Cool Thing of the Week: Zombie Squad and Disaster Preparedness

Awhile ago, some bright folks who were interested in disaster readiness decided to start a website about preparation. Looking for a theme, they asked the question - "What is the worst case disaster scenario?" The answer, of course, is a zombie apocalypse. Thus began Zombie Squad, a tongue-in-cheek website dedicated to promoting preparedness and self-sufficiency. A good portion of the population seems to have this fantasy of post-apocalyptic living in a small farm way out in the mountains, but that's really unlikely (any catastrophic event that causes society to collapse will most likely kill you outright, and if it doesn't, it will probably destroy all your carefully laid preperations anyway.) There are your required discussions on "which caliber is best for the PAW (post apocalyptic world)?" as if anyone knows what that's actually going to be like. Finally, you get a few people who don't realize that the zombies are a metaphor, and try to start topics like "what weapon is best for killing zombies - shovel or katana?" If you take the time to look around, you'll discover a ton of information on nearly everything disaster related. Some of the most fascinating threads are in the "Personal Experiences" section, including some from survivors of Katrina. There's sections devoted to topics as widespread as firearms to personal gardening. A quick aside on preparedness in general before I continue: Talking about disaster preparedness makes most people think of bearded men in surplus camoflage eating canned beans in an underground concrete bunker. That's not being prepared, that's being paranoid. What's the point of focusing so much on saving your life that you forget to live it? Also, being prepared isn't just for when the bombs fall - it's for all sorts of unexciting (yet far more likely) scenarios. Off the top of your head - if your power went off tonight, would you be able to create light? Heat? Food? What if it stayed off for a week? I live in Washington, D.C., which has had in the past year several subway malfunctions and a deadly crash - on a train which I would have been on if I hadn't decided to bike to school that day. It made me think - if I had been on that train, and not disabled in the initial crash, would I have been able to help anyone? I'm an EMT, and while I could have done some basic triage and airway management and probably have improvised some splints or bandages thanks to my Wilderness First Responder training, I would have been alot more effective with some Kerlix rolls and a SAM splint. What if it had happened underground? I didn't carry any kind of light. Now, I keep a some basic first aid supplies, enough to stop major bleeding, wrap a sprained ankle, and splint a broken bone, as well as a flashlight, some Cliff bars, a swiss army knife, and two liters of water. It all fits in the back pocket of the backpack that has all my Arabic stuff in it, and doesn't weigh much at all. I'm going to be adding a bicycle patch kit and tools soon. Some people think it's funny that I carry all that around but to be honest, I don't really notice it anymore, and having first-hand experience treating people who thought "it would never happen to them," I'd rather err on the side of caution. I mean, I'd rather be trying to stop a bleeding gash on my leg with a proper sterile dressing and bandage, as opposed to a torn up shirt. Anyway, ZS is not only a great resource for prepping, but it's a fascinating example of internet community. The site's members range from veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to liberal arts majors from England, and they all get along because of two rules - No Politics, no Religion. There is no opportunity on the site to discuss either of those two topics, and it's quite impressive how much people from different backgrounds get along when you simply ignore those issues. It's an online community that approaches a serious topic with humor and intelligence. It promotes volunteer work and raises money for charities. It's about zombies. So check it out.

Web Clips for 6/22/09

3 vids today.

Hate, the internet, and gaymers. Also, GayGamer.net.

John Hodgman about Obama's geekyness, in front of Obama.

Incendiary ammo (and a silenced MAC 10) in Left 4 Dead 2. This game will rock the face.

Yet Another Sandbox Title: A Review of Prototype

Ugh, I thought I'd never write a review here, it's not like there isn't enough already out there, and no one comes here for reviews, so anything I write about games I tend to try to stay away from just reviewing them, but everything I started writing about this game just turned into a review - or something close enough to a review that it might as well be a review anyway. Anyway:

Ok, Prototype is an "open world" game, which means an inevitable comparison to the Grand Theft Auto series. So here it is: Prototype is like GTA, except you're an unstoppable killing machine, and the zombie apocalypse is involved.

