Zombies!

Whether you are playing with a bright pink beach ball in the middle of a sunny resort, investigating the insides of an air hangar, looking for supplies in hut surrounded by a hot vast wilderness or simply screaming at the top of your lungs "DIE ZOMBITCH", you are playing a Zombie game. But when it comes down to the sawn-off shotgun, which zombie game is the best? Here's a list of my top picks in the Zombie genre.

1. Left for Dead Series

Let's face it, the L4D series has been one of the most satisfying of the zombie genre for one reason: Stalking. 

Who doesn't love a good stalk? With multiplayer allowing you to play either as a zombie or part of a survival team there are few other titles that simulate actual fear. I actually screamed out loud a few times (read: every-time) when a witch or a jockey popped out of nowhere and viciously attacked my back. The game lacks plot since it expires its use of plot after you play the game through once and it simply becomes who can get to the other side of the map with the most headshots the quickest. Notable maps are the Cornfields and the Fairground. Creepy.

2. DayZ, Arma2mod

You spawn in the middle of a soviet country-side, in the infinitely expanding world called Chenarus, you'll have a bit of food, a drink and maybe a weapon, if you are lucky. There are no objectives, no place to be, your one mission is to simply survive. In an endless landscape you scavenge for supplies and try to avoid the plethora of problems waiting to multiply from your very first step in this bleak landscape. Zombies hang about  more frequent than their living counterparts, they might be dulling prodding themselves against a chicken wire fence, or waiting gormlessly in that house you need to enter for supplies. You might get eaten by zombies, killed by your fellow human players, expire from hunger or thirst, exposure, from your wounds or a number of other reasons. Cautiously approach fellow players, they may want to band up, or murder you for your loot. This will be released as a stand-alone game in the next couple of weeks.

3. C.O.D Blackops/Blackops||: Zombie Mode

Combine this game with scotch and a competitive attitude and you make for some of the best times of your life. This game is best played in company, with your friends (or enemies). Don't play it for the story line, there isn't one, but then again you are playing in a world of magical teddy bears, inexplicable lava outside of bus-stops or even on the moon, and its somehow become infested with zombies, so what do you really expect. The premise is strategy, band together with your fellow player, score points by knifing, building barricades and getting headshots, use the points to get bigger shinier weapons. Try to come up with different ways to survive the increasingly insistent hordes of zombies making their way towards you and your companions. Make it a drinking game. 

4. Dead Island

This title is a delight, if not for the relaxing island resort environs, then for the accidental inclusion of developer’s mode when the game was first released. There was nothing quite like watching your large black protagonist have his arms swing beside him like two pieces of glitching spaghetti. The premise is pretty straightforward, a group of swearing down-to-earthers holidaying on a resort are horribly surprised that the island populace has been re-enervated as flesh eating corpses. Have fun bashing up endless waves with boat oars, beach balls, fistycuffs, guns axes, or seemingly anything you can find laying around. The replayability is limited. But it's good mindless fun, if you like that sort of thing.  

5. Minecraft

Yep, Minecraft. Not simply a zombie survival game, but also a sandbox creation universe in which the sky is the limit to the ways that you can dream up to prevent zombies from blowing up your house, stealing your children, destroying your hard mined and constructed furniture. From its simplistic brightly coloured visuals to its multiplayer success, Minecraft is not to be left out on the list of the greatest zombie survival games ever made.

6. House of the Dead Overkill

I've done a review of house of the dead overkill on my blog before but i have to give it an honourable mention on here because it is so ridiculous it cannot be left out. Few games made good use of the potential for the Wii mote, but this one certainly made it the most fun. From Varla Gunns, the big boobed shot gun toting character to the hideous story line, i can't help but wonder if I’ll ever see zombie games in the same light ever again. This arcade style zombie shooter for the Wii platform makes use of the Wii mote as a gun that you point at the screen and blow zombie brains to high hell, there are power ups, boss fights and tits, what more could you ask of a zombie game. HOTD doesn't try to take itself seriously; it is most definitely a stand-alone satire title that delivers the most fun for buck.

7. Resident Evil

No zombie game list would be complete without including this series. This cult classic is the mother of the entire zombie/horror survival genre and it all started with Jil Valentine and Chris Redfield trapped in a Mansion without a cure for the now infamous T-virus. This title was a rare blend of excellent story and great action combat dynamics. The legacy this game has left behind has inspired almost every zombie movie and game to date.

8. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct

This game follows on from the popular TV series of the same name. It pulls from the difficult decision making P.O.V of the protagonist Rick from the TV series and puts you in the shoes of the leader of a group of survivors. The gameplay is features Daryl Dixon as the first person shooter, who fights the walking dead on his journey towards Atlanta. You must decide whether to help or leave people along the way making tough decisions you think will best help your group survive. 

9. Dead Space

Taking place hundreds of years in the future, you, the protagonists exist in a world where earth’s natural resources have been exhausted. Having mastered space travel humans use a process known as cracking to travel to different planets and strip mine them of their resources before returning to earth. On a routine mission to Ishimura something has gone wrong, signalled by the violent imagery of corpses splattered about the walls and limb strewn on the floor. In this universe zombies go by the name of Necromorphs and you play as Isaac Clarke an engineer aboard the ship who must make his way to escape the horrors aboard the ship.

10. The Last of Us

Humanity has been decimated by a virus, the remaining survivors risk becoming contaminated and controlled by a fungus, turning them into zombie-like creatures. Plot-driven post-apocalyptic zombie games are my favourite. For a zombie game this one has the most believable human relationships throughout which set it apart from its somewhat tacky neighbours in the zombie genre. Use your resources widely; alcohol and rags could make a medi-kit or a Molotov cocktail, which would be more useful in this world of limited supplies.

Fable |||: The chicken kickening

Fable ||| is the kind of game that will have you creating a depression in your couch so large it may actually engulf you. This is the one true power of all greatest of video games. The great thing about Fable is that the protagonist has just the right mix of personality and vagueness that makes it the perfect mould for any prospective player to really see themselves as the character. Unlike Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, whose main character Ezio was so vapid most people have a hard time even pretending they want to be him, Fable ||| allows you to immerse yourself in the world of Albion like a Duck to a bread crumb. Isn't that what great games are all about, the character? (Sorry C.O.D players, guess you're shit out of luck.)

Fable ||| kind of picks up where 2 left off. You arrive in a less than ideal version of Albion. Your mother, or father (depending on which gender you select at the start of the game) was the last hero of Albion and you are one of her/his children. Now your evil sibling has become a tyrant and rules over Albion with an iron fist the likes of which no peasant comments come close to vilifying enough. You are the naive pampered prince or princess of Albion and when you discover your brother has gone mad and the decisions he has been making you decide to confront him.

There’s only one thing going to come of an underdog royal ousted by their sibling, that’s right, a struggle for power. I won't put too many spoilers in but the game is split into two main parts, the first your journey to oust your brother from the throne and usher in a new era of peace and kindness and all the good things, because that's the kind of ruler you would be wouldn't you, everything will be peaches. Until the second half arrives and with it a twist so emotionally frustrating you'll find yourself jumping out of your couch depression and yelling at the screen. If any of you played Fable 2 I liken it to the end scene with the dog. It's that heart-wrenching.

The game has all of the staple elements that make fable so playable, the immense capacity to wander with the ease of quick travel if you aren't in the mood to roam. The comic characters juxtaposed with the plain tragic. The longing transvestites, who you'll marry, mixed with the dark deeds you secretly hope your lover will never discover. But these things have been done in the previous Fables, the tried and true at the heart of what we all play RPG's for, what has Fable 3 really brought to the table that hasn't been thoroughly digested already? The answer to that is not much; the combat is pretty much identical all be it slightly easier once you have levelled up your magic to the point where you just hold down B before limply removing your thumb to enjoy the decimation of wave after wave of hollow men.

You can use melee or magic and despite it not being all that necessary I found myself using a mixture of both just to increase the difficulty and to give myself the illusion that I was playing a game that required me to use more than one button. The game has some interesting areas too, particularly the desert called Shifting Sands and its city of Aurora. This is where the second half of the game gets interesting as the kingdom of Albion faces a great threat from across the seas and you must begin to make some hard decisions on how to deal with it.

Ultimately Fable 3 is an exquisitely playable game with an ending that crashes abruptly to a halt with all the subtlety of a faked orgasm.

MAN VS MINECRAFT

Imagine being thrust into a world that looks as though it’s made from strangely decorated blocks of lego. This world is vast, literally greater than the surface of the earth; there are trees, flowers, valleys, lakes, deserts, horizons, animals and monsters. You have no resources and only three minutes to get together a shelter before the safety of the sun’s light disappears and darkness engulfs you. Night-time is not a place you want to be caught unprotected. Every creature will hunt you and make no mistake; if it finds you it will kill you. Your first mission is: Find a way to not die.

This is the world of Minecraft, a sandbox construction and adventure game where every thing you can see can be destroyed, collected and replaced to create almost anything you like. If you’ve ever played The Sims or even Farmville you can probably understand the addiction that develops out of being able to collect things, the more time you spend the better and greater quantity you obtain. This isn’t a video game about plot or victory; it’s about getting creative, exploring, crafting, building, surviving and sharing your accomplishments with other players.

