My First HvZ Experience - Meet Game of Foams

I know, warriors. I still didn't get our next review up. Forgive me. We've had more fires ignite in Colorado and I was a little tied up in my day job with some repercussions of that. No worries though, the firefighters got them out fairly quickly and no one in our region has lost homes to wildfire this year so far.

In good news, I do have a new video for you! We had a great time with a company called Game of Foams that is putting on short-form HvZ-styled events they call Survivors versus Zombie. They let us come up to Longmont and play with them, getting this footage to boot. It was a great opportunity to see how the ECS Cam Blaster would actually behave in a dusk setting outdoors. So I ran that with a dual banana "clip" I taped together after ganking them from a couple of our Demolishers.. Check out the results (below the jump)!!

Zombie Outfitters: Any Need for Zombie-specific Marketing?

Recent rumors and news got me thinking: Do we really need to have zombie-specific merchandise? There are now at least three blaster companies reported to be involved with making zombie-hunting blasters. Let's take a look at the notable releases.

Toys R Us sells HvZ blasters -well, one HvZ blaster. They're really Air Zone blasters with a paint job. I was a bit annoyed by this. Air Zone is generally a miss for quality blasters. It's not like that should come as a surprise. So when Gnarwhal studios (the original HvZ folks from Goucher College) went with Geoffrey to do their official blaster line . . . it was sad. Doesn't seem they were so successful either. If you look at this as a way to support the original guys that started Humans vs. Zombies, I guess that might be something. But you'd think people who are trying to make a business would go with more quality.

Rumors with pic spam have started circulating about a "Zombiestrike" blaster. A user called yayaccav, posted pictures and then a video. The "Hammershot" has been attributed to NERF and has the logo on it. Doesn't look like a mod or hack. Actually, it looks like an alternate version of one of the new Rebelle blasters they are releasing (marketed to girls). The Baidu pics and video have since been removed. Some of my fellow NIC bloggers found a state-side video too, if you care to look.  Nothing has been confirmed. Please keep in mind that this is still unofficial. I would not recommend promising money for this blaster to any retailer or third party seller yet.

If this blaster is confirmed, this will be one of the coolest sidearms. Looks like it will operate much like a wild west six-shooter, or . . . five-shooter. Even if it is a NERF Rebelle repaint, I don't mind if they release it within the season as an alternated for those who don't necessarily want pink.

Zing Toys seems to recycle their famous Z-Curve bow with other branding like Air Huntress (a pink version) and now Zombie Slayerz. I don't necessarily take issue with that. Especially when they say they are working on a glowing version! A consistent and quality product that can hit 125 foot ranges can re-release as many copies as they want! Keep in mind that HvZ Goucher-style (original+) rules specify that a hit shouldn't hurt. Be careful using the bow, if the moderators allow it. I'd like to see a Hawkeye look-alike picking off zombies with a bow! That just sounds fun.

One of our contributors won the recent Zing Toys contest, so we'll be looking at this beast soon.

So out of these, it looks like NERF might be the first company coming out with a zombie-specific release -at least at the same time the blaster comes out in another color scheme. It seems to be more than an afterthought. Zing has a quality product now marketing for zombie-hunting too. My question is do we really need anything marketed specifically for an HvZ game? Are you going to be more inclined to but something because it is zombie branded? ~Chris

Zing Toys working on Glow-In-The-Dark bow?

Hey Warriors!

So in case you missed it, Zing Toys is doing a facebook giveaway. You can qualify until Friday.

When they posted it, I asked about the graphic. It looks like the bow is glow-in-the-dark by the way the graphic is designed. That isn't the case, but Zing gave a hint that it may be in the works!

What do you think about using a bow and arrows in an HvZ game? ~Chris