Brrrraaaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnnssssss: Your guide to surving the Zombie Appocalypse.

Hello once again, seeing as it tis the season for Zombie themed bar crawls, Halloween parties, and Haunted Housing I figured I'd give my advise to staying alive till next year.  Now these times can be difficult but we must always remember a few simple rules to abide by when fighting off hordes of the undead, and quite possibly the teen fakers as well.

They only want to hug.

 
1) Never for get the shotgun.
It is always important that one must be prepared, and nothing says prepared like a 12 gauge slung over the shoulder.  I do understand that the shotgun has been over-romanticized in popular zombie media and on ever zombie survival guide but honestly why shouldn't it be?  I mean nothing says badass like a gun that can blow a hole in not only 1, 2, 3, but up to 4 targets with a single slug.  Where can I sign up.  Just remember though that this puppy has one helluva kick to it and is not advised for young children, unless your fighting children zombies, then don't forget to kneel down to conserve ammo and get a better headshot.


2) Avoid spending too much time in major cities.
This one is pretty obvious if you ask me but it still needs to be said.  Major cities mean one thing: lots of people.  And a lot of people turns into a lot of zombies so its obvious that the biggest concentration of the zombie horde is going to be sitting in a major city.  Now thats not to say to avoid them entirely, quite the contrary, major cities are where all the supplies are, ammo, food, stress relief targets, but you just gotta be careful.  Just don't forget to get plenty of those supplies before you leave, remember efficiency is the key.

3) Travel in groups.
This one is a pretty non-standard way to do things.  Most people will argue that you build an attachment and won't want to help your friends when they start craving your flesh.  I say that if you do develop that bond the less likely that the time will come that they will get a craving for your flesh.  Now a group of 20 can really waste your resources so you should try and stay down to about 4 - 8 people, enough to cover your ass and not be a burden.  Also make sure these people are your close friends and have a good sense of humor to make surviving the horde even easier.

Left 4 Dead got it right, groups are key.

4) Stay mobile.
Every zombie movie says this and they say it for a reason.  If you stay in one place its like putting a silver platter under your ass and saying to the zombies: "Here I am!!  Come get me, I'm fresh and I taste good."  However when your always on the move your more comparable to meals on wheels, only your wheels don't deliver.  Also the advantage to staying mobile is you get to see the world, no matter how apocalyptically ravaged it is, think of it a photo opp at the Grand Canyon one day and swimming in the Atlantic the next, ahh the good life.

5) Impenetrable Fort.
Okay if you absolutely feel the need to bunker down just make sure that you're in someplace absolutely safe, like the side of a mountain, behind a 2 ft. thick steel door.  Seriously though make sure that your personal bunker meets 3 qualifications: well fortified, able to see out, and see whats coming, and rig the place with traps.  Think of it like this, a fence all the way around your steel and concrete palace with a minefield 50 ft. deep.  Any zombies dare to come close just sit back and watch the bits fly, but don't forget to replace the mines or else wave 2 will surely be having brain soup for supper.

6) Chainsaws Suck!
Contrary to popular belief chainsaws are not your best friend when getting in close with the zombie horde.  Mainly because the way chainsaws work, Its a rotating blade.  Yea it can cut skin like butter but think of it like this, you need to start the chainsaw and how many regular old people know how to run a chainsaw?  You need to have gas and oil to run the chain saw, why would you waste precious fuel on killing the horde?  My suggestion is to simply use a giant meat cleaver, yea the bones may be tough to cut but with enough force you'll never even notice.

7) The Right Gun for Every Situation.
Now I know that I said shotguns were great idea but their not always the best, or even the right idea.  For example a shotgun is ideal in a situation where your in close with a lot of zombies but what happens when you get in confined spaces and you are trying to escape the way you came?  Well try a flamethrower.  Or if there a ton of zombies that you need to take out fast?  Well throw a Molotov or use a machine gun to thin their ranks.  Never forget that sometimes is can be better to just blow a leg off with a pistol than to waste a shotgun shell on a single zombie.

Be prepared.

8) Take a Book.
Now this is pretty much counter productive to just about every zombie movie ever but think about it.  Your going to need a way to kill some time and I suggest reading.  The only thing you need to read is a little bit of light so you can kill a bored day by doing so.  I know that I'm going to bring my library with me because why not?  Books work fine no matter how many times you use them, they never jam and if your in a pickle you can throw some of the heavier ones at the zombies as weapons.  Plus you never know what the currency will be in the New World Zombie Order and you may just be one of the few people with a book to read.  Just don't get too into the book that you forget to watch your back.

