We Hate Zombies

Scenario:
Your local grocery store is having a sale

I want your job!

on big boy Bud Lite cans at one dollar each, limit one thousand per visit. This is the sale of the century. When you get up to the counter with a cartload of treasure, you realize that you only have twenty bucks on you and your credit card is already maxed. In a panic, you shoot the clerk in the heart, take the twenty and the beer and hit the road. As you run down the street, the clerk is hot on your heels and he doesn’t look like he is coming for the money. What do you do?

What you should do:
Turn around and shoot him in the head. The man is obviously a zombie now and you cannot remember him for what he was. Wait a minute. You just shot the man in the heart while he was alive. What is the hold up?

Oh, you are out of bullets. That is a problem. Can you outrun the clerk? No, he is gaining on you. No more ammo, huh? Run into the street and start dodging traffic. The zombie clerk will be too interested in you to watch for speeding cars and buses.

This is me. I am winning. You are probably killed by me.

The longer you run in traffic the better your chances of surviving are.

What I would do:
Believe it or not, I wouldn’t have a maxed out credit card so I could pay for all the booze with it, even if I was out of cash. I would drink the beers and buy some more ammo. Life is simpler that way and so is killing zombies. This way, the only surprise is the happy ending down at the Tokyo Spa. God bless America.

Title: Days 2 Die (click to play)
Style: Side-Scroller
Source: ???

This is one of those games you’re going to need a mouse and a few hours for. You play a woman who’s trying to survive against varying sized waves of zombie bastards, and they like to waltz right in to your fortress and bitch smack you in the face. You have a gun and some stuff like that to fend them off, you get levels which provide bonuses and cash to buy such varying things as barriers, more weapons, and even mercenaries.

You heard me, mercenaries. This game actually lets you hire people to help you fight the undead. Sure, they are damn expensive, but also kind of fun, and you don’t have to buy their weapons either. Speaking of weapons, this game has perhaps the widest array of anti-zombie artillery I’ve ever seen in a game. Some of these weapons look like they should be mounted on armored vehicles, and ripping through zombie face is incredibly fun with pretty much all of them. Booyah.

While the gameplay itself can be repetitive and tedious, the extensive support for upgrades and such make the game addictive and satisfying without sacrificing the amount of time you can play. This is good news if you are lonely and have no friends because it’ll erase another night from your life without letting you dwell on your own insecurities. This is bad news if you are at work and should be working but aren’t because you are playing a game and the economy sucks ass and you’re about to be fired for bullshitting the boss and wasting your time. All in all, not so bad.

Maybe not the most fun I’ve ever had playing a zombie game, maybe not the most satisfying of all, but its pretty damn good anyway. Besides, did you see how many guns you can upgrade to?

Game Score:

Graphics:		2.5
Sound:		2
Fun Factor:		3.5
Satisfaction:		3
Total:

Title: Zombie Man (click to play)
Style: Top Down RPG
Source: ???

Unlike the usual games we’ve played, this one is unusual. Why? Because you play both a zombie and a human in the same game, and you do so quickly, easily, and with some considerable enjoyment.

What am I talking about? In this game, you start out as a human who can shoot a gun that turns any zombie it hits into a human. I guess it’s like a cure gun, which doesn’t exist but who cares. If you, instead, get attacked by a zombie without curing it, you become a zombie instead. Then, as a zombie you get points for attacking people and turning them also into zombies. Other humans help you, other zombies help you, etc. You get points depending on how you do.

Perhaps my favorite part was being a zombie, though I feel like a dirty whore saying it. As a zombie, you get to move faster and can mow through people like you’re going to town on a mound of cocaine. This was fun for me. It will probably be fun for you. The only annoying things are the man hole covers you can fall through and die immediately in. Who built that town anyway?

For those of you who turn the sound on, you’ll likely recognize some of the sounds from Starcraft. If the effects weren’t directly taken from the Zerg race, they must have been closely based on them. Anyway, the familiar noises brought back some good memories or some shit like that, which is to say I didn’t hate it and the man who made it. That’s a good thing.

