Zombie Panic: Source changed my life. While that sounds dramatic, ZPS is what got me into map/level design with the Hammer Editor. I loved creating levels so much, that I looked further and realized there were schools for game design. I am now in my second year of 3D Animation & Modeling. I still remember my very first time playing this - Sunday, October 8th, 2008. Only Eugene and Marcus were available. It was on ZPO_Deadblock. I remember a guy exploiting the padlock on the fenced gate.

THE GOOD:
This game is so original - players are split into two teams: Survivors & Zombies. The Zombies get a leader, the Carrier, who is slightly faster, stronger, and can infect survivors. The Zombie team start out small (2-4) and slowly devour the Survivors who then respawn as Zombies. The Survivors are given an array of weapons and supplies to survive. The two main game modes are Survival and Objective. Objective has always been my favorite, because it requires more teamwork and gives the Survivors (and occasionally Zombies) tasks to complete to win.

Most of the official maps have a charm and flair about them really set them apart from each other. The dev team have made a number of models so the game doesn't look like it takes place in the world of HL2.

THE BAD:
The majority of servers running today do not run vanilla gameplay. They have plug-ins that give zombies 100% infection, extra health, toxic death clouds, and many other imbalanced changes. These servers also change the character models into female anime characters with balloon breasts, Star Wars characters, and other out-of-place models. The majority of these servers run poorly designed, gimmicky maps that turn a zombie horror game into a zombie fragging party game.

THE UGLY:
For some reason, new players and long time players prefer to play on the aforementioned servers. You'll find a number of servers running zany maps with meme plug-ins. I don't have an issue with these servers, but in 2018, this is mostly what you will find if you don't join one of the five servers that run vanilla or a diet vanilla gameplay.

IN CONCLUSION:
I definitely recommend everyone try this game. Do your best to find a vanilla server. But be warned, that is very hard to do if you don't live in Europe.

The current state of the game is not the current dev team's fault. ZPS was left for dead by Monochrome and long-time player Tabajara convinced Monochrome (Tatsur0) to let him continue to support and update ZPS. When Monochrome left ZPS to die, the regular population who played vanilla maps moved on. The majority of the players that stayed behind were ones who love to play a meme version of ZPS.

Zombie Panic: Source changed my life. While that sounds dramatic, ZPS is what got me into map/level design with the Hammer Editor. I loved creating levels so much, that I looked further and realized there were schools for game design. I am now in my second year of 3D Animation & Modeling. I still remember my very first time playing this - Sunday, October 8th, 2008. Only Eugene and Marcus were available. It was on ZPO_Deadblock. I remember a guy exploiting the padlock on the fenced gate. THE GOOD: This game is so original - players are split into two teams: Survivors & Zombies. The Zombies get a leader, the Carrier, who is slightly faster, stronger, and can infect survivors. The Zombie team start out small (2-4) and slowly devour the Survivors who then respawn as Zombies. The Survivors are given an array of weapons and supplies to survive. The two main game modes are Survival and Objective. Objective has always been my favorite, because it requires more teamwork and gives the Survivors (and occasionally Zombies) tasks to complete to win. Most of the official maps have a charm and flair about them really set them apart from each other. The dev team have made a number of models so the game doesn't look like it takes place in the world of HL2. THE BAD: The majority of servers running today do not run vanilla gameplay. They have plug-ins that give zombies 100% infection, extra health, toxic death clouds, and many other imbalanced changes. These servers also change the character models into female anime characters with balloon breasts, Star Wars characters, and other out-of-place models. The majority of these servers run poorly designed, gimmicky maps that turn a zombie horror game into a zombie fragging party game. THE UGLY: For some reason, new players and long time players prefer to play on the aforementioned servers. You'll find a number of servers running zany maps with meme plug-ins. I don't have an issue with these servers, but in 2018, this is mostly what you will find if you don't join one of the five servers that run vanilla or a diet vanilla gameplay. IN CONCLUSION: I definitely recommend everyone try this game. Do your best to find a vanilla server. But be warned, that is very hard to do if you don't live in Europe. The current state of the game is not the current dev team's fault. ZPS was left for dead by Monochrome and long-time player Tabajara convinced Monochrome (Tatsur0) to let him continue to support and update ZPS. When Monochrome left ZPS to die, the regular population who played vanilla maps moved on. The majority of the players that stayed behind were ones who love to play a meme version of ZPS.