I still haven’t seen the first Rob Zombie Halloween remake, so I’m not itching to see the sequel. Â Perhaps one day I’ll catch up.
The Final Destination:
There is a fairly long tradition of horror movies utilizing 3D, but the old 3D kinda sucked. Â RealD, however, works great. Â It also helps that The Final Destination didn’t waste much time doing “stupid” 3D tricks like people waving things at the screen… they didn’t need to, because in a movie about people getting killed in insanely intricate traps there are plenty of body parts and death machines to fling at the audience. Â Overall, this movie was probably, from a plot standpoint, the worst of the Final Destination series, but the 3D makes the whole film stand out (see what I did there). Â The death scenes are just incredibly over the top, and fun to watch unfold. Â Well, unless you didn’t like the previous three films. Â It is sort of gross, and not for the squeamish. Â I’m not sure if the movie is worth $10 ($12 in most places since they charge you extra for the glasses), but seeing this in 3D is really the only worthwhile way to see it, and when it comes to DVD/Blu-Ray it won’t be in RealD 3D but regular 3D which just isn’t as good. Â So, yeah, if this sort of movie is something you’d enjoy, go see it at the theater.
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. Â Or if you want you can read the relevant chapter here. Â But to boil it down, when looking at models of containment, cure and control, the best way to handle a zombie outbreak…
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.
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 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.
One of the things I’ve always dreamed of in an MMO was playing in a truly enormous world. Â For example, if I were to play (or make) an MMO for a zombie apocalypse setting, I would want the world to be so large that even if I had millions of players, it could be as sparsely populated as you might expect a horror themed zombie game to be. Â Of course, players could choose to cluster, for safety and companionship, but the possibility to walk for miles and miles and find no one else needs to exist.
The problem is that taking the time to build that world would be too much. Â And that is why this has me very excited.
The CityEngine by the people over at Procedural just floors me. Â Lots of people will tell you that hand crafted games will always be better than a procedurally generated one, and in one aspect they are right. Â If your goal as a game maker is to tell a story, a narrative, like a Halo game, or Dead Rising, or any other traditional PC or console game, then yes, hand crafted content is the way to go. Â Your story demands it. Â But in an MMO or other Virtual World type game, where the players and their interactions are the real story, and your setting and lore are just a sandbox for them to play in, procedurally generated content done well is, in my opinion, the far better choice.
I know I promised zombies, but I lied… you get this instead…
I signed up for and am participating in an online game design class. On our first day of “class” (which I actually read a couple days later), part of the reading was an example to show you that making a game is not a Herculean effort. Simple games are exactly that: simple. What follows is the game I designed in less than 15 minutes.
Get to da Choppa!
Welcome to the jungle! You are in the thick of it, and something is after you. But if you can be the first to the helicopter, you can survive.
Supplies:
26 Game Tiles – 1 “Start” tile, 1 “Choppa!” tile, 14 blank “Jungle” tiles, 2 “Tunnel Entrance” tiles, 4 “Lose a Turn” tiles (tangled in vines, stuck in mud, broke through bridge, and lost my way), 2 “Advance 1 Space” tiles, and 2 “Retreat 1 Space” tiles.
12 Opportunity Cards – 3 “Cover Fire” card (Advance another player 2 spaces), 3 “Decoy” cards (Advance yourself 3 spaces), 3 “Rest Up” cards (Do nothing this turn, next turn move 5 spaces instead of rolling), and 3 “Frag” cards (Cause another player to lose a turn).
1 Six-sided die.
12 player pieces (green plastic army men if you have them).
Game designed for 2 to 12 players.
The Rules:
The 26 tiles are placed in a pile, face up, on the table. The 12 Opportunity cards are placed, face down, on the table. Each player chooses a playing piece and roles the die to determine play order. Highest first, roll again to break ties. The “Start” tile is placed on the table and all playing piece are placed on it. Starting with the highest rolling player, each person in turn will take a game tile from the tile pile and place it on the table so that it connects to the previous tile. The game path can turn left and right, however when a tile is placed it must only connect to one other tile. When tile placing is complete, and the last player placed the “Choppa!” tile, you should have a board that takes 25 forward movements to complete.
Beginning with the next player in the rotation, each player draws an Opportunity card from the face down pile. Do not show your card to other players until you play it.
After each player has drawn a card, the game moves into the Movement rounds. If the player is on the “Start” tile, they must roll the die. A roll of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 allows the player to move their playing piece forward that many spaces. If they land on a tile with an action on it, they must adhere to it (Advancing 1 space, retreating 1 space, losing their next turn, or moving to the other end of the tunnel). Tile actions “stack” in that if you land on an “Advance 1 Space” tile and doing so lands you on a “Lose a Turn” tile, you lose your next turn. If a player rolls a 6, the player believes they have been spotted and hides, not moving that turn.
After the player has moved off the “Start” tile, on their turn they may choose to use their Opportunity card instead of rolling the die. Any player moved by an Opportunity card onto a tile with an action must adhere to that action.
The game ends when a player “Gets to da Choppa!” and leaves the rest of the players in the jungle.
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My first prototype of the game was as basic as possible. Â Sticky notes for the game tiles, more sticky notes (folded in half to hide the sticky part) for the cards, a die and some army men. Â If I am inspired, I may make a “better” prototype and post some pictures.
If, my dear reader(s), you are so inclined, feel free to make your own copy of this game and try it out. Â I’d love feedback on how it plays. Â I feel it might need more special tiles, or some other game element to spice it up. Â If you do play it, please come back and let me know how it went…
Normally, Wednesdays are reserved for zombie posts, but this being the 4th of July weekend, all the movies open on Wednesday, so for this week only movies on Wednesday, zombies on Friday…
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs:
This is the third film in the Ice Age series, and I have yet to see any of them. I once bought an Ice Age/Ice Age 2 twin pack from Target, but they turned out to be in full screen instead of wide screen, so we returned them. I do, however, love the little short films with the prehistoric squirrel. Anyway, I suppose if you liked the first two, you’ll like this too. I’ll see them all some day.
Public Enemies:
In my personal opinion, Johnny Depp doesn’t make bad movies. Or at the very least, he is always worth watching even if the film around him is lacking. This movie is definitely on my watch list, but I’m not sure I’m going to make it to the theater to see it. If I can manage to find the time and the money, though, I will.