Sound interesting? Triple-A titles tend to do that. Oh yea, this is a big title:

I'm a huge GTA fan and a huge open world fan. I love open world games because they're stress-free. If you don't want to worry about a story, you don't have to. You can just drive around, doing jack shit, playing around with guns and explosions without any motivation to do anything. It's great, and I spend hours doing just that. It's actually rare that I finish the storyline of any given sandbox title.

My latest sandbox game that I'd been sinking countless hours into was GTA 4. Though, it kept pissing me off. You see, I kept longing for the days of GTA 3 and Vice City, where jumping off of the tallest building wouldn't kill you, the cops couldn't take three shotgun blasts to the chest and still shoot, there were tanks, helicopters with missiles, rampage mini-games, and the main character actually wore their seat belt.

I was also sick of the wonky controls. Too often I would try to climb up to a ledge, but instead would vault over it and fall 50 feet to my death. Cuz that's what I wanted. Or I'd be firing an RPG on top of a building, but the game decided that I wasn't actually aiming at the FBI agent below, but the ledge at my feet, and I'd have to watch myself get blown to bits in slow motion. This happened in the earlier games as well, but it wouldn't kill you, so you could do the health cheat afterwards and go back to killing. Sure, the graphics in GTA 4 are better, but hey, the developers name is Rockstar, not Glam Rockstar.

Um, anyway, imagine my delight when I found a game where the main character not only is completely unaffected by gravity, but is also mostly unaffected by explosions. Though he could probably lose the overly-angsty hoody and popped collar.

You are Alex Mercer, a guy who wakes up in a morgue having lost his memory, but gained ridiculous super-powers. Which I would say is a pretty decent trade off. He goes on a hunt to try to uncover why he is the way he is, and kill the people responsible not only for doing this to him, but also for releasing a virus on Manhattan that turns the city into zombies. Or something like that. The story's actually not too bad if you're into the whole "governments are evil" thing. It's told fairly well, cutscenes aren't painful, and voice acting is decent. It's not Deus Ex good, but maybe it's Deus Ex 2.

Though, like Painkiller, It's not really the story that's important. What's important is that you can tear an innocent civilian in two with your bear hands, and absorb their body for health. Your power is basically you can alter yourself at a genetic level, and turn your arms into claws, a giant blade, Hulk fists, a whip thingy, and a giant shield. You can sprout spikes from the ground, shoot tendrils from your palms, and morph into anyone you absorb. There's an absolutely huge list of powers and moves you can buy with experience points (called "evolution points" in the game, which is pretty lame) that you obtain for doing pretty much anything.

In this way it's almost like an RPG, you can choose what powers you'd like to upgrade and taylor them to your playstyle. It's actually what kept me playing the game, because I knew if I finished just one more level I'd get acces to a new ability.

Actually, I'm sick of telling you what the game is about, go read (or skim) the Wikipedia, and Metacritic entries for the game. Good? Ok, moving on.

