Zombie Arena - X-Box 360 Indie Zombie Videogame Review

I didn't buy this game, I only played the demo (gives you around 5 minutes of game play).  I am glad I didn't buy this, as it really is the worst kind of Indie shovel ware crud.

Zombie Arena sees you cast into the role of your X-Box Avatar.  You stand at the edge of a large football pitch style circular arena, in front of you is a small circle of sandbags.  Armed with a bow and arrows you have to survive waves of identical looking zombies as they slowly shamble towards you from a 180 degree radius.  If the zombies get too close to your position they will fling some type of red splodge towards you, get hit 3 times by these jam like projectiles and it's game over.

Zombie Arena looks quite similar in look to the train wreck that was Crazy Ride with Zombies, and this was my first warning sign that the game was going to be dross.  Your Avatar stands in the centre of the screen looking onto a circular pitch, complete with digitised looking ruins in the distance.  There is only one type of zombie, the only difference between them all is that some are small while others are tall.

To fire the bow you have to adjust accordingly to get the arrows arc right.  You have infinite arrows, but also have special power ups that are limited.  These power ups include exploding arrows, and flaming arrows.  The game has two modes; wave mode which sees you surviving for a specific amount of time against the shambling horrors, while Survival mode sees you just surviving as long as possible.  The game has a really chirpy, annoying tune which just does not fit the game at all, and is almost distractingly wrong.

The game is only 80 Microsoft points, but it is really boring, and no fun, just do not buy this.  Yet another fantastic piece of Indie shovel ware junk.  Avoid.

SCORE:

                                                 

Manhunt - Horror Videogame Review (Playstation 2)

I love Manhunt, it ranks up there as one of my all time favourite videogames.  I usually hate stealth in games, but here it is deliciously good.  The game is a grim, violent, and miserable game to play, and also very unique.

You play as convicted murderer James Cash.  The game starts with your apparent execution via lethal injection, but rather than kill you, you wake up in a morgue.  A voice over a intercom informs you that your life has been spared, in return you have the 'honour' of starring in the ultimate snuff film.  The mysterious voice tells you to put on a ear piece.  For the remainder of the game the Director instructs you via the ear piece.  He says that if you survive the filming, and get lots of brutal and violent kills for his film that he will let you go.

The game is very very violent.  It mostly involves you sneaking around various locations using stealth to take out gang members one by one.  Each weapon you get has 3 different brutalities, the longer you are sneaking up to an enemy the more violent the kill.  For instance the low level baseball bat kill sees Cash strangling out a thug using the bat, the high level baseball bat kill sees Cash bring the thug to his knees before taking off his head with a wild swing of the bat.  The kills are automated, and shown from the perspective of a surveillance camera (these are dotted around the various locations Cash finds himself at).  As well as melee weapons such as the baseball bat, and crowbar (which Cash jams in thugs heads!) there are also single use weapons such as glass shards, and plastic bags (the glass is stabbed repeatedly into the thug, while the bag is used to violently smother the victim).  Later levels see the introduction of guns, but these do not have brutalities associated with them.

Each set of levels sees you in a different area of the violent Carcer City.  Each location is ruled over by a different gang.  For instance the Scrap Yard sees you avoiding a White Supremacist gang, the Zoo sees you fighting a gang of Survivalists, while the lunatic asylum sees you battling a gang of yellow smiley masked wearing crazies.  Each gang is vastly different in looks, as well as in what they say.  All really want to hurt you badly, they taunt you, and scream at you, coming across as fierce and scary.  Stealth is key as when you are seen death usually quickly follows unless you are able to get to the shadows and hide.  Later missions include Police as enemies, which could seem controversial, but they are never shown as anything other than completely and utterly corrupt.

The best thing about this game is just how classic it feels.  The plot itself is like something out of an 80's action flick such as The Running Man.  Cash at first forced to participate in the Directors sick dream later escapes, ending in a brutal showdown at the Directors heavily defended Mansion.  Cash himself is not a nice character.  It is never made clear if he really was a murderer, but it heavily implies he is a bad person deserving of death.  His family show up in the game as captives that Cash is instructed to rescue, but there is no love displayed by his parents and sister towards him when he rescues them.  The Director is amazing as the constantly taunting voice, something which 'Batman: Arkham Asylum' copied with the Joker serving a similar role.  The only sour point of the game unfortunately is the very end, not satisfying at all.

