In a way, what happened might have been for the best for Fitch. In a way, he surmised, it may have saved his life… Not that he was in danger of losing it before-- Fitch’s wellbeing hadn’t been threatened since roughly the eighth grade—but more that Fitch ran the risk of never having a life at all, or at least, not one that hadn’t been lived before by his father or grandfather, or even his grandfather’s father. What he had had back then had seemed fairly satisfactory at the time: a job that paid him just enough to not be living paycheck-to-paycheck with prospects to move ever so slightly up the corporate food chain; a girlfriend that, while fairly unattractive, at least counted herself lucky enough to never cheat on him and a family that never called, which at least spared him of their criticisms. Yes, Fitch had been all set to sail comfortably, numbly through life to settle unceremoniously (as did his father and grandfather before) into an alcohol-fueled retirement that would bring about his early death, publicly recognized as a “tragic loss of a brilliant spirit” by his few remaining friends and family, but privately deemed “timely” by all.

And to think all of this could have been his.

                This portrait of perfect adequacy now clashed harshly against what Fitch had become: sitting in the branches of a tree like some wild man, stringy beard and greasy locks clinging to his face, gun resting on his denim-clad thighs, he hardly seemed to fit the description. Average, auburn eyes that once might have pored over sales projection charts and company policy manuscripts now darted back and forth in the inky gloom, never resting, searching for something in the darkness. Hands that might have hammered clumsily at computer keys now gripped the stock of his rifle, tightening at the sound of each cracking twig, knuckles whitening at each crushed leaf. Instead of his favorite party shirt, Fitch now wore rough plaid, close-fitting with rolled sleeves. Instead of his necktie, a cross he found in an abandoned rectory a month ago. Indeed, to suggest that the humble office worker of yesteryear might one day degrade into this filthy, unwashed wretch might seem ludicrous, absurd. It didn’t matter; for Fitch, those words lost their meaning the first time he watched a human eat another human.

                For the longest time no one would admit what was happening: not the government, not the people at work, not the guy at the newsstand and certainly not Fitch. The idea that a model husband in Southern California could submit to such insanity as to murder and devour his family (including the dog, Jojo) was more than enough to stomach, let alone the concept that this insanity might be contagious. Instead, the slobbering Californian was brought down by local law enforcement and the whole thing was labeled an isolated incident; another crazy waiting for the right moment to crack. No one but the rattled servicemen themselves made much of a fuss over how many rounds it took to finally drop the guy.

Forty-seven.

                It wasn’t until similar, large-scale incidents started popping up all over the world that people started taking notice, and it took a whole town in Louisiana being quarantined for the necessary panic to set in. Even then Fitch continued to behave as he had always done: kept his head down, nose to the grindstone, mouth shut. It took a state of emergency and his dismissal from work to finally shake him out of this thirty-two year daze. Even then he moved with the crowds, barely aware of what was going on, of society unraveling. He missed going to one of the government’s "safe havens" because he forgot his briefcase at camp, something that he never once considered leaving behind; everyone who didn’t forget their briefcase was gassed by a military that had barely enough food to keep their own fed and not enough ammunition to worry about the growing crowds becoming a threat. After he saw the corpses burning and smelled the charred skin, Fitch didn’t go around people anymore.

Comments/criticism appreciated.

I’ve found myself in a weird place with games lately. Although I still enjoy playing them, I'm becoming increasingly jaded with both games and, more to the point, the culture surrounding them. For example, I can’t count the number of times I’ve questioned whether or not my XBOX Live subscription is worth the roughly $15 bucks I pay for it, since I play online for the social aspect of it, as opposed to simply wanting to play against non-AI opponents. I question whether or not it’s worth it because there seems to be a moratorium on headset chatter over XBOX Live, with those rare folks who do have a headset plugged in either existing as slur-spewing vomit sacks (which conjures the image of a Boomer wearing a microphone) or silent, lonely hisses and background noise (dishes clanging, players readjusting in their seats).