The creator of this brilliant game is Swedish programmer Markus Persson better known as ‘Notch’. He is somewhat of a legend within the gaming community for bringing back an era of simplicity to video games that many had thought were cast aside at the end of the nineties with new developments to video games graphics. The game hasn’t even been officially released (only the beta version is available) and it’s already sold more than 3 million copies and 15 million people have registered to buy the game when it’s officially released in November 2011.

In Minecraft players can combine resources together to make new items, for example, you can combine blocks of wood and coals to make a torch. Iron and stone to make a pickaxe, hoe or spade. Players can also make circuitry and electricity using a resource called redstone. One player even made a working computer inside Minecraft, and then programmed Minecraft to play on it: mineception. Because Minecraft is so adaptable people have found many more uses for it than was intended. Many players have replicated scale models of famous icons like the titanic, even the starship Enterprise. Others have even made whole cities and replicas of fictional towns.

Perhaps the most interesting side product of Minecraft is its use as an environment for web-shows. Countless series have emerged from players creating characters, scripts and plots and acting them out in Minecraft to make a show. They can build their set to look exactly as they want it to be whether it’s lava filled dungeon or Grandma Bacon’s coffee shop.

Among the best of these web-series is ‘The Shadow of Israphael’ made by Simon Lane and Lewis Brindley. The story is based around the adventures of two characters, Honeydew a red bearded recklessly clumsy dwarf, and Xephos, a timid space captain. The series starts off with these two characters seemingly learning to play the game minecraft, showing new players what to do and how to build. A few episodes in however strange constructions start appearing on their server that neither of them has built. They come back from a day of gathering resources in the wilderness only to find their extravagant cave blown to bits and all the entrances trapped. They soon discover that this mysterious player is called Israphel and he's been going through their world and destroying everything.

Much to the surprise of Honeydew and Xephos they discover a settlement just beyond the mountain where their cave was and before long they realise that their server is not as empty as they had first thought. They discover that Israphel is the resurrected son of the village pastor and agree to help to protect the village and if they can, kill Israphel!

That is just the beginning of their adventures but, Simon and Lewis saw the potential of Minecraft to house a cast of fictional characters that could share their explorations in Minecraft endlessly.
Their series has more than one hundred thousand subscribers and each episode in the ‘The Shadow of Israphael’ series has over 4 million views.

Despite all these unintended side projects that Minecraft has spawned, its original purpose is still by far the best. Once you survive the fear and panic of the first night, and figure out the basics of not dying you have the world at your fingertips. Your first hastily constructed hovel has the potential to become a castle, a modern architectural wonder, the taj-mahhal or the even the secret entrance to a subterranean world.

You will become attached to your creations but in the end it’s you against the world and Minecraft doesn’t care if you die. Once you do, you respawn with nothing, left once more with just your ingenuity and a vast universe of blocks at your disposal. Pictured above is an example of what the collaboration of players can result in. If you want to walk through the world and see what other people can build, or work together on a project that everyone can enjoy then multiplayer is for you.

There are many types of multiplayer servers, some work based on economy, where you can specialise in a certain type of goods, which you can sell (e.g wood, iron, diamond, cake). Some servers are based on a common goal, like creating a city. You normally have to apply and agree to adhere to their rules (called a white list) to be allowed on their server. Others operate purely to let you be creative and make whatever you want. Some servers have strict rules, some are relaxed, some play on peaceful mode (no death), some on survival. It just depends on what your preferences are as a player. You can also play by yourself.

Make sure to keep an eye on the clock when you play because Minecraft is a huge time sink. You might start playing at 7pm and before you know it the birds are tweeting outside your window and it’s time to go to work. It’s a great way to take a break form the real world and do something creative, just be careful how much time you spend doing it. Minecraft allows you to lose yourself in an endlessly generated world; no two areas are the same. Walk through swamps, rainforests, barracks and abandoned townships, you and the sword you crafted with your bare hands, man vs. Minecraft.

DEAD AWESOME

Dead Island review coming soon... but trust me go and play it. It's amazing
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F.E.A.R3 a micro review

F.E.A.R3 is boring, the plot is terrible and the scenes are too long with too many mobs.
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TERRIBLE MOVIES

Ok so sometimes I actually do stuff other than play games, and then immediately regret it.