9) Lights Out!
Now yes, light is a nice thing to have, during the day.  But remember even zombies can see, how else could they find the best place on your neck to munch on.  So at night, light isn't the best thing unless you're actively looking for something/someone.  Yea all of the horror games and movies show the survivors as people who can't live without it but the truth is the human body can adjust to different situations, such as low light.  For example has anyone ever laid awake at night not being able to sleep?  Well you know how the room becomes more profound the longer that you are awake.  This is because your eyes are adjusting to the low light level.  So long story short you don't need it and you probably don't want it.

10) Keep your wits about you.
We all know that zombies are really just looking for deadly human brain hugs and that your job as a survivor is to keep that from happening.  Now its time to make sure that you use your brain to keep from being brain salad.  So use it, thats what the zombies want it and you got it.  Its a game of capture the flag only your flag is your best weapon against the horde, just don't loose it because if you do its game over forever.

So just remember that next time there is a zombie apocalypse to keep to these simple rules and you'll be just fine.  Happy Halloween everybody!

But not too happy or you'll end up like this.

The Call of Duty Effect

Okay so this is a topic that's honestly a little touchy for me, mainly because I have some very strong, and very mixed feelings about this.  This weeks topic is what I like to call: "The Call of Duty Effect".  And the only reason that it gets that name is because of Call of Duty's impact on the FPS genre.  And its impacts were drastic, almost to the level that you would call it a singularity, almost.

Now no matter who you are there was a very obvious turning point in who played and payed attention to video games at about the time that the latest generation of consoles launched.  Online gaming has been made easier and more convenient, partially because of wireless adapters on all current systems, and due to good design and some nice UI's the way we navigate a system has also improved, anyone remember holding the "A" button on the game cube to get to the system menu?

Hold it, hold it, there you go.

But you're still probably wondering what Call of Duty did specifically.  Well in 2007 we saw a nice little man named Price and his 2 bff's Gaz and Soap, hunt down terrorists  in an attempt to advert WW3.  This game was called Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.  Yea yea yea, you all know that right?  Okay good, but the real question is what does that mean and where does that come into play?  Well CoD4 was one of the first console based shooters to introduce a leveling system that gave the player perks and bonuses to playing the game and using specific weapons, it became extremely addictive, and very easy to play.  But also because it was a shooter a lot of people felt as if they could play it easily without looking like a dork for playing for hours on end online.  Long and short is it gave players a reason to continue playing, and was "cool" enough that people weren't afraid to be seen with it on their TV's playing online.

Start of a Revolution.

But why is that such a big deal?  Well because the standard rep to online gaming prior to this was people sitting in their parents basements playing WoW for hours on end.  Now obviously that hasn't gone away, but a new rep for people playing video games is the 20-something sitting in a college dorm room, or apartment, playing call of duty all night.  So why is that bad?  Well like any other stereotype its not an accurate representation for either people who play Call of Duty or people who play online video games.

But again, what did CoD do wrong?  Well in short nothing, in fact they did more things right than they possibly could have done wrong.  They built a good game that kept people playing, in fact I think that the people at Infinity Ward need to be applauded more than anything else.  The people who are to blame here is society.  And before you get the angry lynch mobs and come to burn my house down because I suggested that a single person isn't to blame you might want to hear me out.  When I grew up, this was the 90's, the norm was to go outside and throw a ball around, or hit each other with sticks, baseball bats or other blunt instruments.  However now its much more normal, partially because of the current level of technology, for children and younger generations to sit inside and play a video game.  Needless to say this is a bad thing to older generations, they didn't do it and frankly just don't understand it.

This would've never happened 10 years ago.

So CoD comes into play with this because it is one of the first games to streamline video games into a more norm approach to gaming.  For example at work the other day me and a couple coworkers were talking, one of the girls made a comment saying "If my boyfriend is playing CoD then I just leave and see other friends."  Now, knowing her, and having half a brain, I could take a guess and say that her boyfriend isn't nearly as into the video game scene as someone like me.  However thats exactly the audience that CoD targeted, and they hit them on the nose.

Taken at Call of Duty XP, this kind of proves my point.

There are a few positive things that came out of this "Call of Duty Effect" though.  One of which is the MLG, or video games equivalent of the NFL to football.  I think that this is a pretty cool idea, though I would like to see more regional competitions and some minor leagues for people who play recreational like me.  Another thing that came out of this was just a larger acceptance of video game culture.  Now I know what I said earlier about society being the one that condemns video games and the usual arguments of "if society condemns it how can society accept it" may fall into place here but the thing is when I was a kid even wearing a Mario T-Shirt was like slapping a giant red "NERD" sticker on them.

This kid would get "NERD" tattooed on his forehead.

One of the biggest things to come though is the general acceptance of video game conventions.  Not only does this help to drive more people to these conventions who already play video games but also helps to spark the interest in people who don't by seeing this on things like MSN or Yahoo! News.  It's even at the point in time where people are becoming more excited about events like this happening.  Hopefully this will lead to a general acceptance of other such conventions in the future like a gaming convention (not video games) , anime conventions, and even just a general nerd convention.  Not that these don't happen but they are still considered something that is "socially awkward" by society, mainly because society doesn't understand them.

