Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) - Zombie Mode

I have long intended to do a blog post about the awesome zombie modes in Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2. It was first included in Call of Duty: World at War but I won't talk about that much as the maps were re-released as DLC for Black Ops. I promised I would state that I only ever got into the zombie mode due to my dear friend Lucinda who is a keen advocate of it. I have discovered I wrote about this two years ago but hey; this is an update. My original post on this can be found here.

The zombie mode tasks you with one objective only; survive. It takes place over a confined map in which zombies assault barricades eventually destroying them and coming after you. Whilst it can be played in single player it is really designed for co-op play. You earn points from killing zombies which you can use to buy better weapons, power ups from vending machines (such as quick revive), and unlock more areas in the map you are in. Each round the zombies get stronger and there are more of them. You will die! The puzzle box is the most essential item to find in each level. Opening it gives you a random weapon, the one hit kill Ray-gun is the one you really want to get.

I  don't own all the maps for Black Ops but I do have most of them. Following is a small description of the various maps...

Ascension: I don't own this map, it takes place at an abandoned Soviet Cosmodrome and features four characters from World at War. There is a special enemy type in the form of space monkeys (sounds cool).

Call of the Dead: Again I do not own this map. This one takes place on the Siberian coast and features a lighthouse and a ship wreck. A special enemy type is zombie legend George Romero! You play as one of four horror icons; Danny Trejo, Robert Englund, Michael Rooker, and Sarah Michelle Gellar who provide voices for these characters.

Shangri-La: The last of the Black Ops zombie maps I do not own. This one takes place in a jungle and features a host of new enemy types (such as a zombie monkey) and again the character you play as are the four ones from World at War.

Kino Der Toten (Theatre of the Dead) - This is the first of the three maps that come with the disc and is one of the best zombie maps. As the title suggests this is set in a theatre and has you battling Nazi zombies as well as crawling zombies that explode upon death. It is quite a large map and includes a huge theatre room as well as a teleporter that briefly takes you away to a safe room for a breather. Every five or so rounds rather than zombies you have to survive against Hellhounds that spawn in randomly.

"Five" - Set in the Pentagon, you play as either John F.Kennedy, Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon or Robert McNamara. The layout for this one is quite linear rather than the looping design most maps have. Once the press room is over run you can take an elevator down to the mission room. From here you can get to some offices which includes a teleporter that takes you back to the start. A hard level I find.

Dead Ops Arcade - Different to all the other maps this is an overhead shooter similar to Smash TV. You are attacked by waves of enemies and after they are all killed you move on to the next arena. There is lots of treasure and power ups to collect. Is ok but I often get bored with this one.

Nacht Der Untoten  - This was the very first zombies map and it shows due to a very small layout. Nonetheless it is fun and chaotic after an initially slow start. Set in a ruined building.

Verruckt (Asylum) - There are many doors in this level and as with quite a few of the maps the power is off until you find the switch. It seems that you either spawn in one of two parts of the building. Another level I never seem to do well in.

Shi No Numa - For this one you are fighting Japanese zombies in a building in the middle of a swamp. Quite a large level and features Hellhounds again. The swamp water makes your character move slowly.

Der Riese  - Starting in a courtyard in the middle of the factory the big draw for this one is to initiate four different teleporters which then opens up a Pack-a-punch machine in the courtyard (this machine upgrades your weapons). Another large map that has quite a few ledges you can drop down from to make cheeky escapes from death.

Moon - The last map and the most bizarre. Moon features the largest zombie map out of both Black Ops and Black Ops 2. Starting on Earth you have to get to a teleporter that takes you to a secret Nazi moon base. On the moon you have to wear a space suit to avoid suffocating while altered gravity means you can jump long distances. I have yet to see all this level has to offer. Here you get teleporting crawling zombies as well as zombie astronauts who cause you to teleport to a random section of the map if they grab you!

So there you have it, quite a self indulgent blog post but it is something I have always wanted to write about. I love the zombie mode in this game, I wish they would make a stand alone Call of Duty zombie game and no, the mobile games do not count.

Castlevania (1986) - Horror Videogame Review

Though I already own Castlevania on the Wii's Virtual Console I just had to buy it for a second time when I saw it on the 3DS E-Shop, who wouldn't want Castlevania on the go?