I feel anti-social for my movie dislike, alienated at best. When people ask me if I’ve seen this or that movie? No I haven’t. I don’t even know what the movie is you are trying to get me to remember. I probably haven’t seen it, I don’t care. No I won’t come and see the Hangover two with you, I haven’t even seen the first one. Seven pounds was boring, Inception was nonsense and I fell asleep in Lord of the Rings. Yep, my dreams were better than Lord of the Rings. My dislike of spending between two and three hours watching movies has flared up again recently after a spate of movies that can only be described as infuriating. But why? I wouldn’t say I hate movies, it’s more that I just dread watching them. I know most of them are going to be terrible. I never used to be like this, hours of my young life were spent, bottom-on-carpet watching hours upon hours of flickering telly screen. What’s changed? Is it the internet, my secret wish to be a robot or some other reason that I am as yet unaware of. It’s not that I don’t like terrible movies, Some of my favourite movies are terrible, bad acting filled, ten dollar pieces of garbage. Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead is a great example. I think I’ve just moved on. Dear terrible movies I’m breaking up with you, and here’s why.


Lets start with ‘The Mist’ a 2007, horror/scifi thriller. Yes, all three genres in one, a massive undertaking at the best of times, but one that I thought Stephen King of all people might be capable of. I was assured by a friend that this was beacon of cinematic originality, a movie worth writing novels about, the acting, angelic, the concept divine. Admittedly the concept for the movie was pretty cool, the blurb reads, ‘A freak storm unleashes a species of blood-thirsty creatures on a small town, where a small band of citizens hole-up in a supermarket and fight for their lives.’ It sounded alright despite the front cover’s pitiful catchphrase, ‘Fear changes everything’ (almost as bad as The Clash of Titans catchphrase, ‘Titans will clash.’) I settled down, bag of chips in hand and mild dose of healthy scepticism. This lead to plain scepticism and then to anger, which eventually lead to rage and me shouting insults at the screen. How does a movie made in 2007 manage to have CGI that looks as though it was rendered by a blind child randomly mashing buttons on Windows 97? Why were there monsters in the mist that looked like giant octopuses? Was there supposed to be back-story here that was assumed knowledge. Perhaps the movie in question was intended for audiences fifty years from now who had undergone an alien invasion and had stumbled blissfully out of ignorance and into a terrifying world occupied by dinosaurs and giant sea mammals. Maybe within that context I might have understood the movie slightly better. But as it stands it was as bleakly unoriginal as sliced bread. The explanation for how these creatures got to earth, was that a top secret military experiment had somehow ripped a whole in space time, allowing creatures inhabiting a different planet –despite being confusingly similar to earth creatures – to enter a small town in back country America. On top of this all the creatures that came through the void somehow manage to maintain a force shield of impenetrable mist that follows them around wherever they go. Three words to the producers of ‘The Mist,’ suspension of disbelief, you’re doing it wrong. I wasn’t going to mention the ending but it kind of sums up how dreadful this movie really was. Basically the protagonist is forced to kill all of his family, a better death than being ripped apart by the creatures. After he’s killed them he’s screaming out with self-hate, because there wasn’t enough bullets to kill him too and at that moment, the fog clears and rescue workers come to get them. I bet he felt like a right pillock. I knew that would happen, why make it so obvious.


This brings me to my second terrible movie, ‘The Steam Experiment.’ In fact I’m beginning to think I might never watch anything that has ‘The’ in the title ever again. ‘The premise for the steam room is pretty laughable; I can imagine people sitting around the boardroom table, thinking about what movie to make. One of the young upstarts thinks current affairs is a good idea, so he shouts ‘Global Warming’ he’s pointed at solemnly by the director, who then, with a spark in his eyes, says ‘Yes, you, I like you. What else?’ Then someone else shouts out ‘Steam room,’ and nobody wants to be the one who says that it’s a terrible suggestion so they make ‘The Steam Experiment,’ a movie about a deranged scientist who locks 6 people in a steam room and threatens to kill them unless the paper runs his article on global warming. It’s so bad, there isn’t any awful CGI in this one but there is bad acting, bad script and bad twists. The steam experiment has the opposite problem of the mist. In ‘The Mist you know exactly what’s going to happen because it’s being signposted the whole way through whereas in ‘The Steam Experiment’ it’s as though the director was like ‘let just do something completely unexpected, then we’ll get them, they’ll never see it coming, what? Who cares if it doesn’t make sense, let’s just put it in.’ The result of this is that the twist is so utterly confusing that you are left feeling alienated it’s as though the film require full exegesis to extract any meaning whatsoever. I think the moral of the story was, ‘global warming is bad,’ and if you put six people in a steam room together, they will kill each other.’
This got me thinking about why I didn’t like these twists, I’m sure I would have loved it when I was younger. My dislike of movies seems to be directly proportionate with my age, the older I get, the more boring I find movies. Is this phenomenon only affecting me? Is it because we get so much more stimulation from the internet and video games now, that watching a movies seems like a chore. Technology is moving pretty fast these days, it even has a theory called Moore’s Law; it shows that the rate of technology increase is exponential by measuring the increase in the number of transistors we can fit on an intergrated circuit every year. Think about that. It means that every two years we double the intelligence of manmade machines. If only we could double the capacity to make original and interesting movies every two years, imagine what that could do for Hollywood. Gone would be the days of Fast and the Furious Five, Final Destination five hundred (or whatever it is they are up to now.)

