Infected Designer Diary #1 - A New York Christmas

Planet Moon's upcoming shooter Infected is one of the more unique and promising PSP action games on the horizon. Not only will you be able to create your own gun-toting zombie killer and rampage through New York City, you'll be able to spread your unique design to other players' games through the rollicking deathmatch mode. Infectious! Here to guide us through the zombie-filled streets of New York is Aaron Loeb, a producer at Planet Moon Studios.

A New York Christmas

By Aaron Loeb
Producer, Planet Moon Studios

Ah, Christmastime in New York. It's the most wonderful time in the greatest city on Earth. Won't you join us for an Infected guide to Christmas in New York?

At the beginning of our trip, we see Christmas shoppers running through the streets of Midtown, screaming for help (aren't they always?). Zombies are tying to eat their brains--and all they wanted was to get the latest bargain at Macy's.

In our first video level guide, Kevin plays our main character, Officer Stevens. Stevens is showing us some of the sights in Midtown. Right ahead is one of Midtown's sprawling plazas, currently covered in snow and blood. The plaza is also home to one of the many helipad evacuation points littered around the city this Christmas.

No, the helipads aren't a new art installation from some French artist. The New York Bio Team, responsible for protecting the city from infections that turn people into flesh-eating madmen and women (New York's a big city with departments for everything), has called in evac choppers to get the innocent people out of the area. Kevin's mission is simple--recover the civilians and get them to the evacuation points.

The first thing he does is grab a couple of innocents. Then he hunts down the remaining Infected in his zone and takes them out with his pistol. As you can see, people have left their cars in the streets, they're so excited about the holiday bargains!

Saving civilians and killing the Infected earns Kevin enough points to automatically upgrade to a shotgun. And like my mom always says, shotguns make the killin' go quicker. Boomstick in hand, Kevin hunts down the last Infected in his zone and quickly wounds it so he can splat it with his viral gun. With the last Infected in the zone dead, the whole area is clean and turns green on his map. This means it's safe, and the Infected are locked out.

Kevin drops his civilians off in a chopper and heads into the subways to get to a neighboring zone. One of Midtown's teeming avenues, this area is jam-packed with the Infected--including a couple of giants. These huge Infected pull their intestines out and hurl them at him. Kevin's gonna need a bigger gun, so he starts getting combos to earn himself some better hardware. In Infected, if you get a couple wounded Infected next to each other, one shot from your viral gun can make them all splat in combos, which are worth more points and drop power-ups.

Kevin does just that, and picks up a fire grenade and upgrades to the RPG. This is pretty sweet because he can start burninating. With the RPG, he can knock Infected into the air and get aerial combos for more points. He blasts the zombies into the air and splats them--Merry Christmas, New York! It's raining guts!

Now that he's killed himself a whole mess of Infected, he heads toward another zone of civilians to make sure he gets them out before the Infected swoop in and infect them too. He loads them all onto the chopper. The neighborhood is safe. Now he's got one job: Hunt down the last Infected and introduce it to his friend, Mr. Machinegun.

Checking his satellite map, Kevin finds the last gut-spewing weasel hiding behind some cars. He quickly demonstrates his ability to make stuff blow up, winning the mission--with a gold medal to boot, on account of saving so many civilians. Great work!