First, huge props to the devs for the PC version. I was very pleased. There was no apparent DRM of any kind, except for a CD check. The install was simple and went on without a hitch, there was automatic gamepad support, as well as keyboard support, which I know sounds weird, but it's outrageous how many games I play on the PC where, during a tutorial, the game will say something like "Press [Left Trigger] to aim." and I have to open up controls to see what they're talking about. But none of that here. The game also ran exceptionally well on my middle-of-the-road system (and man, it pains me to say that, since just two years ago it was top-of-the-line. Damn you moore's law). I was able to crank up all the shinies (even vsync and AA) and run it at my native resolution of 1680x1050. The game ran smooth and never crashed, which is saying a lot for a 1.0 release. It's really great to see a game that is actually a final product, and not a buggy POS that needs 3 or so patches before it's even remotely playable (here's looking at you, S.T.A.L.K.E.R). The graphics themselves are not really that great, They look almost last-gen with higher res textures, which is unusual for a big title. The game still looks damn good, though. And again, it's not about the graphics as much as it is about killing people. Plus a lot of effort was put into the animations. Everything is very fluid and killing people is very, very satisfying. Most people say that you really should use a gamepad for this game. I used both, and found that I actually liked the keyboard and mouse better. It all comes down to personal preference, but if you're worried about it then I can say it was definitely a better experience with the keyboard and mouse, as the difficult combos and such are simply easier when there's more buttons. Ok, so moving on to that actual game. It starts off really great, once you get past the tutorial levels. But as the story progresses and things move on, the game actually gets significantly worse, for a variety of reasons: 1.) The more powers, abilities, and attacks you gain. The more difficult it becomes to control your character, so what used to be a simple jump or climb, is now a quadruple flip into a glide attack that destroys a city block. It makes simple things like grabbing people (which becomes more and more important) very troublesome. There were many times where I'd try to pick up a gun next to me, but instead would blow up a tank across the street with ground spikes, sending the entire military after me. 2.) The difficulty curve, while somewhat linear, is kinda cheap. So you took out 50 soldiers in the last level? How about 100? You thought 7 tanks and 3 helicopters was easy? Well how about 14 tanks and 6 helicopters? It makes things much more chaotic than they need to be, and combined with reason #1, becomes extremely frustrating and predictable. 3.) The boss battles suffer from the same problem as the difficulty curve, but also, they're FUCKING RIDICULOUS! But not in a good way. Not in the epic way. I remember one of the major boss battles (spoiler) where you fight a main character, Elizabeth Greene, who is literally a giant puffy vagina on a stick. I timed it, and it took me 45 FUCKING minutes to beat her, and I didn't die once. That's just too long. She had so much heath that it just becomes annoying. Here is a 2 part video of a guy doing it in 15ish minutes (which is still a long-ass time for a boss battle), though he has upgrades which you don't have in that portion of that game yet, and has obviously fought her before: Notice she has 4 HUGE HEALTH BARS! WHY ON GODS GREEN EARTH WOULD YOU DO THAT! She spits rocks at you, shoots heat-seeking green energy thingys, sends hunters at you (which are sort of like the zombie equivalent of tanks) as well as a ton of other attacks, and zombies, and the military is also fighting you with everything they have. It's as if the developers realized that they'd made your character too powerful, and tried to compensate. The last boss battle is also stupidly difficult, though a little less absurd. 4.) The missions are rerepepetititivtivee as fuck. Here's the objectives for one of the missions near the end of the game: 1~ Destroy a helicopter before it leaves the area. 2~ Destroy two helicopters before they leave the area. 3~ Destroy three helicopters before they leave the area. 4~ ok, I'm not telling you this one. See if you can guess. That's right, FOUR HELICOPTERS! YAY! AWESOME GAYME DEZINE GUYZZZ! 5.) Free-roam gets less and less appealing as you progress through the game. There is a zombie infection slowly spreading through the city, and while it IS cool to free-roam around a zombie apocalypse for a while, it is a novelty that quickly wears off and I ended up yearning for the ability to explore just plain-old Manhattan. The game makes up for it with the ability to, once you've finished the story, start a new game with all of your existing powers retained. which is cool, but at the beginning you lack the ability to hijack choppers and tanks, which again makes free-roaming not as fun as it could be. 6.) The targeting system is abysmal, and again gets more annoying the more enemies there are and the more chaotic the missions get. So often I'd try to aim at the giant boss charging at me, but the targeting system would decide that it was more important to focus my wrath upon the taxi behind me. All in all though, a whole lot is forgivable when you go back to the fact that you can run through cars and crowds of people with a giant bio-blade. Free-roaming is still a real blast. And not all of the missions are a total bust. Did I mention the bio-blade?

