If you are a Gold Member on Xbox Live (and seriously, if you are planning to play Left 4 Dead 2 as single player or local multi-player only, you are missing out on the best parts of the game), the Left 4 Dead 2 demo is out.
Personally, I’m not going to bother. To me, a demo is something you play if you are not yet decided on purchasing in order to see if you enjoy the game. For example, I played the demo of Mirror’s Edge because I wasn’t sure of the game, and I’m glad I did because it saved me money. But from all accounts, Left 4 Dead 2 is going to be Left 4 Dead only with more awesome. Considering how much I love the original, there isn’t a chance in hell I won’t love the sequel. Valve just doesn’t make crappy sequels.
As a birthday gift this year, I was given a pre-order of Left 4 Dead 2. So I will happily wait for it to show up and not spoil any of the game playing a mere demo. But I won’t judge you if you do play the demo. Have fun!
With Monkey Island getting a remake/update/new episodes, I can only hope that Zombies Ate My Neighbors, another classic LucasArts game, gets the same treatment. Sadly, I don’t think it will. However, thanks to Tom Chick, I now know I can get the old game on my Wii.
 Zombies Ate My Neighbors - A Classic Game It is something I suppose… but a man can dream…
Thanks to Rock, Paper, Shotgun I now have another zombie game to look forward to: Zombie Driver. Think the original GTA but with zombies. Here is some game footage.
Now I just hope they release this on the Xbox 360.
After the devastation of volume 8 of The Walking Dead, I wondered where exactly the story would turn. Here We Remain answers that as we follow Rick and his son on their own. Of course, they don’t stay that way for long, and it turns out that not all of our old friends are dead. But Rick still lost his wife and baby, and after all he’s been through it isn’t surprising that he might finally be going a little nuts. We also meet some new people here, one of whom is a scientist who thinks he might be able to do something about all the damn zombies.
What We Become takes our group on the road to Washington D.C. where the new scientist friend says he needs to go. Everyone is a little more frazzled and rattled having left the prison, left the ranch, and hit the road with many of them riding in the back of a truck.
Hands down, The Walking Dead is the best set of zombie stories I’ve ever read. I continue looking forward to more.
This isn’t exactly zombie news, but…
Over the past few months, I’ve been participating in the beta for Fallen Earth, an upcoming post apocalyptic MMO. Before I get to the good stuff, let me just get the bad stuff out of the way.
The graphics. And I don’t mean the style, but the performance. My PC isn’t exactly new or top of the line, but I beat out their required specs and I play a great number of games released in the last couple years very well. When I venture off by myself or in a small group, this game plays great. But when I get to town or any large gathering of people, the game turns into a slide show. Unplayable. Obviously, I could buy a new PC, but my PC should be enough to play if I turn all the effects off… it doesn’t help though. Even with minimal settings, low resolution and playing in a window, the game gets better, but never what I would call good in busy areas. To make matters more confusing, if I stand still in town, I can sit and watch everything run great, but the instant I try to move or turn, slide show.
That aside… Fallen Earth captures the post apocalyptic world perfectly. First off, the world is huge, so when you run off into the wilderness, you are literally running off into the wilderness. One day I just picked a direction and started running. Two hours later I was still running… I’d seen one other person and some critters, some salvage and ruins, but little else. The best part of this… I started to get worried. Am I lost? Where is everyone? I’m gonna die out here… This is what a world after Armageddon is supposed to feel like. In other MMOs I would complain about all the empty space, because those games are littered with NPCs and stuff and are supposed to be full of people, but Fallen Earth is supposed to feel empty, and it does, and it works.
The combat is a little different from your standard MMO. Ranged weapons require aiming, and melee weapons have standard swings but need you to be facing the target. There is no auto attack or auto aiming, you don’t automatically hit something just because you have it targeted and hit your attack button. This makes fighting moving targets more difficult, and it makes movement matter in combat. Speaking of movement… you know how in real life if you are running and then jump, you pause when you land? You know how strafing is slower than turning and running? Both are true in this game. So, if you are looking for typical First Person Shooter mechanics of jumping around like a coked up jackrabbit all while running sideways at full speed in a circle perfectly nailing your opponent all the while, you won’t find it. Personally, I love it.
