We Hate Zombies

Title: Zombie Herder (click to play)
Style: Top Down Shooter
Source: www.zombiegames.net

I’m not going to fill this page with fluff. This game is fun and it is simple. You won’t be bogged down with too much plot, any fancy options for weapons and strategy, and all the zombies look the same. What you see is basically what you get when it comes to Zombie Herder, and for once, its a nice thing.

The basic premise here is that there are zombies and you have a cow prod to keep them on screen. Clicking on a zombie prods that son-of-a-bitch and he turns around and goes the other way. You do this until the onscreen timer reaches zero where an unseen force explodes all of the zombies. For each zombie that gets away, a person dies and you get to kill off 10 innocent civilians before you have to quit. I personally think the number should be closer to a billion. If you haven’t taken out at least 15% of the general population, what’s the big deal? The only thing I don’t care for about this scenario is the intimacy that is needed to prod something. It is far too easy to get bitten.

And that is it! No upgrading, no money, no nothing. Just clicking on zombies. And it is a blast. The only annoying thing about the game is that my touch pad is not the best tool to get the job done. I would put it akin to having a cattle prod that is attached to a leg of lamb. Not only is it retarded, but it is unwieldy as well. Graphics don’t get in the way. The sound was all but absent. I had fun and could see myself hooking up a mouse so that I could dominate. I’ll definately probably be doing that.

PS If you pay attention to the title screen and think about what that is really implying, you will shit your pants. Lord knows I did.

Game Score:

Graphics:		1
Sound:		?
Fun Factor:		5
Satisfaction:		2
Total:

Scenario:
Hurry up, dammit! It’s 11:58 at night and you’re exhausted, tired from a day of busy procrastination, and now you’re busy waiting. All that’s left before you can go to bed is Woot… sweet, sweet Woot. You have to know what tomorrow’s Woot is going to be, otherwise you’ll never get any sleep. You tried going to bed early, once, and all you could do was worry that you’d missed another bag of crap. Never again! 11:59.

Click for the full effect

So tired, eyes bloodshot, you open the computer clock just to watch the second hand. It’s painful. Midnight! You rush to hit refresh over and over until the new Woot pops on the screen.

On no… this is bad. T-Virus, two for Tuesday, $4.99. Woot’s unknowingly selling the zombie plague. What do you do?

What you should do:
Run to the dirty clothes pile and rummage through the weeks of ketchup stains and stiff socks until you find your zombie hunting Woot shirt. Wearing your zombie hunting shirt will show the world that you are one that others can rally behind and look to for support and guidance, kind of like a lighthouse but with a gun. It will make people think twice before considering you a zombie, and everyone will know that you never have to think twice about anything. It’s shirt.Woot.solid, guaranteed.

Next, place an order for as many of the T-Virus Vials as possible. Don’t think about budgets or money, because you can’t put a price tag on saving the world. Use a credit card, or all your credit cards, or all of your friends’ credit cards, until you have enough buying power to buy out Woot. Do I know how much that will take? No. Does anyone? No. It’s such a secret that no one knows except Woot and occassionally that mystical Woot-Off bar. Sirens? Oh yeah, I hear em too.

It doesn’t even matter if you can afford the tall order, you just need to buy some time and keep the world from inadvertently falling into chaos like a screaming monkey pissing on a leak frog. When you’ve done the best you can, it’s time for damage control. Start shooting out emails to Woot staff, flood the message boards, flame dissenters, and engage in lengthy one-line wars of wit with ten year olds. The message must go out, and who better to spread the word than a million people capable of shopping only at a store that sells one item a day. No one, that’s who, because it takes focus to shop a single item and it takes focus to spread the word.

Oh, and if the world lives long enough for you to get your shipment, burn the entire lot immediately, then make a YouTube video with stage props showing how the stuff turns people into zombies. After that, there’s nothing left to do but find the Brave Woman. She’ll know what to do.