The stealth aspect is actually really well done. It's pretty simple, the devs weren't really out to try anything new and wonky, but what's there is solid and it works. basically one of your powers is the ability to morph into other characters. So to infiltrate a base, you'll consume and morph into a general, then just walk in. It's pretty cool, and you can escape the military this way in free-roam. There's also the affectionately named "patsy" ability, where you accuse others of being you in disguise, and get to watch the other soldiers hesitate, then open fire. It's great. So, overall, this isn't a game that's going to stand the test of time. It's not going to win any awards, and it's not really deep or insightful. But hell, it's a damn fun game, and really, isn't that what we're going for here? I mean c'mon, there's over 20 animations just for eating people. As well as hundreds of other ways to reign destruction and terror upon a city already dealing with a zombie infection. If the missions annoy you, just blow off steam by attacking a military base and watch as the puny soldiers cower at the might of your bio-blade. I've certainly got more than my money's worth, and I'll continue to blow shit up for at least the near future. In fact, I think I've found my new go-to sandbox title.

Guest Writer Julian Suhr: "Drag Me To Hell" Review

It's my pleasure to offer you another guest post from Julian Suhr, author of the movie review blog Never Mind The Bats. Enjoy.

I'm kind of at a loss as far as reviewing "Drag Me To Hell" goes, largely because I really don't like horror movies. I can't see the point of needless fear for fear's sake, especially as we begin to live in increasingly terrifying times. Of course, I have an elaborate double standard at work: I like horror movies that I like. Zombie movies are fine, as were "The Host" and "Let The Right One In." And I don't consider Hitchcock movies to be horror (even though the ones I enjoy are more thrillers, but whatever). My taxonomy breaks down like this: movies may be scary or what have you, but a horror movie is one with no point other than to terrify the bejesus out of the audience well after the actual viewing experience is over, and for no real reason of improvement or deeper meaning. It's kind of an extremely subjective definition, as what it boils down to is "whatever doesn't leave me quaking at little noises late at night isn't horror," but I think I've got a point, although my definitions might be a bit off. Take a zombie movie, "28 Days Later." It's pretty goddamn intense throughout, kind of scary, but all in a survival way. Zombies are simply a threat that needs to be dealt with; eliminate the threat and life proceeds as usual. To get further analytical (I spent the cold month of January in a film class on zombie movies, which may have been damaging to my long term mental health, so you'll have to bear with me), "28 Days" can be viewed as an anti-Hobbesian fantasy about the futility of absolute government power, resulting corruption, and the occasional importance of living life nasty, brutal and short (simultaneous thanks and apologies to Christian, the man who is responsible for me bringing this interpretation to you. I have a sinking suspicion that my Hobbes might be a little bootleg, but the core idea seems solid enough). It's also a really smart movie beyond the philosophy and my parantheticals, with heavy post-apocalyptic images, allusions to 9/11, and plenty of other stuff that I can't remember at the moment. Basically, my favorite zombie movie, because the badass zombie violence serves a purpose. Zombie movies, as I was shown in January, provide a means of addressing real-world problems through apocalyptic and audience-friendly scenarios; kind of like satire, but with a lust for human flesh. And I think that the same can go for all other sorts of intelligent horror movies. I've already praised "Let The Right One In" for being as much about human nature and brutality as it is about vampires, and I'm sure that there are other horror movies out there, all excellent, that are about more than the monsters or spirits at hand. We could oversimplify things and refer to these things as "good" horror movies, and they all have the common characteristic that they don't terrify as much as other horror films that use cheap shock tactics and irrational decisions. In these "good" horror films, the real fear is of something deeper psychologically or philosophically than immediate suffering at the hands of evil beings. This fear leads to contemplation instead of adrenaline rushes, and therefore is less terrifying. But I fail to see the point or pleasure of watching something that uses the power of films to exploit audiences via fast cutting, grotesque special effects, and ominous music only for the sake of scaring. Shitty action movies, sure, they're escapist fluff (although I want the two hours of my life that "Hitman" took back). Shitty comedies can be okay as well; I know a guy who loves incredibly mediocre romantic comedies because he finds them unintentionally hilarious, which also brings us to the sort of movie that's so bad it becomes funny, a distinction that defies genre. But I will never for thelife of me understand people who enjoy horror movies. All that rather brings into question my credentials for reviewing a horror film, doesn't it? But "Drag Me To Hell" is unquestionably a horror movie, and one deftly made at that. Setup, as usual, is simple: a loan officer, desirous of promotion, denies a loan extension for an old woman. Poor choice, because this old woman is some kind of a witch-gypsy capable of cursing people. She does, and then young loan officer (forget the names here, and don't feel like looking them up, because they don't make a difference) is tormented by demons, causing her to try and break the curse. It's that simple, but it's very well done. Sam Raimi uses all manner of little tricks and slights-of-film to convey a sense of lingering dread, and we do get rather emotionally involved with young loan officer, which is of course the problem: once we care about a character, we make their problems ours, and then cower in fear. The acting is good, the dialogue inoffensive, and the colors and images (I have no idea why I still remember this) very pleasing and full. Even the special effects are subtle. Like I said, this is a very accomplished horror film. And that's exactly the problem- I can't help but feel a little betrayed by Sam Raimi for making a straight-up scary movie. This was supposed to be a funny horror movie; indeed, "Evil Dead" was invoked in many reviews I read. Unfortunately, all the humor is very subtle and plays second fiddle to the main task of terrifying me with lurking demons and other fucked-up repugnant shit, to paraphrase Jules Winnfield. From what I've seen of "Evil Dead"- and I need to see more- everything is firmly tongue in cheek, lead by Bruce Campbell's wonderful self-assuredness. There is no Bruce Campbell here. Young loan officer girl grows more and more terrified as the movie progresses, only occasionally saying something approaching one-liner quality. The humor comes from the incredible pettiness of the offense (a loan deserves this? really?) and the occasional grotesque torments inflicted upon young loan officer girl, including being puked on thrice and having to wrestle a dead body twice. If there was more of this, and it was all campier, everything would have been a celebration of horror's absurdities, and I would have been a happier camper. Instead, Raimi turns his talents to a straight-up machine for scaring, with no redeeming ending or message. It's very good for what it is, and what it is isn't at all my bag, and leaves me feeling a little frustrated with humanity. Come on guys, do you really need lurking demons to make you fear for a few blissful hours? Read a newspaper. Apologies for length and subjectivity. I really didn't have a lot to say critically due to firmly entrenched opinions on the subject matter, so I decided to foist said opinions upon you. Enjoy, and hopefully join me in my quest to end pointless horror.

