The COD Zombies LAN Party

07 Jun, 2026

Visiting a friend in Newcastle for a weekend of fun

I have a friend who absolutely adores COD Zombies. He has beaten maps that took weeks of training to complete, knows all of the tricky movement tech you can use to slip past zombies, and I think was genuinely prepared to watch - in full - a 7hr COD Zombies lore video¹ with us during a sleepover a few years back.

This is a somewhat difficult position to be in, since Call of Duty: Black Ops III - Zombies Deluxe is $160 AUD at time of writing (buying it for ~$90 on sale was a prerequisite for organising this event).

Setting aside the eye-popping cost, COD Zombies is a somewhat difficult game to get new people into. The fact it belongs to the now oversaturated and out of fashion Zombie Survival genre (despite very much being a genre of its own) is already not the greatest selling point.

The fundamental design of the games can be off-putting as well. COD Zombies was a traditional zombie survival experience that evolved into a complex web of puzzles and storytelling without ever really marketing itself that way. The more I've played it, the more I've seen it as an escape room where your timer is how long you can outlast a zombie horde, but I have certainly never seen it marketed as an escape room game.

Being dropped into a network of puzzles without knowing the conventions can be tough (there's a reason real escape rooms always open with explaining safety and the boundaries of what you're expected to do to progress), and that makes the experience for first time players pretty overwhelming.

So, with all that in mind², I want to emphasise that I loved this entire weekend, and it ended up being a tonne of fun.

Shadows of Evil

Shadows of Evil was the map the weekend revolved around. We started by watching the accompanying cinematic on the TV, then were handed some little homemade booklets. My friend had written a quaint, cryptic guide containing hints on the less obvious parts of the map, and the copies he printed were excellent for taking notes in.

You'd have to ask him about the detailed history of the map, but from what I understand it was one of the first COD Zombies maps designed by Jason Blundell. Jason was the guy who focused COD Zombies on story and puzzles and dramatically shaped the future of the franchise.

As such, the map was full of unique mechanics to explore and understand (with the help of our homemade booklets) and - while I'll admit I didn't pay too much attention to the developing story - the areas all had clear and distinct theming which made navigation a lot easier.

Our goal was to fight (not beat) a boss towards the end of the map. Finishing the map was not in the cards for a single weekend - the final gauntlet is so difficult it would be more frustrating than fun to attempt. We didn't quite reach that goal, but we were only one step shy of it, and that felt incredibly satisfying.

The whole experience of the map was a joy, and it's inspired me to attempt making my own cryptic guide for it. I'm currently writing a post about Cryptic Guides and I think this experience taught me some useful things about them, so I think I'll follow that up with a post on my own guide and how it compares to my friend's original one.

Other Nonsense

We played a bunch of other maps from the Steam community workshop in between Shadows of Evil and some other official maps, and people have made some pretty fantastic stuff.

Bloons TD 6 had a fan map where you play as munted monkey models upgrading the various available towers. All weapons in this map got permanently unlocked for all players once purchased, which is not the norm of COD Zombies maps, and made the experience a little more forgiving.

Later we tried Plants Vs Nazi Zombies, which featured a barely functional planting system that let you build your own home defences. There was a lot of fun little design choices in this map, which kept it fun even if planting plants became completely impossible past the midpoint of the game.

I also insisted we tried the Murder Mystery map (because of course) but this turned out to be a Cluedo-style escape room with some really obnoxious events that forced you stay inside a very small area while fighting off the horde. Sadly, this ended up being one of the least fun maps due to that mechanic alone.

We also played a map I shall not name which was hallways wall-to-wall with the most degenerate memes on the creator's harddrive that played the most obnoxious series of sound bites I'd ever heard at the start of every round. Also, when we activated the teddy bears in the level (a COD Zombies staple which starts playing rock music, and is often utilised by fan maps) it started playing a parody version so awful that the guy who activated apologised for doing so after 5 minutes of it looping. It was awful. I loved it.

A Great Time All Around

LAN parties are almost a relic in the modern day of lightning fast internet. Desktop computers are hard to transport, it's hard to organise enough friends to be available to do it, and playing online is just so convenient there's almost no point.

But there's something really sweet about meeting up, having all your meals together, watching Sam O'Nella on the TV while eating grilled spam and cheese sandwiches and doing something together. I really enjoyed this LAN party, and I hope I get to attend more in the future.

#Journal