What I would do:
First things first, gotta find that zombie hunter t-shirt. Good thing I keep it on top of my bullet proof vest, which happens to be right on top of a box of dynamite. You know, just in case I feel the need to keep things lively. Oh, speaking of which, I’m going to need that dynamite, because it’s not going to be midnight forever.

After I don my vest and shirt, I would pack my dynamite into the car, then call up the Brave Woman, number 6 on speed dial. With any luck she would give me permission to pass through her territory and maybe even give me info on movements between the Robots and the Monkeys. Those rival gangs are always going at it, and despite the urgency it will pay to be careful if I can avoid being caught up in the middle of one of their battles.

Then I would hit the road. I know it’s midnight my time, and I know that in as little as 5 hours Woot is going to be opening those warehouse doors for a full day of dealing out death, unknowingly of course. That gives me five measily hours to get to Carrollton, Texas, and sweet Jesus do I need to fly if I’m going to burn down the warehouse in time to stop the first shipments from going out. Fortunately, I went to stunt driving school and got practice as the lead driver for Talladega Nights. Talk about going fast… I wanna go fast. Still, it would be a lot easier if the warehouse were with the rest of Woot.

If Google Maps has anything to say for accuracy, that’s 640 miles of driving. Luckily, I only have to average 128 miles per hour to make it on time. Unfortunately, that doesn’t give me very much time, not even time to stop. I would set the car on cruise, light whatever explosives I had left, then jump out of the car as it hurtled towards certain glory. After the bullet proof vest absorbed most of the trauma from hitting the ground at high speed, I would stand up and hide behind some bushes to watch, waiting. Legend has it that if enough bags of crap burn in a hot enough fire, a green burst of light will shoot into the sky and grant wishes to all who see.

Ironically, I would wish for a bag of crap. Those things are so damn hard to find! Dammit, I missed another one!

Title: All Hallows Eve (click to play)
Style: Angle Down Third Person
Source: www.seawana.com

In All Hallow’s Eve is another one of those ‘defend your base’ kinds of games, except this one isn’t exactly top down.  You play some rich guy living in his mansion at the top of the hill, and from that vantage point you get to look down the hill and kill the zombies trying to eat your face.  The camera is kind of over the bottom of the hill looking up a bit, so zombies are bigger at the bottom and smaller at the top.  This means they are easier to shoot if you get them right away.

I loved this game, actually.  Unlike the previous games, you earned money relatively quickly and unlocked weapons and upgrades without too much wasted time.  Some upgrades, like land mines or barbed wire, caused damage to the zombies as long as they existed, which means there’s always something to spend money on even if you get all the weapons.  Also, you can have two weapons at once and the bullets are free.  To add the icing on the cupcake, head shots are much more damaging than body shots.  Now that’s a feature I can agree with, teaching kids how to kill zombies most effectively.

The graphics are fine for a zombie game, nothing special, but there are multiple types of zombies with different strengths and they all move and the main character kind of follows the mouse from side to side.  I think that’s decent.  I had trouble hitting the zombies when they got close to the house because they were so small.  To me that seems kind of wrong, because you should be hitting them all the damn time once they get that close.  It’s mostly that difficulty of hitting them close up that made me lose.

I actually didn’t hear any sound.  Maybe my speakers are broken, who knows.  As far as the fun goes, I had lots of it.  The zombies gain in strength as you should be getting stronger weapons, but you almost always have the advantage.  There’s nothing like the switch from the BB gun to the .22 pistol because you can kill those first bastards with one shot.

I thought this game was an all around winner, except maybe the sound, which I couldn’t hear and therefore can’t really give any review of.  I didn’t make it past those damn clowns, or whatever they are, but I think I could have done better if I’d been sitting at a desk instead of getting drunk on the couch.  Maybe.