The game is moderate in length, and varied enough to never get boring, each location offering new challenges (such as the introduction of guns about halfway through the game which totally changes the pacing of the game at times).  I have Manhunt 2, but due to the totally ruined death sequences, and lame story I have not yet played it to completion.

SCORE:

                                    

Shock Horror - Issue 1 of Britains newest Horror Magazine Reviewed

Towards the end of last year the great British Horror Magazine 'Darkside' died.  Getting on for 5 years I brought that great mag.  It wasn't perfect; the smell of the pages made me feel ill, and the magazine focussed far too much on talking on and on about dreadful Italian Giallo films that have nothing to do with horror at all, as well as being really bland.  The magazine had a large readership, but despite this, and the large number of ads it had, the mag could not afford to keep going.

I learnt from my Girlfriend that an old friend of a friend; Dean Boor was going to release his own horror magazine.  I tracked down his website and promptly brought an issue.  I admit I mainly brought this out of curiosity to see what type of magazine he would create, I also brought it as I have yet to find a decent horror mag after the demise of Allan Bryce's Darkside.

I was expecting a flimsy magazine with wafer thin pages, like a supplemental mag in a newspaper, instead I got a lovely solid magazine with really thick pages.  The mag is built to last! The layout for the most part was good, well designed with the exception of one page that was laid out horizontally rather than vertically which seemed odd.  It was also nice to see the return of a self indulgent staff page.  Back in the 90's it was all the rage for magazine writers to talk about themselves, it was nice to see this feature resurrected as it is always good to see whose opinions you are reading about.

Before I go any further I must say that when I read this mag I was in quite a bad mood, as such I was being more critical than I usually would.  The magazine starts off with an article on one of the horror greats Vincent Price.  The article is well written, though does feel as if it was written by a fan rather than someone trying to inform; something Dean readily admits to being.

The first main section of the mag is dedicated to Reviews.  The Film Reviews are interesting, and informative, a mix of old and newer films reviewed such as Re-animator, and Splinter.  The Comic Book Reviews are really good.  It is so hard to review comics, but these reviews really made me want to try out the comics mentioned.  There are two Videogame Reviews.  These are quite terrible unfortunately, due to a mix of spelling mistakes, factual errors, and the fact that the reviews read more like advertisements for the products rather than anything else.  If I was someone unfamiliar with videogames I would be no better informed after reading these than before, as basic information such as what the genre of the game reviewed is, is totally missing.  My main complaint with the Review section in general is a lack of paragraphs, just walls of text that led to me getting a bit lost at times.

The 2nd half of the mag is a lot better, and also a lot more interesting. An article on SFX is quite informative, and small sections on various topics such as products, tattoos, and a hilarious column by zombie survival expert Dr Dale of 'How to survive a zombie apocalypse' fame brings the mag to a nice close.  The interview with John Gulager (director of the Feast trilogy) is a real highlight, being quite entertaining.  I am defiantly going to check out the Feast films having read this (I think I actually own Feast on DVD, but just have not yet got around to watching it).

The magazine is well made, has large easy to read text, and is written in a pleasant style.  Though there are a lot of errors here and there it is to be expected in a first issue, with time I am sure this magazine will improve and improve.  My only worry is that in this age of the internet there is not a lot of call for print mags, a lot of people reckon print is dead.  Here's hoping that Dean Boor and his motley crew will keep up the fab work; the best horror mag I have read in a long long time!

My Realistic Method for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (and an Apology)

First of all; it seems I have egg on my face.  After laughing at my Girlfriend's wild notions of getting in the T.A Centre when the apocalypse happens, it now turns out that plan isn't so silly.  My Girlfriend established contact with a member of the Northampton T.A.!  He revealed that it is the Northampton Territorial Army's intention to head to the T.A Centre at the first signs of zombie apocalypse.  He promised my Girlfriend safe passage in the event of such a...event.  So turns out her plan was not so far fetched! Thank you Northampton T.A!

I previously blogged about what my ideal zombie apocalypse hideaway would be.  It was my dream to have a gigantic underground bunker.  In the unlikely event I cannot afford to build this I have a back up plan.