It may be just me, but I remember XBOX Live’s earlier years as being different. I fondly remember playing endless hours of Gears of War, knowing that each match would be a unique challenge, full of different characters (if not all of them amenable). I made a lot of friends over the service during those days, but now the few that I add during a session almost never stay on my friends list for more than a week. I guess the simplest explanation is that all of the rational human beings have retreated to their impregnable “friends-list-only” fortresses, abandoning the wilderness that is XBOX Live to the slobbering 12-year-old pseudo-gangster racial-slur-hurling mutants. So I often find myself asking the question: is it all worth it in the end, or should I just abandon this apparent wasteland to its own devices? As a certain video game show host has said, it seems that this kind of behavior has become expected of XBOX Live-goers, so that anyone behaving as they would in the real world is considered to be any one of the many homophobic insults thrown at them by those that “get” XBOX Live. Maybe that’s it; maybe I just don’t “get” XBOX Live. Maybe there’s some underlying joke that justifies all of the nastiness that goes on that I just haven’t picked up on. Either way, I’m left wondering whether or not I’d be better off unplugging the Ethernet cable from my XBOX.

Still, for all their faults, the online community is not entirely to blame for my current dissatisfaction with gaming. It seems that game companies are playing increasingly fast and loose with the established norms of game development and releasing just about anything that passes for a video game, regardless of the fact that it’s really just an old No Doubt CD with a space marine slapped onto it. I also can’t help but think that all of those beleaguered people ranting and raving about patches when they first entered the console gaming scene a few years ago must be feeling awfully vindicated today, what with the myriad of games still being patched months after release, not with new content, but with miniscule fixes attempting to mask what is, for all intents and purposes, an unfinished game. The result is infuriatingly macabre and completely impossible to swallow, like a drunken surgeon putting a band-aid over the shotgun wound of a patient who originally came in with a case of the sniffles.

Anyway, my attention-span-to-word-count ratio says that I ought to wrap things up soon, so I guess I’ll finish with a question: is the gaming industry beginning to treat us like the slack-jawed nimrods on XBOX Live, and if those Neanderthals truly are representative of our subculture as a whole, do we deserve it?

Ever wonder what Woody Harrelson is up to these days? Wonder no longer. Apparently, he's busy being Francis.

                Hello again Bombers, I’m back with a quick review today, this one on Max Brooks’ “The Zombie Survival Guide.” After reading the aforementioned author’s fantastic zombie opus “World War Z,” I felt I would be doing myself a disservice by not checking out his first foray into the undead world.

                Unfortunately, The Zombie Survival Guide is exactly as the title suggests: a rather stale handbook explaining--in excruciating detail--the precautions one should take when dealing with an undead uprising. In fact, Brooks is so painfully thorough throughout the book that you can’t help but think he may have already taken some of the precautionary steps he describes. Whether he’s telling you exactly which kind of nylon rope you should pack into your survival kit (including thickness and weight load capacity) or explaining why a chainsaw is not the preferred close combat weapon of the zombie survivalist, Brooks explores such minutiae as to make you wonder just how seriously he takes himself. The result is a dry take on its squishy subject matter that often feels like reading a textbook.

                All-in-all, The Zombie Survival guide makes for a good coffee table or throne room read. Something to flip through a couple pages of while you’re otherwise engaged and move through at your own pace. Three out of five stars.

Thanks for reading,
End Boss.

All of us should now be aware of the controversy surrounding Valve’s announcement of Left 4 Dead 2 (dubbed “Left 4 Dead Too Soon” by its critics) and more than enough of us have voiced our opinions on the matter (myself included), so I won’t bog this blog down with idle, if vehement speculation. Instead I present you with both extremes of the Left 4 Dead 2 opinion spectrum.

The first is a video put together by the folks boycotting the game on the Steam website which, while slightly overdramatic, manages to drive some strong points home. The second is an interview conducted by an Australian journalist with Valve’s own Chet Faliszek, wherein the latter defends Left 4 Dead 2 as a labor of love rather than the money grab so many consider it to be. Anyway, without further ado, here are the vids.

HOLD ON THERE, BUCKEYE:

Early Dead Space spoilers to follow. Read at your own risk.

All-in-all, I’m really enjoying Dead Space, and unless it does something along the way to shoot itself in the foot, I can’t see it scoring anywhere near the bottom half of the scale. Review forthcoming.

