Just a quickie, then I gotta play some more: unlocking the Nazi Zombies! mode in Call of Duty: World at War (by completing the single-player campaign) is the best thing you can do with your spare time. If anyone (ANYONE) wants to play THAT particular game mode, just let me know. You’ll be doing your country a service.
UPDATE 22 FEB 09: Received the happy word that Left 4 Dead (360) is now on its way to me, due to arrive Monday. In theory. So assuming it actually shows up, should be able to explore THAT avenue of zombie destruction relatively soon. ALSO: played the Resident Evil 5 demo… the “legal” one, not the fucked up Japanese version Gerry tried to get me to download and install. I was not happy with the game, a verdict which I’m sure will get me shunned by the gaming community in general; lucky for me my opinion of the gaming community in general is pretty damn low already, so no worries there. The reasoning behind this unpopular opinion will require some additional explanation, which I choose to place below the page break. Oh, the suspense.
I am not alone, either amongst my immediate friends or humanity in general, in my hatred of the undead. In fact, I derive a great deal of visceral, instinct-type joy from the wholesale slaughter (re-slaughter?) of zombies. AS SUCH: I have a greater intrinsic love of games that allow me to dispatch as many loathsome undead as possible, preferably with gas-powered gardening implements. I particularly enjoy games that keep true to the time-honored tradition of headshots/decapitations as sure-fire one-hit kills, as it makes sense (to me) that the brain (and nervous system, by extension) would be the one human organ a zombie would actually need to function and that damage to that organ would result in instant redeadening. ( <—— NOT A REAL WORD)
THEREFORE: Nazi Zombies! in CoD: WaW? YES. Left 4 Dead? VERY YES. Dead Rising (the 360 version)? OH GODS YES. Dead Rising (the Wii version, where there’s, what, like 5 zombies on the screen at a time)? Not so much. House of the Dead 4, where you can blow a zombie’s head clean off and they keep right on coming and somehow manage to knock off one of your fucking four life chunks? NO. Zombie Revenge, a little known Dreamcast game set in the House of the Dead universe where multiple delightful weapon systems are available for the slaying of, let’s be honest here, retarded zombie fodder? SUPER YES. Zombies Ate My Neighbors? A mild yes, if only because melting a zombie with a holy water balloon is hilarious; props for using the materials at hand. Monster Madness: Battle For Suburbia? Definitely yes, even though zombies don’t even APPEAR in some levels; if you haven’t played this one, dude, give it a damn try. Record of Lodoss War? Absolutely YES, if only for the opportunity to cut down zombies with a fire sword. Grabbed By The Ghoulies? …I’m slightly embarrassed to endorse this one, it’s a KIDS’ game, after all… but so was Big Sky Troopers, and that game was awesome, so fuck it: this game was pretty fun and included killing zombies with holy water-filled Super Soakers. Plus my wife (then girlfriend) enjoyed the hell out of the game herself, and thus did I reach second base. Never underestimate the power of video games your significant other might be good at (two words: TETRIS ATTACK).
But Resident Evil 5? FUCK NO. First of all… tentacle heads?!? That shit makes me look back on Resident Evil 1 and 2 with nostalgia, and I hated the hell out of those for quite some time because you got like twelve damn bullets to last you the entire fucking game. And not even good bullets, either… we’re talking 9mm here people… I’d put three of those in an actual human if I wanted a sure kill, and zombies are much more durable in the torso regions. Eventually, I came to enjoy the puzzle opportunities presented by the Survival Horror genre, but I could never play them for long due to my frustration over not being able to just lay into my undead foes with wild abandon. Resident Evil, what, was it 4? The one where they threw boxes of ammo at you like the village had been planting bullet trees for generations? THAT one very nearly redeemed the entire series in my eyes.