You play as Simon Belmont who has started an assault on Dracula's castle (fittingly named Castlevania) in a bid to defeat the dark lord and restore peace to the land. That is about it for the story. You work your way throughout Castlevania, starting in the castle grounds, and ending in Dracula's throne room at the very top of the place, each level preceded by a map showing the route you are taking. The game is split up into six different levels made up of a variety of stages and all ending in a boss fight.

Still the best thing about this game is the music, the Castlevania series for the most part has been full of amazing songs and this can be seen even in the original. The years have not been kind to this game, Simon controls very badly, his whip attack is unreliable at times, he walks as slow as a zombie, actually scratch that, he walks slower than the zombies as they are quite fast! Your jump is terrible, unable to move once you have jumped and is just weird feeling. The power ups of axe, holy water, throwing knives and crucifix are all classic and all useful for different situations, while the stopwatch is...well it is the stopwatch.

One of my favourite things about the series other than the music is the horror aesthetic that was quite unique at the time and appealed to me, having the game all wrapped up in a castle gives it a strong theme so that levels don't feel disjointed. Common enemies are bats, bone throwing skeletons, leaping flea men and floating Medusa heads. Bosses are a chance for the game to shine and while they can be cheap to fight against they are memorable and crop up many, many times in future instalments. Death and Dracula are pretty much the same in all the games and both great battles, while the giant bat, Frankenstein's monster, giant Medusa head and mummy duo make up the other ones (also appear in future games as both boss characters and demoted to ordinary enemies).

While Castlevania is a classic game it is just a tad frustrating nowadays, I know this is due to the challenge vanishing from games and my past self would hit me for saying that but I found myself impatiently rushing through the thing, cursing every now and again by the random nature of the enemies attacks. If you like the series and have yet to play the original it is worth it, but otherwise move along, there are far better games in the series.

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Castlevania The Adventure: ReBirth (2010) - Horror Videogame Review (WiiWare)

The Castlevania series is one of my all time faves, consistently good games with only a few misses.  When I heard that the 1989 Gameboy game Castlevania: The Adventure was being remade for WiiWare I was excited. The game has turned out a lot better than I hoped, keeping the graphics good, rather than changing them all for polygons (which I had feared). Note the game is not actually a remake, but instead a reimagining.

Being a Castlevania game usually means no real story to speak of. That is the case here, but this is not a bad thing for the series, I wouldn't have it any other way! Basically Castlevania, the home of Count Dracula has reappeared. As a descendant of Simon Belmont you have the power to use the mighty Vampire Killer (a magical whip that is said to be the only weapon able to defeat Dracula), so you head off to infiltrate the castle and defeat him yet again.

The game is a level based 2D platformer, and is very similar in look to previous Castlevania games, again not a bad thing. There are six levels in all, all taking place in a different section of Castlevania.  Each level is split up into about ten different shorter sections, and feature alternate routes, as well as a mid-boss, and end of level boss. Well in truth there are five levels, the sixth being just a boss fight with Dracula.

The music for the game is fantastic, most the tunes have shown up in previous Castlevanias but are remixed here. Castlevania has always had the best video game music. The levels are from locations which have all featured in other Castlevanias. You get the clock tower level, the entrance halls level etc, but all look cool. The graphics are of a higher quality than SNES and look very crisp and solid even on my forty two inch screen.

Enemies are the usual suspects. Yet again I say this is not a bad thing! The enemies have all been remade, so look slightly different to how they usually do. Floating medusa heads, mudmen, armour, skeletons, bats, mermen etc. fantastic! No zombies though, oh well. One thing I did notice is that this game loves eyeballs. Most levels feature large rolling eyeballs, one of Dracula's special moves is to drop loads of rolling small eyeballs at you, and the end of level boss for Level 1 is in fact a gigantic eyeball! Talking of bosses; the bosses in this game are all real cool. Having two per level means more variety, and some normal enemies from previous Castlevanias have been upgraded to boss status!  Favourites such as the giant bat, stone golem, and of course Death appear with other promoted bosses, such as a succubus, and an enchanted sword. One cool boss I had not seen before was a Jekyll and Hyde man who could alternate between a slim fast man, and a hulking rock throwing brute.