Thanks for reading,
End Boss.

So, I’ve seen a number of threads around wherein forum users are making the jump from one gaming platform to the next, and, being a fan of multiplatform-ism myself (it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when someone finally gets past console bias), I figured: why not make it easier?

Below I plan to compile a list of must-haves for each console. I plan on keeping each list short, so inevitably some great games will fall by the wayside; but then, the point of this isn’t to list every single game that you should ever buy for your [insert console name here]; it’s to list the games that you should buy first. So gamers, I invite you to post those games which you consider to be “must-haves” for any given console below (first-hand experience is a plus!). I’ll try and put as many as I can in the “must-haves” list whilst keeping it from becoming a massive wall of text. I suppose I’ll start us off:

Max Brooks’ best-selling novel “World War Z” describes to its reader the lead-up, duration and aftermath of the world’s first international zombie uprising. Although the subject matter may sound trite to some, the book is truly a triumph, not only within its genre but of fictional literature as a whole.

I’ll admit, when I first began reading it, I expected a straightforward thriller; and initially, this seems to be what Brooks is offering as the book opens in a small, run-down village where one of the first cases of infection is encountered. However, it quickly becomes apparent that the story Brooks aims to tell is not simply of the survival of a handful of desperate suburbanites trapped within the zombie uprising, but of the survival of humanity itself.

Told through multiple perspectives, Brooks goes on to detail how the infections began to pop up across the globe and how the various nations of the world dealt with their own crises. I’ll refrain from spoiling anything here, but suffice it to say that the reactions, while varied, all end up being disproportionate to the threat the undead pose. And why wouldn’t they be? How would you react if accounts of cannibalistic corpses suddenly started popping up in remote corners of the world?

As the world spirals into chaos, Brooks’ really comes into his own, giving not only unsettlingly real descriptions of undead violence, but also going into great depth as to  the human reactions as society is torn apart and people are forced to band together or be obliterated. That isn’t to say that everyone suddenly puts aside their differences and works toward the defeat of their common enemy; no, Brooks’ story isn’t as one-dimensional as all that. Through the eyes of his varied protagonists we see all of humanity’s hideousness as well as its beauty, as is most horrifyingly illustrated when several families bring their young to a church and, upon realizing that the fast-enclosing horde will allow them no salvation, begin suffocating them. The horror and beauty of mankind during the zombie apocalypse takes place over the course of several years, and as such many scenes similar to this can be found throughout.

As I would hate to reveal even one more detail of Brooks’ masterpiece of zombie fiction, I will end this review here, giving World War Z an unprecedented five out of five stars. Whether you’re a fan of the genre or simply looking for pitch-perfect storytelling, I can almost guarantee Brooks’ heartbreaking, elating, horrifying and most of all believable descriptions of not only the horrors that beset humanity but of humanity itself will leave you clamoring for more.

I cannot emphasize this enough, so I will say it once more: do yourself a favor. Go pick up World War Z. Thanks for reading.

-End Boss.

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought lately, and I think I might have created a world entirely of my own that I’m relatively satisfied with. The only problem that I’m having is introducing any real conflict into this world. I can give my players a sense of purpose, a place for the action to take place and characters that said action could potentially involve… However, it’s giving these people a reason to be at each other’s throats that’s the problem.

Here’s the pitch. I’ve created a metropolis based on a guild system (I’m sure it’s been done before, but I can’t think of where). In fact, this city’s entire economy is (for the most part) based upon guilds: minor guilds, major guilds, blacksmithing guilds, farmers’ guilds and guilds for almost every other profession you can imagine exist within Hyrengraad’s walls. Then of course there are the high guilds, which are divided into the Martial, Arcane, Holy and Natural strains. There’s a great deal more to it than that, but I won’t bore you with the intricate details.

At any rate, Hyrengraad’s guilds are widely revered throughout the land and thousands of hopefuls make their way there annually, desperate to be apprenticed in some guild or other. This is how the PCs would be introduced, as simple travelers amongst the throngs trying to make their own way in the city. Almost any back-story could be worked into this theme and although it would be easier to have the characters not know each other, should they want to I could probably work that in too.