Fanboism

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OH. EM. EF. GEE.

November 17th cannot come soon enough.

Lulz of the Time

 

 Notice under women in the bottom left: "delectable vegetarian cuisine." lol oxymoron.

And now for something completely different...

There is a growing fear in today's society. The thoughts from the darkest corners of our collective psyche's, staining ignorant bliss with shadows of oblivion. We all know what it is, but so few of us will accept the reality of the situation.

Zombies.

That's right ladies and gentlemen, Zombies. Our undead friends from the realms of crappy 70's and 80's horror movies, and the hordes of nasties from the more recent 28 Days Later and Resident Evil. Now the possibility of something like a massive outbreak of some strange disease, or a government experiment, or something of that sort may seem ridiculous to many people. So it may be ridiculous, but wasn't the thought of the Titanic sinking thought of the same way? Given that anything is possible, Zombies are a threat that should be addressed, even just at a personal level, so that when "Z-Day" comes, you can stay calm, stay collected, and most importantly, stay alive.

Now one of the first things to take into consideration is where you may be when Zombies strike. Make a map in your head of all of the places you frequent often. Your house, a friends house, work, the local supermarkets and any store like Home Depot, Menards, Wal-Mart etc. Having at least some idea of the lay out of these places will give you the upper hand when you have a horde of zombies around, or following you. Next it is best to make lists of supplies.

What does one need in their fight to stay alive in the Zombie ridden future? The basics are simple. You'll need food, and water, friends, and weapons. Now choose your friends carefully, you don't want someone becoming a weak link in the group, this sounds harsh, but your lives are literally going to be in each others hands. As for weapons, look around the house. Anything you have that is blunt and heavy would probably be best, at least for the moment. If you have a gun or rifle, that's great, but this isn't like the video games where you pick up ammo everywhere. You're going to want to find anything that could easily bash in a head or cause some sort of blunt force trauma.

Think on this, and ask yourself, are you ready?