So long and short a lot of both good and bad things have come out of The Call of Duty Effect, and I my hope counts for anything, I hope that only good and positive feedback, and a general understanding from society comes out of this.  Also you never know, maybe we'll start to see Call of Duty acting as a gateway for the most unsuspecting people to get into even nerdier thing such as comic books, role playing and manga.  Also I know that I got a little off from just the FPS genre, but thats just kinda were things went.  But till next time, keep on rockin.

Super Movies!!

Okay so this whole idea of superhero movies was brought on by a commercial I saw last week advertising Green Lantern coming to DVD last Friday.  It also reminded me of how much I felt dirty for enjoying Green Lantern, as a stand alone movie it was good, however calling it Green Lantern is like slapping DC across the face with sweaty jock-strap while riding off into the sunset upon a Nazi tank.  Needless to say some superhero movies aren't exactly a good thing.  But with that little tangent out of the way lets get on with the show.

In 1978 Richard Donner shocked the world with the first major motion picture superhero movie: Superman.  Yes that classic movie staring none other than Christopher Reeve as the wondrous man of steel.  Movie going audiences everywhere were shocked, wowed and otherwise overly excited about his dawning on the big screen.  And thus launched a flurry of carefully created superhero movies, that until the year 2000, had a good heart but were ultimately underfunded, with a few minor exceptions.

In the dawning of the new millennium, fresh off the shoulders of movies such as Blade and Mystery Men we see the dawning of a new era of superhero movies.  This new era was designed to include all generations from getting the younger kids involved in superheros and comic books, to giving the older generations nostalgia from their child hood of trading cards and $.05 comic books (you know that the value of things has gone up when you can't even find a cents key on your keyboard).  The thing is: it worked, mostly.  The 21st century hit the ground running with movies like X-Men and Spiderman.  So it should be no surprise that Marvel had control of the first big time superhero sensation and Stan Lee spared no expense to capitalize on this.

I'm sure we all remember this.

The times it seemed were going well, however as fate would have it there were sharks in the water.  For every good movie that came out there was at least one bad.  With such travesties as Hulk, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Blade: Trinity lurking in the midst, its no surprise that the genre had gotten such a bad rap from A LOT of film critics.

But in 2005 a light was turned on at the end of the tunnel with the dawning of Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan's reboot of Batman movies with Christian Bale as the caped crusader.  This light only got brighter with titles like Watchmen, Kick-Ass, and Iron Man 2, which, despite being a superhero sequel, was quite good.

Now this year, 2011 we see such movies as Thor, Captain America, X-Men: First Class and the debauchery that was called Green Lantern, 3 of 4 are good which for superhero movies is a win in my book.  That and all the buzz about next years movie based on The Avengers and the third of the new generation of Batman movies the future only looks better.

Stan Lee makes all the pain of bad superhero movies go away.

But lets get into what we all want to hear about: my opinion.  Now if you ask me letting big name Hollywood directors and Actors just romp on and make superhero movies is a mistake, but if that never happened then we would never have even the good ones.  However a good idea would be to get the creators of such superheroes involved in the making of the movies, oh wait, Stan Lee, riiiigggghhhhttttt (ever notice how Marvel movies tend to be just better). 

Back to the whole Green Lantern thing, sorry I know I said I was done by I just can't get the horror out of my head.  It's a classic example of a movie that if it was a purely unique idea would have been great but it wasn't so it was bad.  And when things like this happen its not necessarily the fault of one person every time, but it does boil down to three major categories: Actors, Directors, and Writers.  For Green Lantern it was a combination of all three.  The execution wasn't very good and with all the cheesy one-liners you could tell that they spilled Ryan Reynolds all over the script.  Ryan Reynolds couldn't decide if he was playing a fun loving Hal Jordan, or a Hal Jordan who was so pissy about everything going wrong in his life that he came over as being way too serious, and Martin Campbell gave him no help, quite literally NO HELP (probably because he was too busy counting his presale money and planning what size of yacht to buy next).

What Green Lantern made me do

You know an even better option to making these movies better would be for big time movie studios to make an open contest taking in fans concepts and screenplays (if they have them) and choose 15 they like the best and have a fan vote to, wait for it, GIVE THE VIEWERS WHAT THEY WANT.  Because ultimately that is who is paying the bills for the movie, the viewers and a lot of Hollywood tends to forget this.  Also we could go ahead and throw in an open casting call to fill these roles, because its not that big and well known names are a bad thing, but they're not the best thing to use when trying to fill a character that was a major part of our childhood, i.e. Nicholas Cage in Ghost Rider.  Yea, a few people like Robert Downy Jr. can get away with it.  But I can't be the only person who thought of Steve Rogers as being portrayed by The Human Torch, or the guy from Push.