Both challenging and alternately enjoyable as either type of character, I must say this was one of the more enjoyable games I’ve had a chance to uncover.

Game Score:

Graphics:		2.5
Sound:		2.5
Fun Factor:		4.5
Satisfaction:		3.5
Total:

Scenario:
You are wounded in battle with a horde of zombies, but not bitten or clawed. A fellow zombie killer shot you in the right kidney during an untimely panic attack and you blacked out. When you came to, the pain was intolerable and the survivors were nowhere to be seen. You tried to call for help and stand, but all you could do was moan loudly and wiggle around on the ground, covering yourself with your own blood and dirt. Then, from out of the bush comes a rugged looking guy holding an axe and wearing a shirt that says “LAMBO” in big letters. He takes you for a zombie and intends to kill you. What do you do?

What you should do:
Considering the fact that zombies do not and will never be able to talk, simply speak to the kind fellow and he will surely spare your life. There is an outside chance that he is deaf, but this would really work against him in a zombie apocalypse and he would most likely be dead at this point. Surely he speaks English, but nobody can guarantee that these days, so shout at him in a few different languages so that he gets the idea. This should save your life.

There is also another terrifying situation that may prove troublesome for you. If the man saw his entire life (his family, his dog, his lawn dart set) consumed by a zombie horde, he may be mad with hatred and kill anything in his path that could be a zombie. Even if you speak to him and he understands, the fact that you remind him of a zombie could drive him insane and he could cut off your head. For this, I have no solution. Good Luck.

What I would do:
I believe that all zombie killers have one thing in common. They all kill zombies and love peanut butter. For this reason, I always have a peanut butter sandwich stuffed in my left sock just in case I need it. This is one of those situations. I would muster the strength to pull the sandwich out of my sock and simple say, “I made this for you LAMBO.” He will see the sandwich and fall in love with me, reducing the risk of him dispatching me. Even if he is insane with hatred, this could break the spell. If not, then I would simple destroy him with a bazooka.

Scenario:
You’ve just picked up a fresh copy of Guitar Hero: Metallica and you’ve been playing it for about twenty minutes. You are right in the middle of a fresh-melt-your-face-off shred when zombies come crashing through your kitchen windows. You’ve got the music up so loud and you are kicking so much fucking ass that beads of concentration sweat are rolling down your back, soaking the blood stained Slayer T-Shirt you have on. Also, you don’t hear the zombies coming in. What do you do?

What you should do:
Whenever you are playing Guitar Hero, you should always block the door into your room with something. Most people use a chair or a dresser or a large pile of dirty clothes, but you could also use a giant bag of charcoal or something. One sweet thing about doing that is that you can get annoyed at the zombies when they try to break into your room. This will probably alert you to their presence and you can come up with a strategy from there.

If you don’t block the door, or lock it for that matter, then you should probably set up a security system for your house so that if zombies break in through any window in the place, it cuts the power to your XBox. Then you know something is up when you look up from the black screen with only a half melted face.

Finally, you should have an escape plan for when they do try to break down the door. Windows are probably not the safest route out because more zombies might be waiting out there. Have a secret door in the floor so that you can escape through the crawl space. This gives you pretty good odds of escaping the city alive.

What I would do:
I have a pretty badass set of speakers that I hook up to the old Xbox whenever I play Guitar Hero. This would be no different. Whenever the zombies break in, I would sense them with the Z-sense that I have developed. Whenever a zombie is near, my testicles climb back into my abdomen for a couple of really good reasons. It helps me be less vulnerable to pokes in the crotch and I am less likely to snag them on anything while I am running, jumping, and scaling twelve foot barbed wire fences. Anywho, when this happens and I am playing Guitar Hero, I would pump up the volume on those bad boys to bone shattering (that’s just two clicks above 1,000,000 on the volume nob) and play the solo finale of One. This would guarantee that the zombies don’t make it through the door, where I would then be dry humping the plastic guitar that I love so much.