My plan is this...I would calmly lock my front and back doors in my terraced house.  I would go upstairs and fill the bathtub with water, and then I would set about destroying my stairs with a sledgehammer (that I keep in the garage).  I would concoct some sort of rope that I could use to climb from upstairs.  I would stay in my house for a week.  I would read books, listen to music, play videogames, and generally chill out.  I would keep all my windows covered up of course.  I have enough food to last a week, and I highly doubt water, gas and electricity would all fail within a week.  Two things could either happen after a week;

a)  My Girlfriend baseball bats my nice safe house door open, she runs to me, knocks me out with a sock to the mouth (a very smelly sock), stuffs me in her Tank, and trundles off back to the over-run T.A Centre.

b) I drive my Mad Max'd up Suzuki car up to the local Tesco's.  Clad in my comfiest clothes, and trainers I advance into the Tesco's and come out with loads of essential goods (such as tinned food, medicine, clothes, and alcohol).  I either load my car up and head back home, or I acquire a Tesco's delivery van.  There would be plenty of zombies about, so I would be armed with my trusty Hockey Stick, and walking stick.  I run quite regularly so would be able to get past most of them.

I would spend as long as I could at my house.  I live in a terraced house of about 5 properties.  The upstairs walls are paper thin, so I would smash my way into the nearby properties, destroying there stairwells as well to make an uber base.  I can't see me making enough noise to attract zombies to my location, so a cushy life until the power fails, and then I will have to just read books (of which I have 1000's)  Boring but effective.

An alternate method to surviving the zombie apocalypse

Recently I got into a bet with my Girlfriend.  She insists her crazy plan to survive a zombie apocalypse would work, so we did a few zombie quiz's online to see whose plan was the better.  First of all we did a Facebook Quiz.  She was given a 1+ year estimation of her life span post apocalypse.  I was given an estimation of 3-4 months.  Not impressed!  Putting my beloved 'Future Survivor of the Zombie Apocalypse' T-Shirt on the line I agreed to another quiz, randomly found via Google.  She was given about a 79% survival chance while I got 69%.  I lost the bet, my pride, and my T-Shirt.

My Girlfriend falls into the category of Survivor who would rather be reckless and fight, than hide away in a nice safe, comfortable hideout.  Here is her plan as much as I was able to understand her excited talk...

Upon learning of the zombie apocalypse she would grab a baseball bat, and then head into Town on foot, she would run, a distance of around 3-4 miles.  Town Centre would be Hellish, drivers crashing cars, pedestrians looting, fighting, screaming, lost children looking for their parents.  She would head to the T.A (Territorial Army) Centre.  She assumes the T.A Centre would be empty, and that if there were T.A Soldiers there that she would somehow be able to convince them to let her in, or she would somehow baseball bat her way in.

I do not know the truth, but she swears blind that not only is there plenty of guns at the T.A Centre, but also a few Tanks.  Once in the T.A Centre she would await the arrival of her best friend (who would know instinctively to head there).  They would go onto the rooftop and each take a corner of the fortified building.  They would proceed to shoot every single zombie in sight with the aim to eventually kill every single zombie in the vicinity.  The T.A Centre has a courtyard which is surrounded by a wall only around 7 feet tall, but the building itself I would imagine is well protected.

She would make this building her HQ, keeping her child, food, and supplies here, while going out on missions to kill any nearby zombies (death by Tank).  She says after a week she would drive her Tank over to my house (where I very sensibly will be hiding out until the heat dies down) and 'rescue' me.  To rescue me she would smash in my front door via her trusty baseball bat.

A few flaws I see in her plan.  Firstly if she somehow manages to drive this alleged Tank it will attract zombies for miles around due to the noise it makes.  Zombies will be attracted to noise, so she will likely have a massive carnival of freaks following her everywhere, eventually climbing all over the Tank trapping her inside.  Secondly, the T.A Centre is quite close to a busy Town Centre, the number of zombies in the area will be impressive, I doubt there is enough ammo (if any) to take out thousands of zombies, especially as I am not convinced she even knows how to use a gun.

Despite my misgivings it does seem she has the better plan (at least according to Online Zombie Quiz's).  I am very fond of her, so wish her all the best.  At least she will be wearing a cool T-Shirt when she is ripped limb from limb!

Lamb - B-Line (Music Video)

My girlfriend showed me a load of music videos the other day, one of the ones she showed me was the video for the song 'B-Line' by the UK electronic music duo Lamb.  It really freaked me out.  The song itself is quite mellow, yet the video was nearly enough to give me nightmares!


