Free Thing of the Week: When Zombies Attack!

There are lots of ways to prove something, but I think we can all agree that the best way to prove something is through math.

This is because Numbers Don't Lie. Let's say I was to tell you that a normal person only uses .3 per cent of their brain, that the Inuit have 127 words for snow, that you only have 2.4 seconds to make a first impression, or that 6 was afraid of 7 because 7 8 9. These are all lies, but the numbers themselves didn't lie. I did. So in their own way, they're facts.

6 was actually afraid of 7 because 7 killed 4's cat.

So yes. The best way to prove something is through math. And the best thing to prove, as long as you're going to be proving something, is zombies.

Hot out of Carlton University's school of mathematics and statistics is, I think we can all agree, some terrifying yet oddly exhilarating news. According to a mathematical model taking into account all manner of vectors and factors and other math words that I'm sort of afraid of, they found out that, in the upcoming zombie apocalypse, we're pretty much toast.

And here's the kicker... they even went and made the zombies slow. Just to give us a head start.

Look out strippers it is zombies.

So the future is looking bleak. I mean, yes. Those three strippers might help stem the tide of undead monsters for a little while. I can understand that the shotgun might be effective, and that chainsaw might do some damage as well. But that third stripper seems to have only a shoe.

I'd say the chances of that working are only around 17%


- Rook

Kicking it old school

This weekend Rook and intend to relive some glory days.

A couple years ago, while his wife was away, we decided to play through and beat Dead Rising and we decided to do it in high debaucherous style. I arrived late Friday night and we immediately plugged in the game swearing that we would beat it that weekend. Now, Dead Rising is a game where you play a veteran photojournalist, Frank West, locked in a mall with zombies.

Part John Maclean, part Angsty teenager, all douchebag.

The game takes place in the Willamette mall, which is located in the sleepy town of Willamette, pop. 53,000. The story tells the story of what Frank gets up to while locked in this zombie infested shopping emporium for 3 days until his helicopter arrives to extract him. What Rook and I didn’t know was that the game clock is real time. We had sworn to beat a game which takes 72 hours to beat and we only had 72 hours to beat it before his wife came home and I returned to my private estate. Screw sleep, we could do it in shifts if we had to. We were undaunted.
About 2 hours in we realized we would need sustenance. We placed an order for 3 extra large pizzas and 20 minutes later, leaving Frank in the secure mall office while we made our food sortie. The plan was that these 3 pizzas would be our sustenance for the next 3 days. Sunday was kinda gross. That weekend we smoked enough cigars to give 5 people cancer. As I said, debauchery.

Needless to say, we beat that mother f-er and swore we would do it again sometime. That sometime is now.

One of these guys is a Daddy, the other is sterile. You guess.

Rook and I have 3 days once again, but this time the stakes are higher. We plan to beat both Bioshock and Metal Gear Solid 4. I know we’re looking at two 30+ hour games and it would be doable except that we aren’t starting until tomorrow. Tonight we’re going to a birthday party and, post party, plan to play through at least one Left 4 Dead Scenario. Also, Rook needs to play Braid.

Maybe we can’t do this, but by God we need to try.

-King

Things That Go BLEEP-BLOOP in the Night

Your humble co-narrator has been busy. Busy with video games.

It might be suspected that as far as business goes, video games might be one of the more pleasant things to be busied with. And, heck, I would have thought so too! But in playing some two dozen horror video games in rapid succession, jumping across systems and decades in a craven search for an understanding of the breadth of the matter, I fear I have begun to do immeasurable damage to my psyche.

In true Lovecraftian form, I may have unearthed secrets not fit for the gaze of man. Each of these games, after all, serves as an attack on a player’s sensibilities. To be truly afraid, something must be undone, leaving some fuse in the viewer’s lizard brain frayed and sparking. But each of these games chooses a different approach, a separate jab and feint that may be radically different from others of its kind. Put together they form a kind of onslaught upon all regions of the self, like a particularly virulent form of Neitzschean nihilism but with way way more zombies.

Like the Inuit's apocryphal hundred words for snow, I am discovering new words for FEAR.

FUN FACT: In one ten second period, Christopher Guest says "suck" four times.