The whip you use can be upgraded by collecting orbs hidden in the levels, the final form giving you limited power to shoot fireballs from the whip. The usual secondary weapons are all here as well, you know; axes, knifes, crucifixes, and the ever useless stopwatch (that lets you pause the enemies for a few seconds).

I can't be unbiased, I admit I love all the Castlevania games. This is no different. Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth costs 1000 Wii Points, and it took me two and a half hours to complete in one sitting (there is no way to save the game), but includes alternate routes through levels, as well as unlocking random things upon completion.

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Death Jr: Root of Evil (2008) - Horror Video Game Review Part 2 (Nintendo Wii)

An update from yesterday's post. I have now completed Death Jr: Root of Evil. It was about eighteen levels long (including three boss levels). The game progressively got more difficult, and frustrating, and the locations turned quite bland. The last set of levels is all set in boring looking caves and forest areas, the amazing music turns into just ambiance, and the end of game boss battle doesn't even have any music!

Combat turned into a bit of a problem. Your melee attacks become less effective as due to lack of a block your energy bar can quickly get knocked away. Nearly all the enemies later in the game constantly throw powerful projectiles at you with scary accuracy, add this to some tricky platforming, and constantly respawning enemies and frustration appears. It would be fair to say that the main way I died in the second half of the game was by enemies cheaply shunting me off platforms to my death in lava pits.

Death Jr: Root of Evil was good, but the first half is definitely a lot better than the more crowded and bland latter half, it's a shame there was such a noticeable shift in quality

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Death Jr: Root of Evil (2008) - Horror Videogame Review Part 1 (Nintendo Wii)

Death Jr is a 3D deceptively cutesy platformer, it is a remake/re-release of a 2006 PSP game. You play as either Death Jr (a skeletal boy wielding a scythe) or Pandora (a goth girl with a bony whip) who accidentally release a evil plant based villain who plans to rule the world. They have to work through about nineteen levels of platforming action to thwart her plans.

I had assumed the game was a kids game, but playing it I realised the humour is much more in the vein of Tim Schafer, and odd ball. The game features odd characters such as a limbless boy in a vat of liquid, and a girl with bleeding holes in her hands called 'Stig-Martha'. The humour is kinda dark in places, and more for a teenage audience (eg: one level is called Morning Woods. I have only played through around eight levels, but it has been quite fun. The first place I did was a toy graveyard, complete with plenty of zombie teddies rising out the ground to attack me. The second location I visited was a science lab, enemies comprised of experimented lab rats.

I don't know how the Pandora character controls, but Death Jr controls great. You can use his scythe not only as a weapon, but also as a tool to swing from bars and hooks, to glide across gaps, and to help you climb onto unreachable platforms. As well as the scythe you also get a variety of different guns to use, ranging from pistols, to shotguns and rocket launchers which use the Wii-remote to aim.

The music is excellent, and the graphics are good for a touched up PSP game. The Wii controls which can destroy some Wii games are used sparingly here which really helps. If the rest of the game stays as fun as the first half then it should be cool.

(Part two of the review)

Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop (2009) - Zombie Horror Videogame Review (Wii)

Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop is a vastly different kind of game to the original version of Dead Rising. What is cool is how it has changed to fit itself onto the more casual Wii system, and as a result feels like a completely different game.

The story is exactly the same as before. A zombie plague has been unleashed on a small American town. You play as Frank West a journalist who has headed to the town (more specifically Willamette Mall) to investigate and try and get the scoop. Once there you uncover a plot involving terrorists, and about a town called Santa Cabeza. So far so similar.

Obviously the graphics are no where near as good as the X-Box 360 version, and the amount of zombies on screen at any one time is far less. There is major fogging for the zombies, they can pop into existence in spaces were seconds previously there was nothing. To make up for this there are many different types than the 360 version. As well as the zombies there are also enemy poodles, and even parrots who fly overhead and drop hand grenades on you. Quite a few of the psychopaths from the 360 (psychopaths were Dead Rising's version of bosses) are now instead super zombies. These super zombies are stronger and have powerful attacks compared to the usual zombies. The butch police woman is now a giant zombie armed with powerful tasers, and the Vietnam veteran is now a zombie armed with 2 machetes who charges at you for example.