Game Score:

Graphics:		3.5
Sound:		1?
Fun Factor:		4.5
Satisfaction:		4
Total:

Scenario:
It’s next to midnight and you’ve got a stack of empty beer cans. You’d be buzzed but for the tension in the room so dense it’s almost palpable, like the sweat soaking your shirt. Zombies. They are everywhere, and you’re the last human alive. Good thing you have infinite ammo and a good position on the top of some crates. They attack, you jump, firing into their brains, scoring the ‘Zombie Killing Spree’ medal, clearing the room. Halo 3 has never been so stressful. You sense an attack, but at that moment your screen freezes and the Xbox 360 stops responding. You angrily restart the machine, cursing like a sunburned sailor in a hurricane, when it smacks you upside the head, sending you flabbergasted and reeling. Three. Red. Lights. The ring of death. Which is exactly when a real zombie smashes through your window and slams onto the floor. What do you do?

What you should do:
Fix the Xbox 360. You know it’s out of warranty like a piss soaked laptop, Microsoft won’t save your baby for free anymore. It’s up to you, so here’s what you do. First, buy yourself some time by picking up the couch and slamming it on the zombie. You don’t have to kill it, just break all its bones, especially the leg and arm part of the bones, rendering the zombie mostly harmless. Then grab up the Xbox 360 and take it to the kitchen table.

I know the table’s covered, but it’s all trash anyway. Throw that crap into the corner, there’s no time to screw around. You’re going to need some Torx screwdrivers (T10 and T8) and a strong pointy tool. Oh, and also a sword. Now, while defending yourself against the zombie onslaught with the sword, hacking your way to grisly glory, keep your mind on the primary task. First rip off the front plate. No screws, no tabs, just take it off. Use the pointy thing to hit the six tabs on each the right and left of the case to remove the grills, then jab a zombie through the eye and wiggle it around in its brain. Bingo, dead zombie bitches!

After the sides are off, proceed to hit the seven tabs on the back of the machine, seperating the top and bottom of the case as you go. The three tabs in the front are a piece of cake; then lift off the bottom piece. The top is screwed on, so you need the screwdrivers. After that, removing the top of the case is easy, just like beheading three zombies at once. I know you can do it, so do it already! … Do it. Seriously.

Now you’re almost home free. The front of the case has the power button and those pesky red lights. Pop off the light diffuser, then unscrew the three screws holding the circuit board with the power button on it. The board will simply slide off once done. Don’t forget to kill some zombies if they appear, perhaps acting like The Highlander, except without the cool lighting (unless you throw some forks into the microwave) … (Do it.) Inside the 360, there’s a DVD drive. Simply pull it out, unplug it, put it aside. Then there’s a pair of fans and an air vent. The vent is held down with one tab, easy to get off. Unplug the fans, then tilt them forward until they are out from underneath the metal holding them in. Remove the fans. The motherboard can now be removed. The bottom has two “X-Clamps”. Kill those bitches, because they are in-league with the zombies, trying to ruin your life to death.

Replace them with some screws and washers. The parts lists are running around the net like zombie hunters on payday, so I won’t list them here. Take care of the old thermal paste on the processors with Q-tips and alcohol (I prefer tequila), cleaning until it’s a mirror finish. Replace with fresh thermal compound. Without putting everything back together, and specifically without the fans, plug the power button front plate back into the motherboard, hook the board up to the power and video on the TV, then turn the 360 on. Those pesky lights are still there, kind of like the zombies are still outside your house, jumping through your window. Watch out for the cripple on the floor! He still might bite.

Wait for the 360 to switch from 3 red lights to 2; that means it’s overheated, which will melt the solder connecting the processors to the motherboard, thereby re-establishing the connection. Tighten the heatsinks down. Reassemble. See if that fixed your problem (I bet it did). If so, fucking awesome. Now you just have to survive the night against a thousand zombies without infinite ammo or some handy crates. If it didn’t fix your problem, then nothing matters anymore. Without your 360, you might as well just die. Do it as you see fit, just don’t let yourself become a zombie.

What I would do:
I already did this. Yesterday. Except without the zombies upon which to vent my rage. Dammit.

Still, Xbox 360 is working again. Woo! My thanks to those who did not give up the good fight and fall blindly into that dark night.