Another aspect of the game that I really enjoyed is the crafting. Not because crafting is so awesomely fun to play, but because so much in the game can be crafted. If you are familiar with EVE Online, it works like that. People go out and scavenge from the wilderness, then craft items (and the crafting is all done “offline”, meaning you don’t sit at a bench and make stuff, you just set it to be made and it will be done in time).
In fact, the EVE comparison is important, because, to me at least, this game plays a lot like a ground based version of EVE. While I could never really get into flying around space in a ship mining materials and joining corporations, I could easily get lost in walking the Earth, surviving.
I’ll make another post later with some screen shots, but to close off this post I’ll just say that if they can get the graphics issues sorted out, or if I win the lottery and can buy a new PC, I’m definitely on board for this game. If I could take this game’s design and put in zombies, I think I’d have my perfect MMO.
It seems that some students and a teacher or two got together and wrote a book about infectious disease modelling. Of particular interest is chapter 4, entitled: When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of and Outbreak of Zombie Infection.
You can purchase the book, and I probably would if I had an extra $90 just laying around. Or if you want you can read the relevant chapter here. But to boil it down, when looking at models of containment, cure and control, the best way to handle a zombie outbreak…
Aim for the head.
Its not a done deal yet, apparently, but it is close. And considering the bang up job that AMC is doing with Mad Men (it being one of the best shows on television), hearing that they, with Frank Darabont at the helm, will be bringing The Walking Dead to the small screen is just awesome.
The full article from Variety is here.
From the moment I first read The Walking Dead I always felt it would make for good TV, that making a movie of it would actually hurt the overall impact of the story and make it “just another zombie movie”. But TV would allow it to tell longer, more complex stories, and yet able to have each episode tackle a complete story of its own as the people try to make their way.
I’m very excited.
I’m a huge fan of Robert Kirkman’s series The Walking Dead. Not huge enough to pick up the single issues, but enough to buy the trades. I’ve been sitting on Book 8 entitled “Made to Suffer” for some time now. I bought it off Amazon when I was buying a few other items and decided to throw it in the box. After finishing up The First Law, I found myself between books and decided to go ahead and delve back into the world of zombies.
Two words: Holy Shit!
If you don’t want anything ruined for you, stop reading now. I mean it. Stop.
Still here? Good. What Kirkman does here takes a serious set of balls. For seven volumes, he has gotten us to know these people, to care for them, and in part this has been done by inflicting small tragedies on them. Small, I say, in comparison to the enormous one of the world succumbing to zombies to begin with. But all that we have read so far is nothing compared to this volume.
I couldn’t put the book down. Volume seven had ended with an attack beginning on our survivors’ prison home, but eight leaps back a bit and shows us how the attackers arrived. For the first section of this book, you know where it is going, but getting there is no worse off for it. Once the attack begins, you find yourself wondering how the hell they will survive this, and bit by bit and piece by piece you see their plan form, you see that they are going to make it. Then Kirkman punches you in the gut and pulls the rug out.
Book nine is sitting on the shelf next to book eight, but I told myself I’d read another book or two first, to spread out the zombie awesomeness. But it is taunting me, and I don’t know how long I can hold out.
While visiting my brother this past weekend, he was offering up to me some of his graphic novels and trade paperbacks to read. One of those was Zombies! Eclipse of the Undead. I was going to borrow it, but ended up reading the whole thing before I left.
Its a fairly typical and fairly decent story. Zombies. In this case, people have gathered for safety in a local football stadium. The military has been ordered to pull out and leave the people to fend for themselves. Of course, all hell breaks loose.
One of the best aspects of this particular tale is the effectiveness of showing how simply not paying attention is the biggest killer when it comes to the genre. People get focused on one thing and forget they are surrounded by zeds, and then they get dead.
Overall, a good, quick read. I look forward to future Zombies! trades.
 
Like Left 4 Dead? Like Shaun of the Dead? Want to play Left 4 Dead in the world of Shaun of the Dead?
Well, you might one day get the chance on the PC version of L4D thanks to the Left 4 Winchester project. It almost makes me want to get a PC version of the game.
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