Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts
9:37 AM
Guilty Pleasure Day
I occassionally visit one of those "flash game" sites, on a recommendation. I have found a very decent little zombie shoot 'em up called THE LAST STAND coded by "the Con Artists" and hosted at ARMORGAMES.This is basically one person (and an occassional other survivor, but they run away a lot) versus the deadly hordes.
Controls are simple:
-A,W,S,D to Move
-Space = Switch Weapons
-R = Reload
-Mouse to Aim and Fire
Red Arrow: Zombie Attack. Green Arrow: Your Character. Yellow Arrow: a fellow survivor lending assistance (computer AI, not very smart).
Objective: Survive the night fighting off zombies from your barricade. Survive longer than a day by making use of the daylight hours effectively by:
- Repairing your barricade
- Searching for weapons
- Looking for other survivors to help repair, search and defend the barricade.
There are some nice campaign elements...
As in most zombie games, the zombies always win in the end.
Worth checking out! A nice diversion during the day.
11:38 AM
Nutrition Hints from George Romero
9:58 AM
I'm no fan of Fast Zombies
From a recent article reprint in SLATE by Josh Levin:How did Movie Zombies Get So Fast?
sections copyright, 21 MAY 07, Slate Magazine and Josh Levin
It's not for nothing that zombies are called the walking dead. In George A. Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead (1968), a group of shut-ins sits in terror, watching television for the latest updates on the creeping undead menace. "Are they slow-moving, chief?" asks a reporter. "Yeah," the cop says wearily, "they're dead."
Romero's canonical trilogy, which also includes Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985), emphasizes the zombie's drag-ass nature. Corpses shuffle so slowly that a potential victim can fall, brush herself off, remove her pumps, and set off again without being touched by a necrotic finger. Max Brooks' book The Zombie Survival Guide, a tongue-in-cheek tutorial for surviving the living dead, notes, "Zombies appear to be incapable of running. The fastest have been observed to move at a rate of barely one step per 1.5 seconds."
But in Zack Snyder's new Dawn of the Dead remake, the zombie has a newfound vigor. In the film's opening scene, a vacant-eyed zombie girl charges through a wooden door and into a couple's bedroom. After the zombie savagely bites her husband in the neck, Ana (Sarah Polley) escapes and drives away, only to have her recently deceased-and-undeceased husband keep chase with a full-out sprint that calls to mind Terminator 2's superhuman killing machine.
The rest of Mr. Levin's article is HERE.
Even though the article is somewhat tongue in cheek, and how could it not be, given the subject matter, I found myself pondering this one. Why fast zombies, indeed? Oh, one can make the point that the fast runners in 28 DAYS were actually infected humans, but they were clearly LOOKING like the undead. And the new DAWN OF THE DEAD, despite the fact that I found it tremendously entertaining, certainly was a shock with zombies that could beat a human in the short sprint.
What has changed with the horror movie going public that fast zombies became popular? Diminished expectations, increasing cynicism, or the willingness to approve of such horrendous tinkering with the Zombie Coda? Maybe a mix of all of these. The great thing about Romero-esque movies was that you could always outrun zombies, and they were dangerous only in mass attack situations, and when you run out of ammo. With FAST RUNNING zombies, it's a wonder that the human race isn't wiped out in no time flat. Zombies are a metaphor for plague-- slow, inexorable, patient.. They aren't an assault weapon. Zombie movies of the Romero era had hope-- sure the situation sucked. Undead rising and all that.. but as long as you had a shotgun, some guts, and the ability to keep moving, you would win out in the end. With these new zombie movies, there's no hope at all. I guess I'm old fashioned at heart.
10:26 AM
Recently Arrived at the Casa
The Zombie "Racer" figures for THE TIBETAN CORPSE RACING OLYMPIAD.
These are the work of one Mr. Howard Whitehouse (aka Mexican Jack Squint on TMP), who did a little conversion and paint job for me. Very reasonable rates and the plain fact is I wouldn't trust a job like this to anyone who couldn't think along the lines of my own twisted thought processes.
The Jockies are really the main component of this game and I wanted them to look right. I'm working on finishing off the Yak Wagons and darling Edwardian children as we speak. This game won't be at HISTORICON but it is very likely to be at TRIADCON and FALL IN!!