The video sees the female singer wearing a sort of military style dress in some dark room.  She rocks from side to side while a man attaches electrodes to her.  He then turns on a machine which with the flick of a switch is able to turn her into a monstrous floating Demon headed creature.  After doing this a few times the machine breaks, the man himself is transformed into some sort of giant robot.  Very creepy! Great video.

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) - Zombie Horror Film Review

Resident Evil: Afterlife is the fourth entry in Paul Anderson's Resident Evil film series and is the second to be directed by him. Resident Evil was an amazing film, and is one of my all time faves.  Next was Resident Evil: Apocalypse. This was quite a bad film, redeemed by the fantastic Nemesis enemy, and some good action scenes. Third was Resident Evil: Extinction, I have only seen that one once, but thought it was fun enough. The films occur in a separate Universe to the video games, despite the original film technically being able to be fitted in. As such many characters from the video games appear.

The third film ended with Alice (Milla Jovavich) and a band of clones wanting to destroy the evil Umbrella Corporation once and for all. This they do in the opening sequence which leads to the destruction of Umbrella's Tokyo HQ, as well as the convenient death's of all the Alice clones. The original Alice survives, as does the CEO of Umbrella; a man known by the name of Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts). Six months later and Alice is in Alaska searching for her friends (who headed there at the end of Extinction). She comes across Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) who is under mind control.  Together they locate a group of survivors in Los Angeles. They reveal that the place her friends are likely to be is a massive tanker which had been broadcasting a signal of hope up until recently.  But is the tanker the source of every ones salvation, or is there yet more...(resident) evil?

The film's budget increases with each episode. This; the fourth film has been made in 3D using the same camera technology that James Cameron used for Avatar.  ome of the 3D effects look fantastic.  The starting sequence of a rainy street in Tokyo is amazing; a birds eye view with individual raindrops falling into the screen. Many action sequences benefit from this 3D, whether it be a fight in a flooded room, a courageous leap off a rooftop followed by zombie hordes, or just Albert Wesker's amazing moves. Sometimes the 3D does make the characters seem 2D in comparison, but for the most part it doesn't ruin the experience.

The film again is only very loosely based on the games, this time around it is focused mostly on Resident Evil 5. Some zombies have the four tentacle type thing that comes out their mouths. Split dogs turn up (and are a real highlight, looking fantastic). The executioner enemy from the fifth game also shows up, though no explanation where he came from. Much like he does in the game, the executioner is gigantic, head covered by a sack, and nails driven through it's flesh. It carries a ginormous axe. The film is not really horror orientated at all.  Action all the way as is demonstrated by the very action heavy opening sequence. It never gets boring though. As is usually the case in the Resident Evil films there is a lot of fast travel (characters moving from one location to another off screen).

Wesker appeared briefly in Extinction, but here he is the main antagonist. In this timeline he is the apparent leader of the Umbrella Corporation. Wesker here is ultra cool, much like in the games.  he has T-Virus powers, and so much like in Resident Evil 5 he is able to move amazingly fast, and is very powerful. His fight with Claire and Chris Redfield is quite brief, but a highlight of the film. The human characters are quite terrible overall. The main ones do their job, but newer characters (such as Crystal) show up, get given a little bit of exposition to try and make them seem more than just cannon fodder, and then promptly get killed off. I don't see the point of trying to make the characters seem like proper people when they have so little screen time before they are gone.

The Umbrella logo is again plastered all through the film, I love that symbol. Zombies show up in large quantities, but for the most part just hang around in the background, with the exception of a fantastic action sequence at a prison. The split head dogs are real cool, but no lickers, or zombie crows this time around.

As is always the case, the film ends with a big cliffhanger, for a few seconds I did think that maybe this was it, but no, a big event happens that will no doubt lead to Resident Evil 5. Hopefully Wesker will return for that film, as he was a real cool character, but the amount of video game characters here now (Chris Redfield, Claire Redfield, Jill Valentine etc) is quite a lot, it doesn't help that they all act in the same fashion and don't stand out from each other, even less so here than how they are in the games. Milla is her usual self as Alice, a vehicle for action, but no actual personality.
I did enjoy the film, and had quite a cool soundtrack, but once again is not a patch on the original film.