In fact I think it’s possible to apply Moore’s law to the making of movies. Let’s make a new theorum right now. The hypothesis shall be that: the number of terrible remakes and/or sequels doubles every two years and is directly proportionate to the decrease in originality. Watch this space. Movie making is dismal at best these days, for every gem there is at least a thousand steamers rolled out on the back of a cash cow, designed specifically to make already poor people pay $17 dollars to see something they’ve already seen with only the slightest (probably worse) changes.
I think part of the reason that movies are less popular than they used to be is because we are used to being entertained multiple ways at once. Here’s a scenario to think about, you pack your bag for a normal day which will consist of getting up, going to work, going out for drinks and then surfing the internet and sleeping. What wouldn’t you leave behind? I don’t know about anyone else, but my phone would be the first thing, then wallet, then ipod, and then Nintendo DS. At any given moment, most of us are carrying around thousands of dollars worth of technology to be used at our every whim. We decide when and how to use our technology. There is an element of choice that draws us in, we can choose who we call, what websites to browse, songs to download and what type of characters we play in games. How can movies even compete? They tell us what to think. No wonder we get bored, where’s the fun in being told what to do? I’d rather the interactivity myself. We can’t just sit down in front of the TV and watch something unencumbered now. Anyone with a laptop will also have that sitting on their lap and be chatting or surfing at the same time. If you had a choice between the internet and the TV, what would you choose?


Ray Kurzweil, a prominent scientist and futurist believes that there will be a point in the future where technology and human intelligence will be indistinguishable. He calls this idea the ‘Singularity’ and I wish it would hurry up so I could transfer my brain into a robot and become an awesome cyborg. I would become an evil mastermind and my mission would be to destroy all the awful movies in the entire world. DVD stores would fear me; my mighty circuits would seek out torrent sites, mass deleting their terrible files. Never again would people have to sit through Biodome with Pauly Shore. The end result of my efforts would be a utopia in which no remakes or sequels existed, unoriginality would not be in tolerated. Any movie with the word ‘labyrinth’ in it would be spared. Young adults and children alike would never have to live in fear of wasting their pocket money on two hours of rage inciting, mind-numbingly boring movies ever again.
So how should we entertain ourselves in the 21st century? Is it merely a question of going back to a simpler time, giving up our modern luxury products? I don’t think so. I think we have passed the point of no return. Now we have to try and find balance between technology and real life. Am I the only one who finds it frustrating that I’m drawn to check facebook several times a day, that I just can’t stop (believe me I’ve tried.) I am trapped, like many of you, in the world I’ve grown up in. My world is the internet, a prison of reward based punishment, it’s where I spend most of my time, and so do you, despite having a secret desire to escape it. I think I’ve reached a state of passive boredom. No matter how many things there are in front of me, if I’m by myself I usually count that as ‘bored.’ Nothing can beat the company of real life for me.


I think there could be a way to release ourselves from the burden of technology without completely removing it. Ubiquitous computing, technology we can’t see working, embedded around us. Real examples of this include belts that tell you where north are, clothes that regulate temperature, photo frames that tell you where the people in the pictures are. Maybe we could invent one that tells us if we will think a movie is rubbish or not.
Speaking of rubbish movies, I just thought of another one, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. You might know it as Heath Ledger’s last film. Sadly it’s also probably his worst. Visually, the movie is amazing; it’s got every last sweet in the candy box. It’s just that the story, was well, terrible. It had glimmers of hope, but it lost itself half way through and became terribly self indulgent and dragged out. Terry Gilligan, what were you thinking? The acting isn’t even bad. It could have been so watchable if only you’d cut out about an hour of the film and replaced it with plot. At the end I was left disgruntled at best.

tbc.

Something awesome

How cool are these? They also have Emma Frost, Wonder Woman and some other spider chick
You can get them at spencers! I want some.


Good for the lads imo.