These varying visions of spookiness jumble together, a melange in the slow cooker of my subconscious. These horrors take hold of me when I least expect them... I have begun to be plagued by fevered dreams! In some, I am assisted by my erstwhile companions, but often I am alone. Perhaps I am on a spaceship, or in a strange town, or confined to a mall or a haunted house. Sometimes I have a gun, or something else entirely, but often I have nothing.

In every dream I am chased by something... something inscrutiably terrible, seen only in the corners of my eyes. It looms over me, hovering, long, black finger of a forgotten god.

Is it.. Oh, God, is it? It is! IT IS!

It's an Atari 2600 Joystick!

I didn't even know they still made those.

- Rook

Player 2 has joined the game

So I spent the Christmas holiday playing video games. I mean the whole thing, one straight week of nonstop gaming.
I was back in my hometown with my friends of yore, we had two TVs and two Xboxs and were prepared to beat the following games or die trying: Gears of War 2 Co-Op Campaign, Gears of War 2 Horde Mode, All 4 Scenarios in Left 4 Dead, and Castle Crashers.

Needless to say we did it, we beat them all. But where did we get the energy to keep going? The resolve to believe it could be done? Let's call it 'Multiplayer Magic'

I've always found that a multiplayer game is better than a single player one, heck, the single player game can be complete shite and still the co-op is amazing, it's that sense of camraderie and the certain knowledge that someone else is having the same amount of fun as you, and they've got your back.

Of course there's always versus multiplayer, but sometimes that can be the most fun of all. Every night of that game-a-thon week, after the dust settled on whatever epic game we had been playing and it was time to shut the system off and catch some Z's we would look at each other and nod and one of us would say "call Nick"

Shortly after Nick would be downstairs, controller in hand at 2 in the morning and Bomberman HD would be on the screen with bombs and expletives flying everywhere until 6 or 7 in the morning. By the way, have you ever played multiplayer Pac-Man, where 3 players control ghosts with limited vision on gameboys? DO IT.

It comes down to complexity I think. All games have a certain level of complexity and you move through the games environment interacting with whatever complexities those may be. Once you figure it out it's all the same. Toss another living breathing thinking human into the mix and suddenly things become interesting.

It's like that quintessential movie scene where the hero and his sidekick are suddenly ambushed by enemies and separated, running in opposite directions from the explosions the hero looks back to see his sidekick overwhelmed by the bad guys before continuing his mission. He disarms the bomb and turns to leave only to find himself staring down the barrel of the enemy commanders gun. BANG! moments pass and the bad guy slumps down to reveal the sidekick, who made it after all, just saved you. That's co-op gaming.

So, why is multiplayer more fun? When you consider that just about every non-video game is a social activity and that people have been playing games for thousands of years then you start to realize that maybe the social aspect, the shared experience, is the heart of gaming and it's soul.

As technology and understanding of video games, which is a relatively new thing, advances we've begun to see more and more refined gaming but his isn't new. Looking to board games as an example, would you rather play 'Monopoly' or 'Settlers of Catan'? 'Sorry' or 'Munchkin'? 'Hungry, Hungry Hippos' or...well the Triple H stands alone. Yet, my point remains, video games are only going to get better and, therefore, so shall our enjoyment of them.


What about Artifical Intelligence you ask?. Besides being the subject of many an Aasimov tale, A.I. is what makes single player games work. But it's based on a series of controls and responses. Chess is a pretty basic game and so, at it's most basic level you can compare just about any other game to it 'The way pieces move' is the function of the game, you ultimately don't play against your opponents pieces, you play against the opponent. The gameplay is simply the other persons input, and everyone will generally play it differently. When you switch out another person for a chess A.I. things change dramatically, as the A.I. is only capable of working in terms of pre-programmed move sets, probabilities and basic reactions.

I wanted to talk about how MMO's and "four dudes on a couch" compare but I think I bounced around topics enough this week, so you'll get that on Tuesday maybe.

Until next time, remember that not all A.I. is evil.

Apocalypse Nao

So I recently read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, while my girlfriend was prepping for the upcoming Watchmen film by reading its source material. The latter involves the nature of superheroes set against the alternate history backdrop of a world where political tensions between the US and the Soviets are edging closer to nuclear war, While the former is the harrowing tale of a man and his son traveling to the coast across the U.S. 10 years after an unexplained cataclysm. Tales of this sort have been told since Mary Shelly’s 1826 The Last Man or, technically speaking, much, much, earlier.