SCORE:

UPDATE 30/03/2020:

This is a great entry in the series and while it was made with 3D moments in mind this is still an enjoyable watch in standard vision. The soundtrack brought to mind George Romero's Day of the Dead, and I found the sense of isolation Alice experiences to be something quite different in feel to the previous movies.                                               

Turok - Action Videogame Review (X-Box 360)

Turok has never been a favourite of mine, the N64 Turok 2 was ok, but basic things such as completely broken sniper rifle controls led to frustration.  The current gen release sees a reboot for the franchise.  Again it features lots and lots of Dinosaurs, and again you are cost as the titular character Turok, but this version features much more human combatants.

The game sees you as Turok on a spaceship with a load of Marines.  You are heading to a Planet where a big terrorist is supposed to be hiding out.  Turok is an outsider with the Marines, as he used to be one of the terrorists biggest students until his conscience got in the way.  Approaching the Planet a massive missile hits the spacecraft.  The craft splits into chunks, landing all over the surface of the Jungle Planet.  You need to relocate the disbanded Marines, as well as stop the terrorist leader, all the while putting up with the horrific bullying of your 'team mates'.

Turok is a first person shooter (FPS). The game is quite terrible, worse than average for sure.  Dinosaurs are annoying to fight, though a instant kill can be activated if you have your knife equipped.  The larger Dinosaurs constantly knock you off your feet onto your back.  Repeatedly they do this.  You are vulnerable to attack while you are stuck in the 3 second falling over animation, and if you happen to be running (well walking) away from the enemy, then you instantly face it, so that when you stand up you have to clumsily turn round again. Very annoying.  The human soldiers for the most part are ok to defeat, they don't show too much intelligence, though they do hide round walls.

There is no run button, the pace you move at is insanely slow, weapons have small clips, and a lot of them (such as the shotgun) just feel totally useless.  When you take damage the screen turns red to indicate this.  However, the screen turns very, very red, so red that you can't actually tell what the heck is going on, so end up accidentally walking into walls, and into enemies as you struggle to make out where exactly you are.

So far, so bad.  The game is slightly redeemed by one particular level.  You assault an enemy base when ground tremors erupt.  Out of the ground come giant scorpions.  After tense fights via fixed gun emplacements the whole area collapses.  The next section sees you in a vast underground network of caverns, and tunnels, infested with the giant scorpions.  You; armed with a flamethrower have to carefully make your way through the lair.  The darkness, and constant attack makes this level really tense, and exciting compared to the dreadfulness of most the game.  The section ends with a giant Leviathan style boss that breaths fire, and hurls rocks at you with it's many tentacles.  This horror section really made the game better than 100% awful.

The game really sucks, it really is not much fun at all.  The Dinosaurs are scrappy to fight, and never scary.  The Scorpion lair level is the games sole redeeming feature, as everything from the multi player orientated achievements, to the hateful A.I Marines leads to pure misery.  Not worth picking up, the horror level cannot make this a purchase worth doing.

SCORE:

The Last Exorcism - Horror Film Review

The Last Exorcism flew under the radar a bit for me.  I hadn't seen any trailers for it, all I had seen were a few posters on Bus Stops showing a stereotypical girl in white gown looking suitably possessed.  However, hearing that the genius Eli Roth was involved as Producer (he of such modern day classics such as 'Cabin Fever', '2001 Maniacs', and the torture porn 'Hostel' series) certainly made me prick my ears up.

The film concerns a troubled Preacher named Cotton Marcus (played wonderfully by Patrick Fabian) who lost his faith in God after a Doctor saved his sick son, rather than the Lord.  Cotton is soon to give up his life's job, but first wants to try and do some good.  He sees the whole notion of religion as silly, but does understand the joy religion gives people.  After hearing about a exorcism that went wrong leading to a boys death, Cotton decides to get a documentary made exposing just how fake, and stupid exorcisms are in order to prevent any more deaths.  He travels with his film crew to a remote farm in Louisiana where a farmer believes that his 16 year daughter is possessed by a Demon.  Cotton agrees to carry out his final exorcism in the hope that the tricks he uses to do it will proof just how baseless exorcism actually is. Unfortunately things turn serious quite quickly.  Could it be that this time the possession is actually real?

The film is shot as if it's a documentary.  Along with Cotton is a woman (Iris) who is narrating the documentary, and asking questions, as well as Daniel; the cameraman.  The film is very well edited together, almost as if it was a real life documentary, it features music to accentuate this feeling also.  The film falls into the genre of 'Found Footage' (think 'The Blair Witch Project', 'Quarantine', or 'The Last Broadcast').  At times it does feel quite similar to Blair Witch, but much more smoothly filmed, after all the Camera man Daniel is a professional.