Scenario:
You went to bed last night with a little tingle in your throat, perhaps an ominous sign of drier days or developing illness. Just in case, you decide to call in sick to work in an effort to skip work but you advertise it as an effort to head off runny nose, dry, scratchy eyes, and a hoarse cough. That’s why you’re sitting on your couch with a beer and a bag of pretzels watching day-time television. It sucks long and it sucks hard, and you can’t help but flick through the channels. Then you stop, and your eyes begin to bulge, and you realize a fate worse than death: Teletubbies. There’s a sensation in your stomach, warm and sticky, and it climbs into your throat, into your mouth, and you begin to retch. That’s when a zombie hooker walks through your window. What do you do?

What you should do:
There’s a little known weakness among the living that few ever discover. In adults, the colorful sound-orgy of the Teletubbies triggers an instinctual vomit reflex that can rarely be overcome.¹ The force and quantity is so severe that it clenches all muscles and restricts breathing for prolonged periods of time, rendering the victim incapable of action until commercial break, if not the end of the episode. In summary, Teletubbies is a buzz kill that could end lives. That’s why it’s on only when normal, honest people are working to bring home the bacon bits.

I explain this not because it will help you survive against hooker zombies, but that it will help you survive against all that is Teletubbies. When you see a zombie, you have full opportunity to take action, but Teletubbies have first-strike and preemptively shatter your ability to resist. Add a zombie on top of Teletubbies and you. will. die.

So here’s what you do. When you feel that next wave of frothy stomach-juice coming up, convulse as best you can so that you spray the television screen with obscuring freedom. The better that subversive material is buried, the less it will be able to hold sway over you. The music, the voices, you can’t help that unless you’ve already had several beers and enough liquid to short the whole works. As soon as the Teletubbies have fallen from wicked power, move away from the zombie and regain your strength.

It’s your house, there should be no better place for you to defend against a zombie intruder. If you aren’t prepared at home, then how can you say you’re prepared at all? If you don’t have shotguns lining the walls or hidden under ever cushion, grab a mace or sword and wreck havoc. What? You don’t have maces or swords, or even a club? Then get creative and find a weapon, or just leave. Whatever, I don’t even care anymore.

What I would do:
If you thought I was immune to the corruptive power of the Teletubbies, you would be wrong. Dead wrong. I am no mere mortal, but the Teletubbies were certainly sent by the very darkest powers of Satan to ravage the earth and rend asunder all of humanity as the faux horsemen of the apocalypse.² As such, what is there to do but lash out against the breaking waves of evil before the last vestiges of righteousness flow from my body.

Thanks to my close relation with the avian family, the acidity of my stomach rivals that of the stately Vulture, yet includes a variety of noxious fumes that combust given the slightest provocation. As the Teletubbies attempt to paralyze me, I would spray liquid-corrosion out in the direction of those monsters and the monster breaking through my window. The digestive juice will quickly destroy the TV and melt the feet off the zombie, causing that nasty hooker to fall to the ground.

Then, while the fallen croaker crawls towards me in an unnerving display of determination, I’d take up my remote control, a high-powered Logitech Harmony, and switch it to ‘laser’ with an activity button I’ve labeled ‘Mission Eagle-Eye.’ Pointing at the melting zombie, I’d mash all buttons at once to send out a stream of radiation that would ignite the fumes in a minor explosion, decimating all but the upper torso of that lady of the night. At the same time, I would turn my back and catch a ride on the shockwave into another room, from which I would grab my pre-packed supplies, drive away in my Ford Escape, and remote detonate my entire house with the Panic button on my truck’s keyless entry fob. Poof. Zombie ash.³

¹ Some have proven immune to Teletubbies, primarily social workers and day care specialists. It is recommended that one be kept on speed dial at all times.
² “I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Zombies were following close behind him.” The true words of revelation.
³ Imagine U2’s “War” is blaring as the soundtrack of my victorious escape.