Notice that I’ve said that the guilds are revered, but never did I say “deservedly so.” Although the guilds were indeed once the high places of learning they are considered to be today, the truth is that they have fallen to squabbling amongst each other, each blaming the other for some minor hardship. Once the characters have been accepted into their guilds of choice via some sort of appropriate trial, their first missions would involve resolving petty disputes between the guilds (even the higher ones). I think this would be a great way to ease them into the action without immediately putting them in over their heads.

There would of course eventually have to be some uniting factor that would sensibly bring all of the characters together; but what could threaten a self-sufficient city that annually produces highly trained guards to defend its ramparts? An outside threat is almost completely out of the question, as it would have to be so powerful as to seem completely overwhelming to the new players. Therefore I have determined that the PCs will catch wind of a disease that is ravaging the lesser guilds, one that even the most apt druids and powerful clerics cannot seem to banish from those it infects. It’s spreading rapidly, and its effects are devastating, turning those it is allowed to fester in into ghoulish creatures that want nothing more than to pass the disease on, usually through some sort of heinous cannibalism.

That’s right. I’ve solved the equation for a unifying threat with a universally feared and respected enemy: zombies.

Of course, the infection can’t have started all on its own. As the players’ investigation progresses, I’ll have to reveal some underlying cause for the plague. Any ideas, fellow DMs?

Movie Review: “The Zombie Diaries.”

The back of The Zombie Diaries’ case proclaims that it is “the most realistic zombie movie ever made” and that it’s “better than Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later.” As a huge fan of 28 Days, I looked forward to seeing the Diaries top it. Unfortunately, it is with heavy heart that I must emphatically disagree. Though the film opens nicely with a military squadron clearing a couple of buildings in search of the living dead, things deteriorate from there. The acting, once closely examined, is obviously B-movie caliber and takes away from the experience, especially when an obviously British actor attempts to toss on an American accent and sounds… Well… Like a Brit trying to sound American.

Another disappointment came upon the realization that the Diaries does not follow in the “superhuman threat” vein that 28 Days established. Instead we are given the “classic zombie” treatment: slow, shambling, pasty dead folks that rarely catch their victims, even when one such victim (in the second “diary” of the film) stands perfectly still a mere three or four feet from the zombie, apparently stupefied by its stunning good looks.

 As the film descends further into ridiculousness, survivors walk right up to zombies and plant bullets in their domes. In a scene that comes dangerously close to crossing the line, a survivor compares his experiences in the zombie apocalypse to the Twin Towers, saying that he knew what they must have felt like. Might these actually be the thoughts of a survivor during the apocalypse? It’s possible, even probable. Was it necessary to include them in the film to get the point across? No. We get it. There are dead people walking around. Shit has hit the fan.

I suppose one could say that much of the scare factor of the Diaries was lost on me, probably because I’ve been spoiled on 28 Days and films like it. Even scenes which were clearly meant to inspire dread left me cold, such as an instance of survivors freaking out in a field, frantically picking off the living dead as they mosey (or in some cases stand still) on towards them.

The film really started to come undone in the fourth diary, where the first survivor is actually bitten. His saviors literally shove the assailing zombie to the ground and beat it to death with the butt of a rifle; these were not the supernatural threats that I knew and loved; these were nothing more than cattle, easily culled.

 The “climax” of the Diaries involves the discovery of two sick individuals who have taken the apocalypse as an opportunity to commit heinous crimes with impunity. These include rape, torture and murder; I suppose the pair were meant to embody all of the worst qualities found in a human being. I understand the desire to portray both the good and evil that can come from a crisis situation; however, their behavior is unrealistic if for no other reason than anyone left alive would likely be desperate for help or even the company of other human beings, and thus probably wouldn’t turn on fellow survivors, barring a psychological break. I give “The Zombie Diaries” a disappointed 2 out of 5 stars. Thanks for reading.

-End Boss.

P.S. I tried to include some stills of the movie to give you a sense for what you might be getting into, but Giant Bomb's image insertion process is absolutely heinous, so this will remain a dry, text-only review.