The characters all seem believable, and flawed in their own ways.  Despite being a complete fake, Cotton comes across as a really likable guy rather than a fool.  He is funny, charismatic, and while he doesn't have much faith in his religion, he does recognise just how useful it is to people, and how he is able to put peoples minds at ease, and relax them.  He is also shown to genuinely care about people.  Long after things turn sour he stays to help the family he has found himself involved with (the Sweetzer family consisting of Louis, the Daughter Nell, and the Farmers sullen Son Caleb) rather than leave them to whatever issues he feels they have.  Louis; the father of the maybe possessed girl comes across as a really tragic figure.  He is an alcoholic after the loss of his Wife to cancer, and is tortured with his devout belief in God, and the protection of his two children. The character of Nell is another ace one, being able to convey both vulnerability, and shyness one second, and cold blooded psycho the next.

Being an Eli Roth film, I expected plenty of violence, and blood.  Surprisingly there was not much of either, only a few scenes worth.  When the blood arrived it was suitably large in scope; a cat being stabbed to pieces, and the aftermath of a knife to the face are the most bloody scenes.  The film seemed very realistic, though the films score takes you out of the illusion somewhat that it is a real documentary, specially as the ending just doesn't lend itself to the image of the documentary being properly finished off.

The film felt almost subdued by the end, a resolution to the tale, and I almost felt cheated by the events...then everything got totally shaken up.  The last 5 minutes of the film are completely messed up, like something from a fever dream.  It seems like a totally different film, as if both the gentle documentary, and this vision of utter madness had been coexisting.  The films last scene is more creepy, and terrifying than anything in the film, a total twist in direction for the films tone, and I am ashamed to say that by pandering to the horror fans they have made the film much higher in my estimations than it would have been sans ending.

A different twist to the usual generic tale of Demonic possession, and the documentary style is effectively done.  Worth a watch, just don't expect too much terror.

SCORE:

Age of Zombies (2010) - Zombie Videogame Review (Playstation 3)

Age of Zombies is a PSP PlayStation Mini game that can also be played via PlayStation 3.  PlayStation Minis are similar to X-Box Indie games I guess, though of a much higher quality, feeling more like Popcap style games.  Age of Zombies is an arena based shooter in which you play as a time travelling wise cracking hard nut battling legions of zombies.

The game starts with your character - Barry Steakfries confronting an evil Scientist at his HQ.  Just before you kill him, he reveals that he has sent legions of zombies back to different time periods to mess up the human timeline.  You jump into a nearby time portal determined to battle them all.

The game is split up into around five different time periods.  Each time period features three stages, the last stage of each period having a boss to defeat.  The time periods all look totally different, and all feature exclusive enemies.  The basic aim of each stage is to defeat all the zombies. The time periods used include prehistoric, Egypt, 1930's, futuristic, and feudal Japan.  In prehistoric times you get cavemen zombies, 1930's feature gangster zombies, Egypt has a multitude of mummies, the future level features zombie cyborgs, while feudal Japan sees zombie samurais, reminiscent of Panic in Wonderland.  The music for each stage is fantastic and really fits the setting.

Dotted around each level are various weapons.  Your basic handgun can be briefly exchanged for a shotgun, rifle, submachine gun, flame thrower, or minigun, while your secondary weapon (by default grenades) can be exchanged for mines, and rocket launchers. When you pick up a weapon, a voice over tells you the weapon you have got, but this voice can change depending on the time period.  Most noticeably in feudal Japan all the voice overs are hilariously bad, with a Japanese accent (such as 'oooooooh, machina gunna!' or 'shotagunna!') very very funny.  The future level has a robotic voice over.

There is a very basic story, and at the end of each stage Barry Steakfries has a little dialogue scene, usually some corny self aware Duke Nukem style quote.  Some of these are just terrible, and not funny, but a lot of them are quite entertaining.

The zombies come in many different styles. Basic zombies are the main enemy type, mostly it is the time period which dictates the other enemy types. Some of the gangster zombies have tommy guns, while ninja zombies can throw throwing stars, and cyborg zombies can shoot lasers. These enemies all come in bigger versions as well. Also mixed in with these are some enemies that move a lot faster, as well as glowing red enemies who explode when shot. The bosses are all cool, if predictable. Man, this game has a zombie T-Rex! The bosses are fun to fight, and are quite varied in how you fight them.