I guess my ideal zombie situation is some kind of combination of Dead Rising (huge hordes of fragile zombies) and either Too Human or Viking (another underrated game; I love how each area culminates in a massive viking assault on some fort or whatever, with dragon-based fighter-bomber-esque assistance; Gamefly the shit, you’ll see what I’m talking about)… so, a bloodthirsty bezerker-type encounter. Look, Dynasty Warriors: Zombies would be an AWESOME game to me. Just the thought of Lu “Cockroach Man” Bu holding Hu Lao Gate against a tidal wave of zombified peasantry is delightful to me. Shit would go down like “My Lord Liu Bei! Cao Cao’s forces are nearly upon us! We must flee!” “No, Zhao Yun, I must buy the rearguard time to evacuate the peasants… I MUST defend my people!” “But Sir, your people are all gray and stinky and they’ve eaten the rearguard!” “…No shit? Fuck it then, Cao Cao can have ‘em, he wants ‘em so much.” “Right on, my liege. Yo! Zhang Fei, Guan Yu! Wrangle up all the healthy wenches, we’re gonna fuck off out of here and rebuild the Kingdom of Shu our damn selves! Yes, yes, the rice wine, too!”
…You know what? Fuck it. I’M MAKING THAT GAME. Gerry, halt all production on whatever that TD game was that I’ve been out of the loop on for so long: we are reprioritizing towards development of Zombie Plague of the Three Kingdoms XIII: Fucking Off To Japan. It’s a civilization development game interspersed with resource-gathering sorties into infested villages with alcohol and desperate fighting withdrawls towards the port city of Qing Zhou. And should the port prove full of the undead, as well? Over the Great Wall. It’s a story of love, loss, and huge fuck-off halberds. MY WILL BE DONE, god dammit.
Anyways. I have faith in Left 4 Dead because it’s always seemed right to me for the last vestiges of humanity to eventually be impossibly outnumbered by the mindless undead. It seems only just, in such a world, for a small band of competent, well-armed heroes to be carving a swathe through thousands upon thousands of zombies, pausing only to rest and rearm at rare safe havens before venturing once again into a seething, moaning ocean of reanimated hunger. Why do they continue on as they do, their bodies, minds and spirits being slowly ground into nothingness by the relentless grasping hordes? Do they strive towards a final safety that may not even exist? Do they seek to drown their useless, vestigal sense of humanity beneath their grim, neverending harvest? Or… are they reaching, unconsciously, towards the sweet release of death that their comrades and, tragically, even they themselves cannot find the courage to provide? I choose to believe there is something about indomitable odds that drives people towards a final, explosive blaze of glory… and if a person can take as many of the enemy along with them as possible, then we should honor their effort all the greater. That the Left 4 Dead zombies seems to tear apart under gunfire like used tissue paper gives me hope that the body count for this game will be truly great. Our Norse forefathers will surely greet us heartily in Valhalla.. while the slow and the weak will be left trudge the Earth forever while you and I quaff mightily and laugh at them from on high.
Comma bitches.
Didn’t they unlock that without the need to have to play through the game? or is that only in the pc version? Anyway, F that man. It’s all about L4D
UPDATE 26 FEB 09: After playing through the first three campaigns (or “movies”, whatever the fuck analogy they used instead of just coming out and saying “We don’t particularly feel like hiring writers to throw together a plot”) of Left 4 Dead I am UNDERWHELMED. Perhaps I was a bit spoiled by the Nazi Zombies! barricade system (you repair boarded-up windows to keep the zombies out a bit longer) which is fucking SPARSE at best, but still gives an impression of gamely trying to hold ground against an implacable tide of undead. I also bemoan the relatively stingy weapon selection; I realize that having more interesting weapons would undercut the whole “Team Effort” thing, but even when faced with zombies that (LITERALLY) fall over if you shoot NEAR them (they have weak hearts, apparently) I’d like at least a little time with something truly ungodly. Yes, I get the “lightly armed trek through Zombie Country” thing, I really do. I think if there were more objectives along the way, even a Quake Wars level of objectives, then I might be happier. Something like a quick side trip to make the main path easier, or more interesting, would be a great diversion from the “wander around until you see zombies; you’re now going the right way” feeling I’m getting. Even a “push this abandoned car downhill into a crowd of zombies you’d otherwise have to shoot” option would be a break in the monotony. The special zombies come close, but the fact that the solution to all special zombie attacks is “SHOOT THEM” really degrades the novelty. Dammit, I REALLY WANT to like this game, but they’re not giving me much to work with here. If YOU know something I don’t, please drop me a line. Maybe the fourth campaign is a magical smorgasbord of shit to do, but I somehow doubt it.