But what’s the point of all of this? Why is humanity so enthralled by the depiction, fantasy and, in games, participation in apocalypse? I mean, clearly popular culture is rife with the apocalypse in a variety of forms, we’ve been destroying it in stories and prophecy pretty much it since it began. The stories go from war and acts of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, to religious, sci-fi, horror and fantasy representations of the end of the world, depicted in a wide range of media including novels, comics, film, television and video games. Considering how old the idea of the apocalypse is it’s certainly created some of the most imaginative and terrifying imagery I’ve seen.

The Large Hadron Collider still freaks me out abit

While Apocalyptic Fiction has a long pedigree there has also, for quite some time, been a similar genre in the gaming world. As far as games themselves are concerned it pretty much started with Wasteland, probably the first Post Apocalyptic Video Game and the undisputed Granddaddy of the genre, directly inspiring The Fallout Series with the most recent entry being 2008’s Fallout 3.

I don't want the future to look like this

Then of course we have film. Starting with Wells’ Things to Come, going the B-movie route through the 50’s and 60’s and then regaining prominence with Mad Max in the late 70’s and soon becoming mainstream with the Terminator series and Kevin Costners hard-on for Post-Cataclysmic adventure, capping off with The Matrix before moving away from Wars and bombs and towards zombies and plagues through the likes of Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, and I Am Legend. It seems people are fascinated with the end of the world.

In recent years of course Environmental Apocalypse has taken the stage. The Day After Tomorrow, Japan Sinks, the upcoming 2012, the adapation of The Road, The Happening, and even Wall-E. These films are all moneymakers on account of the growing concerns regarding our environment…well except The Happening.

Insert obvious joke relating 'Apocalypse'
and 'M. Night Shyamalan's career'

With all of the available post apocalyptic musings, scenarios, games, film and literature I have read or heard about I can safely say I would not like to see one on the real. An apocalypse is a tragedy on a vast, and horrifying scale, but it brings with it the idea of starting new and on a bare slate where everything is destroyed, leaving a scattered few to rebuild from the ruins which seems to be where alot of the...let's say charm

So, as cool as trading some pre-apocalypse artifacts for a clean jug of water, a hunting rifle and a fur hat sounds, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to take part. I mean, it sounds like a really shitty time. Luckily there’s these guys.

Until Next time make a point of going out in style,

-King

In Memorium

I swear I was going to write a piece about the lack of strong male role models in today’s society. It was going to be both educational and thought provoking. Seriously, both. Check for that on Thursday.

I started writing the piece Sunday afternoon while waiting for a couple friends to come over. It was our intent to sling cards for awhile that afternoon after which I would dip my quill back into the ink pot and continue penning another chapter of my life’s work. We didn’t play cards that day.

What happened you might ask? Left 4 Dead happened. Left 4 frikkin’ Dead. It was alright though, I could finish writing on Monday. Nope, Monday night came along and with it, Left 4 Dead. I awoke late for work today, but scrawled on the bedroom wall in the orange dust from a Kraft Dinner package was an arcane formula, Multiplayer +Zombies = Fun.

My girlfriend was unimpressed.

Now, in case you haven’t noticed, I enjoy video games. Trickily, I also enjoy my social life. When I have the opportunity to blend the two it’s like making a peanut butter sandwich. Bread and peanut butter is delicious! Why doesn’t everyone eat this ALL THE TIME!? The same goes for multiplayer video games. I find it difficult to understand why every single person I know doesn’t play video games. I mean every single person I know owns a computer, likewise for “enjoys board games”.

That said, on Sunday night a good friend of mine who doesn’t play video games decided to go ahead and give Left 4 Dead a try. It started not unlike a childs first time in a pool. Except also he’s swimming the relay. “I don’t know about this guys. I don’t think I’ll be able to help and I’ll probably just hold you back.”

“It’s cool”, said Joel and I, experienced gamers,” We’ll watch your back.” The three of us stood atop a greenhouse. I contented myself to shoot the zombies below with my hunting rifle while Joel explained some of the basics to Matt. A few tentative shots at potted plants and even a zombie and he felt ready to give it a go. So down from the roof we climbed. Clamb? Climbed.