The game designed for PSP of course looks kind of rough on a TV, lots of jagged edges, but the cartoony style of the game is good despite this. The game cost £3.49, and for that price you get around two or three hours of game. It is not hard, but is fun, zombies exploding into blobs of blood when shot, and sometimes the amount of zombies swarming towards you is immense, throwing a grenade into a throng of zombies then watching them all burst into flames never fails to be entertaining.

Not a bad action shooter, I do plan one day on getting a PSP, so will try it out on that when I do to see if it's any better or worse on a handheld. As my first ever PlayStation Store purchase this was good, fun, if a little bit too brief.

SCORE:

General Update for September 2010

Time moves on, another Monthly Update.  My personal life has been going ace, which is really cool, though it does mean that I am not currently doing as many blog posts as I have done in the past.  I am going to be made redundant soon which is going to suck, though on the plus side I am going to be able to promote my blog, and work on it a lot more.  If any one has any job offers email me!

I am currently tidying up a lot of my badly spelt earlier posts, and replacing broken images.  In time I will replace the very early reviews with better written ones.

There are quite a few horror films out at the moment.  Eli Roth's 'The Last Excorcism' is out, a supernatural tale of possession I am guessing.  Also out is Piranha 3D.  I really wanted to see this, but don't know if I will get round to it.  Of course on 10th September the fourth entry in the Resident Evil series is out.  Resident Evil: Afterlife is shot using James Cameron's 3D camera technology.  The trailer is quite cool, though it seems a vast amount of the film is based on ideas from Resident Evil 5.  Alongside Alice (again played by the beautiful Milla Jovovich) Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, and the amazing Albert Wesker will also feature heavily.

I now have a PS3, currently playing through a fun simple shooter called 'Age of Zombies' that sees you as a Duke Nukem style Hero travelling through time, fighting Zombies.  The remake of Forbidden Siren I have brought, so will be reviewing that.  On the Nintendo DS Dementium 2 has been out for a while in USA, I intend to import that soon, as well as replay the original.  On the 360 there is a billion Indie Zombie games now, I do need to review those.  Dead Rising: Case 0 is out on X-Box Live Arcade, I will be playing that pretty soonish.  I also have got the side scrolling brawler 'Scott Pilgrim VS the World' which features a cheat code that turns all the enemies into zombies.  It has been confirmed that the new Call of Duty (Call of Duty: Black Ops) will feature a zombie mode, similar to Call of Duty World at Wars cult mode.

Lots of stuff to do then, and unfortunately due to losing my job it seems I may have a lot of time to get it all done.

Oh yeah, I have ordered issue 1 of  a new British Horror Magazine called 'Shock Horror' which turns out to have been created by a friend of a friend of mine, so that will be interesting to read.  A review will follow.

Nightmare I had Tuesday 31st August (Warning: features Demons!)

Had another Nightmare the other day, no zombies in this one, but a Demon; spooky!

I was working for the Military, I had been forced onto this Top Secret Project as otherwise I would be in Military Prison.  There was a hole dug into the ground, a metal runged ladder led down into a small earthen cave which had an ancient Temple room leading off it.  The Temple room had an evil presence in it, I could feel it as it rushed to get me.  I managed to climb up the ladder and escape. The Military wanted to harness the power of the evil spirit for their own ends.

Later on I somehow revealed the secrets of the room, I emerged from the ladder to find myself by a cliff by the sea, there was a big cave nearby which had thousands of birds flying around.  By the entrance to the cave was a human skeleton.  As I approached the skeleton the birds all flew out, they pecked me clean within seconds, removing all skin, muscles, and internals, leaving just a bleached skeleton.

The strange thing about this dream is that despite starring in it, I knew it was a 2 part TV special.  There had been 4 horror films about this evil spirit, each film revealing no answers and ending with all the characters killed off.  At the end of the first episode I fast forwarded the tape to get to the 2nd (why yes, I was watching this on VHS, and?)

Part 2 saw me on a cliff by the sea with my Sensai, a ancient Chinese man, complete with long wispy beard, and ornate robes.  He started acting strange, saying the evil spirit in the hole was all his plan.  He tries to kill me and I run.  On the edge of a cliff I look over to see the Sensai crawling crab like up the sheer cliff face. I realise that he is possessed by the Demon of the hole...

Can't recall the rest, so not exactly a hyper interesting dream, but still I saw this as fit for a blog post.