The whole original game was very time based, you had to keep to a strict time limit to progress the story, and lead fellow survivors to safety. Time is no longer an important factor, the different sections of the game are more level based. Usually you will have a story mission, then a variety of missions were the aim is to rescue a specific survivor. Breaking the structure down like this lends the game a far more arcade like feel. You get a grade for each mission you complete, and are gifted accordingly.

This game guns play a far more important role than melee weapons. You have your guns mapped to the D-pad and use the Wii-mote to aim a reticule at the screen in an over the shoulder Resident Evil 4 type of way. Ammo is plentiful, most zombies when killed leave behind either ammo, or money. Otis the owner of a gun store can be visited at any time. In his shop you can buy new guns, as well as upgrade how much ammo you can carry for each weapon, and buy books which teach you new special moves.

Levelling up still occurs. This time it is less important. You get either more item slots (all accessed via a menu screen rather than the 360's real time selection), and a bigger choice of books to buy at Otis's shop, and that's about it. Health upgrades are done via mixing won protein supplements with juice, so levelling up is not needed for that.

The game is still as violent as it was before, and includes some new weapons, as well as removing some others. The game features all the cut scenes of the original and has the 'Overtime' bonus mode incorporated to the end of the game rather than separately selected. Due to the focus on guns the boss battles are far more easy. A particular highlight was the fight with the convicts in the park. The 360 version of this fight was quite tough, this version has the whole fight take place as an extended quick time event, and as a result is quite fun.

After the game is finished there are lots of extra missions available to try (titled 'Odd Jobs') such as running down a certain amount of zombies in the underground tunnels, or killing a certain amount of zombies just using the football weapon. These are a nice bonus. I recommend Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop, even if you own the 360 original. It is different enough to warrant a purchase.

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Alone in the Dark (2008) - Horror Videogame Review (X-Box 360)

My god... Alone in the Dark is awful! I picked it up at a bargain price, but wish I hadn't. It's frustrating to see the promise this game has, but that promise is too soiled.

Like the previous games in the series this is a survival horror game. The Alone in the Dark games have always been a bit crud. The last game Alone in the Dark: A New Nightmare was ok, but the second half just collapsed into monotony. This game just plain collapses right away.

I cannot believe that this game was ever play tested. The controls are utterly broken, as is the games engine. First the story. The game starts off quite exciting. You are Edward Carnby, suffering amnesia and captured by a violent gang in a hotel in central New York. Something has been unleashed in the hotel, a dark evil that soon starts ripping the hotel to shreds and inadvertently freeing you from your captors. The first thirty minutes of the game is an exciting descent through the ruined hotel followed by a tremendous chase through the streets of New York as the ancient evil gives chase, smashing up roads and buildings like something out of Cloverfield.

This would have been great if not for the games dreadful flaws. Within minutes of starting the game I had managed to get completely stuck in the scenery, a reset was the only way out of this. Many times the controls just totally fail, not responding to button presses seemingly at random. For a lot of the game (am about half way through) you have a stupid A.I character getting in your way. Though a physically small and slim character there is an invisible barrier to either side of her meaning you cannot get past her if she's in your way despite there being lots of room to do so. This is very annoying when you're being attacked by a zombie (zombie type creatures are the main enemy, as well as mutant insects and rodents of various types) and a weapon is just past her.

The damage bar is really something else. You physically show injuries on your body, cuts and scrapes which have to be healed by spraying with a health spray. But the wounds are totally flat, and show over your clothes, for instance your bulky leather jacket suddenly gets a hilariously bad looking flesh wound on it looking in no way like its anything real. The tears and rips in your clothes regenerate over time, as do windows and objects dotted round the levels which is stupid.

The inventory is tripe. Your inventory is represented by the inside pockets of your coat, it is very difficult to select the item you want due to the analogue sticks terrible controls.

Fighting is horrendous. You have to use the right analogue stick to simulate the attack, it is very unresponsive, slow and cumbersome, a simple button to attack would be much preferred. Sometimes you get a driving sequence, the car controls are terrible, and it takes hardly anything for your car to flip upside down leaving you stuck until you die.

A level skip feature was put into the game, obviously as Atari realised how crap the game was and wanted people to be able to skip the bad sections (i.e.: all of it).

I cannot recommend Alone in the Dark at all, even if you saw it for free I would say avoid, it is rubbish. Even if your a huge survival horror fan avoid it! It does have zombies in it, but they are not worth suffering this crap to encounter.

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