ALL their video game training in teamwork and tactics came to the fore when half-Hawkesbury squad Bad Company hit ‘Zedtown: State of Emergency’ to play a real-life zombie game on Saturday, July 8.
This year’s Zedtown was at Sydney Showground at Homebush. Players use big Nerf dart blaster guns or Nerf handguns to fight hordes of zombies while carrying out missions in three different teams, comprised of smaller squads.
Most players start as ‘survivors’ (of the zombie apocalypse) and over the course of the four-hour game, get tagged by zombies (by being touched or grabbed) and so become a zombie as well. The aim is to hold out as long as possible.
One mission was to find the enemy bases and take a picture of them. Another was to move the ‘payload’ – a large contraption that looked like an iron lung – and plug it in to various locations.
Dave Renaud of North Richmond said it was “a big adrenalin rush at the start”. “Everyone was running everywhere in a big panic as no-one knew where the zombies were.”
Was it better than playing video games though? “A lot better,” former Kurrajong Hills resident Declan Geake said. “There’s the nervousness and anticipation and stress as you’re genuinely under threat. You never get used to a horde of zombies charging at you!”
He gave an example. “I had a zombie coming straight at me and I couldn’t use my main gun.” He said that was because it was an automatic and takes a couple of seconds to charge up before it starts spitting out the round. “I had to draw on my side arm and only had time for one shot.” He got the zombie in the chest and so survived.
Shot zombies have to go back to the zombie hub to respawn, which gives survivors time to get away. Besides survivors-turned-zombies there are also fully costumed actors who are “special zombies” – such as the ‘witch’ zombie who screams as she runs at survivors, which attracts other zombies. She also can’t be killed.
The aim might be to survive as long as possible, “but when you’re paying $70-80 to play, spending it all hiding in a corner isn’t good value,” Declan said. “That’s pretty much what we did last year. The best way to play is to run around playing hard and fast, doing the missions and if you die, you die.”
Zombies kill survivors by touching them. They then have to scan the ‘dead’ human’s dog tag with the Zedtown app on their phone to register the kill, then go back to zombie hub to respawn.
There was an afternoon game and a night game on the day, with over 2500 players in total, organisers told the Gazette. More than 10,000 darts were fired and there were 6000 zombie respawns.
