them do your bidding is the same as in any Dawn of War or Red Alert.  But the knowledge that those tiny little figures running around your monitor are actually real people?  That the drag-and-dropped dead that you’re effortlessly right-clicking will appear as full scale monsters on someone else’s screen?

It’s an evil thrill you won’t experience in any game.  Since Zombie Master is a free mod, you really have no excuse not to download it right now and try it out.  Everyone on the server is guaranteed an even-share of being the undead puppetmaster, and it’s such viciously vindictive fun people have been known to spontaneously sprout monocles and evil goatees while playing.

With Halloween here, the gamer’s mind turns to all the benefits of the season: large amounts of free candy, videogame-themed pumpkins and, of course, the target-rich environment of endless hordes of undead.  They’ve always been the best bad guy for the first person shooter: lots of them, usually slow moving, and they don’t have guns.  But you do.  (They’re also handy if you have to wussify a game like Carmageddon to get an official release).

Not that L4D is the only big-name undead fest on the horizon: Call of Duty 5 servers will also be able to discriminate against the dead in an extremely explosive manner.  The “Zombie mode” looks like being one of the best things to happen to the series - as well as adding some much needed variation to the extremely tried-and-tested World War setting, the bad guys are Zombie Nazis.  Zombie Nazis!  There has never been a better enemy!  You can literally do anything you want to those and not even the most ACLU-ified vegan kitten would object!

If you really can’t wait to get some cadaver-combat going, or you suspect that this Halloween is going to be “The Big One” and want to get some practice in fast, you don’t have to wait.  Logging on to a Zombie Panic server will get you some fast and furious combat, no waiting.  With players as both survivors and zombies you get to try both sides (especially if you suck at the former, because when you die you come back as the latter).

Another undead option is the original idea of Zombie Master.  Here one player, the Zombie Master funnily enough, directs hordes of minions to swamp a desperate team of human survivors.  You get to play either as the brave hero battling against the swarms of an evil controlling intelligence, or - even better - BE that intelligence.  Half Dr Evil, half George Romero, and all fantastic fun.

Get your Zombie-Blasting on this Halloween.  You know you want to.