The Download Munkey : Finder of Things …

A rather old but innovative zombie killfest by Charles Cuiguet where you command squads of infantry and fighting vehicles to repel a zombie invasion.

Engage the zombie hordes with your squads, wait until the undead things shamble into range before giving the order to fire and watch the wholesale slaughter begin. Just try not to move the mouse in the combat window as it’s used for scrolling the view around the battlefield as it can get quite disorienting at times.

I especially like the close combat sequence that ensues when the zombies crash (slowly) into your defensive line. It’s a blast to watch your troops pull out knives and cut down zombies hand-to-hand but don’t expect many of your troopers to survive a melee against superior numbers of undead.

The strategic portion of the game emphasizes on manuevering your squads (in red) around on the map to attack different enemy units - preferably with you in tactically advantageous terrain (dark green) and them in open areas (light green).

Use heavy armour and RPG troopers to thin out larger groups and the standard assault rifle or pistol squads to mop up the remnants. RPGs are so effective against the undead invaders it’s hard to believe that they were designed to take out light armour - they must have been designed to combat a secret zombie infestation

Later missions allow you to reinforce battered units back to full strength or supplement your squads with an additional jeep or armoured vehicle to provide the extra dose of firepower like this

A sequel is currently in the works and you can follow the progress at the creator’s blog at Newgrounds.

Play Autumn War.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Beat Back the Zombie Hordes in Boxhead : The Zombie Wars
Boxhead - More Rooms Zombie Shooting Flash Game
The Last Stand & The Endless Zombie Rampage & Crimsonland
Marvel Zombie Wallpapers

If you’re into electronic music, you’ll recognize some of these machines that shaped early electronic music : Roland’s legendary trio of the TR-808, TR-909, the TB-303 (acid!) synthesizers.

Together with a selection of effects processors, Hobnox’s Audiotool allows you to produce tracks for free (much thanks to GeekNews for the heads up)

While Hobnox provides a video tutorial on the basics of using Audiotool and the virtual TR-909 and the TB-303, knowing how to use the equipment doesn’t translate proportionally to your ability to create music. I’m been fiddling with Audiotool for hours and I still can’t figure out how to create decent drum n’ bass beats.

The default drum n’ bass setup

I did create a simple 4/4 track which you can torture your ears with over here - a crappy example of tweaking the various knobs and buttons - I didn’t create enough patterns to substantially evolve the rhythms and basslines though.

Try out Audiotool.

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Orange Mixer
Saiko - Cool Electronic Music Generator
10 Favourite Mods (Music, Not Games)
Tony-B Machine - Flash Toy for Creating Early 90’s Techno/Electro
Be Your Own One Man Band

I like to play shorter tactically-oriented games like Battalion Nemesis during short breaks when I haven’t got the time for more detailed tactical masterpieces like Combat Mission, WinSPWW2, Steel Panthers : World At War (to name a few).

Battalion Nemesis puts you in the shoes of the commander of the red forces in a turn-based combined arms conflict with similiarly armed and equipped blue forces (a civil war perhaps?) I got a little confused at the start because I’m used to the convention of blue and red signifying friendly and enemy units respectively.

The 6 comprehensive training missions will get you up to speed on using the intuitive interface to command and lead your troops to victory in a series of mock battles which includes small-scale raids and even an amphibious landing

Color-coded +, - and = signs over each possible target in range for the currently selected unit makes it very easy to learn to play Battalion Nemesis.

As with every combined-arms game, the art of placing the correct units to counter specific enemy units is essential. So do the timeless techniques of manuevering to occupy the most advantageous terrain for attacking and defending. An good eye for terrain for defense by the right type of units and for funneling larger enemy forces into deathtraps for piecemeal destruction definitely helps to win the day in Battalion Nemesis.

There’s minimal resource management, mainly in capturing oil refineries to literally fuel the war with additional war machines churned from war factories.

Play Battalion Nemesis at Kongregate or read more at JayIsGames.

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Modern Tactics 3 - Squad-based Tactical Game
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BrikWars - War with Mini-Figs!

It’s actually quite surprising to see a dearth of World War I videogames considering that most real-time strategy games usually devolve into stalemated battles of attrition and the Great War was possibly the most significant conflict of the 20th century involving such battles e.g the Battle of Somme and the Battle of Verdun.

Con Artist Productions, the creators of the zombie defense games The Last Stand and The Last Stand 2 have shifted their sights to depict carnage on a different scale and timeframe in Warfare 1917, a fairly realistic depiction of the murderous bloodbath of trench warfare on the Western Front during World War I.

Playing as the British (The Old Contemptibles) or the Germans, you’ll lead squads of troops over the top through the barbed wires and landmines of no-man-land and into the trenches of the enemy in the face of heavy fire from the defending infantry and artillery. Historically, artillery bombardment was far more intensive than that depicted in-game but that would probably make a frustratingly unplayable game.

The introduction of the machine gun during WWI provided a significant advantage in the firepower and effective range of defending infantry over their attacking counterparts, thus mad rushes are definitely a no-no in Warfare 1917. Callously squandering away the lives of your men for neglible gains in ground will also quickly break their will to fight and lead to a quick and ignominious surrender.

As enemy machineguns and artillery bombardment will quickly make mincemeat of waves of attacking infantry, only a well-timed bombardment with mortars, heavy artillery (and later poison gases) to suppress entrenched defenders and reinforcements with infantry and (later tanks) follwing closely behind the barrage of explosive shells will stand a chance of getting anywhere near the entrenched enemy to employ their weapons and forcefully evict the occupants of a trench.

Using the correct mix of troops is essential too as by 1916, the Germans had developed specialized stosstruppen units for assaulting trenches in close combat with carbines and hand grenades to support the regular infantry. Assault infantry stand a fairly good chance to clear an enemy trench provided that they are supported by regular infantry, machinegunners or snipers to provide covering fire in order for them to close in with grenades.

Unfortunately, successfully capturing a trench means nothing if the next wave(s) of enemy reinforcements counterattack and retake it from the half decimated remnants of a successful assault. Learning to follow up on your assault with fresh infantry reinforcements to defend your hard-fought gains and hold the line is therefore as crucial as learning to assault the enemy positions, especially in the later actions where you have to take multiple trenches in a single mission.

To reflect your experience in war, upgrade points are earned to boost your units’ ability to give them the edge in inflicting more punishment while sustaining less themselves.

Play Warfare 1917.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
US Army Center of Military History Prints
War and Game - Military History Blog
The Last Stand

Finally found the standalone player for the latest version of Adobe Flash which allows you to run Flash applications and games written in Flash 10 offline.

Frankly speaking, the only application written in Flash 10 that I’ve seen is Hobnox’s Audiotool recommended by Andy over at Geeknews (more about this impressive online audio production tool in the near future), but the standalone player is still worth downloading since it’s backwards compatible with all games and apps written in earlier versions of Flash.

For example, BubbleBox offers a selection of freely downloadable Flash games which you can load and play with the standalone player. Above is Bubblebox’s Elite Base Jump in the standalone player.

Download Adobe Flash 10 Standalone Player. You’ll want the non-debugger version unless you’re a Flash developer (Versions for Windows, Mac and Linux are found in the zip download - Windows users should run flashplayer10r12_36_win_sa.exe inside the zip file).

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Playing Flash Games Offline with opera:cache + Adobe Flash 9 Debug Players
Rumble Roses Exclusive Wallpapers + Fun With Flasm
Flasm - A Flash Disassembler