Things went well, we trekked through the large greenhouse into the warehouse it was attached to and took out our first horde of zombies before we proceeded through a small town towards an airstrip where we saw a plane land at the beginning. Now I’m going to take a moment and explain what the deal is with these zombies. We’re not talking the slow shambling zombies we all know and love. I speak of the sprinting, climbing, blood curdling scream kind. (I initially wrote blurdling by accident. I thought you should know)There are also super zombies. First there is the Smoker. This guy has a 635 foot long tongue which he lashes at you with like a vicious octopus. It will wrap you up in this tongue and drag you, helpless in its grasp, towards it, usually across a field and up the side of a building. Seriously the tongue is long. Then there’s the Hunter, a feral thing that leaps tall buildings in a single bound and crawls around on all fours. This fucker will jump on you and then he will eat your face. Both of these guys render you helpless and your only chance is to scream into your mic “helpmehelpmehelpmehelpme” and hope one of your friends has a spare moment to shoot the thing off you. The game is intense and really requires an unparalleled degree of teamwork in a video game.

I told you it was a long tongue.

Anyway Matt only shot me once during our journey, which was not great. We made it to a safehouse anyways where we patched up before heading onto the airstrip. There we found the plane beside a fuel truck. The pilot had locked himself in the cockpit and informed us, via the co-pilots radio, that they had tried to refuel and as soon as the co-pilot had turned on the fuel truck the zombie horde converged. Okay, so we began the planning stages. I stood atop the fuel truck with my sniper rifle while Joel walked around with propane tanks and set them in visible locations at the entrances to the various choke points leading to our last stand. Matt found a chaingun turret, we’re not sure why it was there but we didn’t question it. We informed Matt to hold onto the trigger of that thing right up until it overheated and caught on fire. At the last minute a friend of Joel’s jumped into the game to take control of the AI that had been accompanying us and so we were 4.

Things got out of hand quickly after that. I had killed scores of zombies with well placed shots on the propane tanks from atop the fuel truck while Joel kept others off my back with his shotgun. Matt was cutting a swath through the hordes with the mini-gun when a 10 foot chunk of concrete came flying out of the distance and smashed into the sandbags he was behind knocking him to the ground and destroying the turret. The Tank had arrived. The monstrosity was half-Incredible Hulk half-Zombie and came barreling down the runway tossing airplane fuselages left and right. Joel threw a molitov cocktail at it englufing the beast in flames. We now had a flaming tank rushing towards us. I fired off a few rounds as Joel, in a moment of pure cinematic badassery walked calmly towards charging beast unloading round after round of shotgun ammo at it. With a groundshaking roar the Tank stumbled and slide forward stopping at Joel’s feet. There was a moment of triumph before we saw the teeming mass of Zombies coming down the runway.

If Rook were a zombie I wouldn’t even feel bad when I shot him.

I wasn’t even sure if we were going to have enough bullets to take out that many. I helped Matt to his feet and clambered to the top of the fuel truck and that’s when I saw an equally large horde coming from behind. We were fucked. I pulled out my pistols, yes two, and began to open fire blindly in all directions, John Woo style. The hordes converged on the truck and began climbing up the sides. Joel and I stood atop it kicking them off the sides as the made their ascent and rifle butting when necessary. I looked to my left and saw the cargo bay of the plane opening and called to my comrades to run for it. Joel and I leapt from atop the truck, soaring majestically over the heads of the zombies, and landed in a full run towards the plane. I saw Matt fall to the ground in front of me and raced towards him. His hand reached out to clasp mine as I leapt over him and made for the hanger. Don’t look at me like that, the guy shot me that one time remember? I clambered into the plane’s cargo hold and pulled out my rifle to cover our backs as Joel ran in beside me. We fired madly to keep the zombies from entering the hold while we waited for Joel’s friend to get in.

What happened next is debated. I claim a hunter jumped on the guy’s back. Everyone else claimed I shot Joel’s friend in the head. Either way Joel’s friend and Matt were dead so it was my word against Joel’s in the end as we flew to safety. Credits actually rolled as the joke of the game is that it’s actually a movie. It displayed our user names as the actors and proceeded to dedicate the film to Matt and Lunchbox, Joel’s friend, who didn’t make it. In the end it’s not important who shot who, what matters is that we all had fun, and someone who doesn’t play video games gave it a shot.

Until next time remember, blades don’t need reloading

-King