Oh hey look Captain America, or better know as The Human Torch.

Now I'm all for Hollywood making these movies, but if you go by everything that I say they need to have a severe leash on some parts of them, thats right  Ghost Rider, looking at you, and give more freedom to the intellectual property holders because, here's an idea, they're the ones who made it good in the beginning.  So long and short when you go out next Tuesday and buy your Blu-Ray/DVD combo packs of Captain America: The First Avenger, just like I will, enjoy it, but remember to think about which superhero movies are worth the money you spend, and which ones just leave your DVD/Blu-Ray player with a swanky after funk that you just can't get out of your house.

The Gear that Keeps Turning

So first I want to apologize about all of the Gears of War posts so far but this will be the last one for a while, that I plan on of course.  Also I apologize for the delay, I've been a bit busy.  But in addition the usual spoiler warning goes into effect with this post.  So here we go.

Last week we saw the launch of Gears of War 3, and also the end of the franchise.  With this end comes a lot of questions, and a lot of answers, but not only about the storyline.  For example Gears of War was a franchise both every unique and very familiar all at the same time, whether it was the unique cover based, third-person shooting or the underlining story of the game, where there are two sets of primary dominant species on Sera, the Humans and the Locust.

Today I'm going to dissect the second of those impacts, the story.  For any of us who have read the Gears of War novels by Karen Travis you know that there really is a lot of back story to this universe.  And just by looking at the first game, before the back story became as big as it is now, we can tell that it is just hinted as to how big it could be.  The first Gears of War book, Aspho Fields, was released almost a month before the second game.  Aspho Fields, for those who don't know, covers the events leading up to the development of the Hammer of Dawn and ultimately how Marcus, Carlos, and Dom became Gears.  This is coincidentally the first time we meet Bernie, Carlos, Adam Fenix and Helena Stroud.  Like I said a lot of back story.

Aspho Fields by Karen Traviss

All 3 novels were written by Karen Traviss, and coincidentally so was Gears 3, I personally tribute her the reason that Gears 3 had such a focus on its story.  BUT the big point here is that if it were not for Karen Traviss would we have the Gears of War story we have today?  Probably not, mainly because she did do so much of it, even if Epic decided to hamper her creativity by adding limitations to her stories and forcing a lot of major elements or events to occur (which probably did happen).

Why is this important though?  It's important because Gears of War has a rather unique story to drive it, like I mentioned earlier, there are 2 dominant species on the planet.  It's almost a classic war of technology vs. nature, actually I lied, it IS a classic war of technology vs. nature.  On one side we have the COG with a very high tech military, including a satellite weapons system, and on the other theres the Locust, whose vehicles are quite literally subterranean animals with saddles.   But then we add in our secondary humans, the Stranded, they almost act like a morally grey middle ground, same goals as the COG but a lot more lawless.

Saddle Up

So to me the 3 initial factions act upon basic human nature, the nature to advance, the nature to survive, and the nature to conquest.  Where we have the COG, Stranded, and Locust respectfully.  I draw this conclusion because of what each faction ultimately stands for.  While the war itself is almost a message telling us that if we want super advanced technology we can't forget about where we come from as a species.  Nature is something to preserve because it is scary.  I mean for example there are plenty of things that can kill a human, from a spider the size of your finger to a bear 3 times the size of you.

For example, this could kill you.

This historical value of the Pendulum Wars in Gears can also teach us a valuable lesson.  The lesson here is that fighting over fuel is just plain silly, as is a huge land grab or even a small disagreement.  The COG and the UIR fought mercilessly for almost 100 years to end up being attacked by an enemy that quite frankly didn't care.  One of my favorite quotes from the game is where Adam Fenix says "What if our next enemy doesn't think like us?  We need to be prepared for a situation where this is the case."  This quote really hits home the fact that no matter what you need to be prepared, and both the COG and UIR were not.

So next we enter the Lambent, they are quite literally a parasite upon the world, like a giant mushroom that can also infect people.  Very similar to the green goo in Killzone 3 encasing the entire world in poison.  The Lambent represent a more feral side of human nature, one that doesn't really conserve or care, it just consumes all in its path.  There is a lesson to learn from the Lambent however, be mindful of your actions and their repercussions.  Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and people need to be mindful of this.

The appropriate reaction to this is "Awwwwww"

Now I'm not trying to shove a political lesson down your throat our teach you some big humanistic lesson, because frankly I don't care, I also don't actively try to preserve nature.  All I'm trying to make a point here is that sometimes it pays to take 2 seconds to critically think about a situation before just jumping right in and trying to solve the problem.