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As we discussed last week, Ghoul Patrol is a pretty shabby pseudo-sequel to the excellent run-and-gun-and-B-movies game, Zombies Ate My Neighbors ("ZAMN" for short).

For this week, I looked a little further into the ghoulishly slapdash Ghoul Patrol, and figured out how many hits it takes for each of the five weapons to destroy each (non-boss) enemy!

Yup, sadly there are only five different weapons...and you can get them all in the first level, without even exploring too far away from each neighbor.

And worse, NONE of them can blast through doors or destructible-walls like the Bazooka in ZAMN! There are three or four places in the game where there's 1-ups and other power-ups hidden behind a destructible wall...but the only way to get in is to expend an ENTIRE Monster-Up potion just to smash ONE wall!

Even sadder, for virtually all enemies, there are only 3 different "weapon damage levels":

Crossbow -- your default weapon; as usual, unlimited ammo = unlimited inferiority!

Ping-Pong Ball Machine Gun and Martian "Heatseeker" Gun -- usually better than crossbow, but worse than...

The Crossbow, Ping-Pong Ball Machine Gun and Laser Beam Gun all work basically the same: they all reach the edge of the screen, and they can all fire pretty quickly if you press the fire button quickly. It's possible the Ping-Pong Ball Machine Gun shoots more rapidly, but it might just be an optical illusion (it seems to launch two orange bullets every time you shoot).

However the other two weapons perform differently: The Martian "Heatseeker" Gun looks just like the Martian Bubble Gun from ZAMN, but works like a weaker single-shot version of the "Pandora's Box Heatseeking Multi-Blast" item from ZAMN: every time you pull the trigger it shoots a little waft of energy which zips out, then after a moment travels towards the nearest enemy. It's not as great as it sounds, because it takes a second to lock on (similar to the missiles in Battle Cars)...but as long as you're running, or facing roughly the right direction, it gives you a bit of "auto aim".

As for the Useless Mortar, unfortunately I didn't call it that for nothing. It fires slightly shorter-range projectiles which arc upwards, missing most enemies who are within 1 or 2 enemy-lengths of you. So far it sounds like the "soda grenades" from ZAMN, but it doesn't have the kind of "explosive splash zone" of the soda grenades. Aside from a few of the floating enemies (who tend to get in the way of the mortar's arc more easily) this weapon is a waste of time.

So, without further ado, these seem to be the number of hits it takes to kill each enemy with each weapon:

...tune in next week (or at some point in the future) for a more in-depth look at the various enemies!