3 Zombie Games and their Annoying-Kid-In-Movie Counterparts

With the premiere of Walking Dead on AMC, mainstream audiences are learning what film buffs and gamers have known all along; zombie outbreaks are not just a trashy, lowbrow plot device, but are an entirely legitimate foundation for extremely compelling narratives of very diverse types. The George Romero films use them for social commentary, Shawn of the Dead for comedy, 28 Days Later for suspense and now Walking Dead for post-apocalyptic survivor drama. It's a watershed moment for the genre and will hopefully inspire even more talented people to follow the example set by Frank Darabont and Danny Boyle to try their hand at the zombie premise.

Because zombies have had wider acceptance in gaming for longer, however, there have been many more opportunities to get it completely wrong. I am one of those gamers who doesn't get liquid fanboy all over my sweatpants just because something has zombies in it, I don't care how gory it is. If it's not as good or as fun as Resident Evil 4 or Undead Nightmare, I'd really just rather play those again.

Just the other day I was organizing my game collection when I stumbled on Mark of Kri, a game for the PS2 that is extremely original and fun until the very last level when it becomes about hordes of zombies. Then, seemingly as a revelation by the Nerd Gods, Enemy Mine came on TV. While it is kind of silly, it actually is a surprisingly watchable movie until the last 30 minutes, when it becomes about rescuing a stupid kid from a refinery or something. Both Mark of Kri and Enemy Mine were fine and enjoyable entertainment which choked at the last minute.

Who'da thunk, kids and zombies have a lot in common! Most of my gamer friends don't watch as many movies as I do and my film-buff friends aren't gamers. So to make everybody happy, here's my list of 3 Zombie Games and their Annoying-Kid-In-Movie Counterparts.


1) Mark of Kri - Enemy Mine

Third Act Fuckups

Mark of Kri is about stealth and occasional combat when you screw up. The controls are solid, the stealth mechanics went unmatched until the Assassin's Creed series, and the Polynesian-inspired world of fortresses and mercenaries is completely unique in all of gaming. Naturally, a game that emphasizes stealth and strategy is going to be somewhat weak in its combat mechanics, which is actually one of the game's strengths for the most part - the player is forced to think these actions through to weigh the risks of stealth versus open combat. That intrigue collapses very quickly in the last level. Suddenly, instead of creeping around corners and crossbow-sniping guards, you begin fighting hordes of zombies, which is nothing but combat. It's not even engaging swordplay like elsewhere in the game, it's tedious axe-swinging and taking cheap, unblockable hits while hoping you don't die stupidly before the next save point. Game ruiner, I cannot recommend the game based on this alone.

Enemy Mine is about aliens, but really it's about racism. Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. play a human and an alien during a war between the two races who get stuck on a planet and have to overcome prejudice to survive. Nothing revolutionary, but fair enough. But with about 30 minutes left to go, we find out that Gossett reproduces asexually, so he has a kid and eventually dies. The kid is then promptly abducted by an inexplicably hateful Vincent Schiavelli and the whole end of the movie turns from innocent-if-clichéd parable to a bland chase through what seems to be a barrel factory for a kid nobody really gives a shit about. Dead in the water.


2) Crackdown 2 - Aliens

If It Ain't Broke, Why Not Break It?

Both Crackdown 2 and Aliens are sequels that were made by people who had nothing to do with the originals, yet who were still talented in their own rights. And while parts of both sequels are competent, at times even great, each felt the need to include extraneous elements that not only ruined their spots in the story, but over time begin to infect the fun parts as well.

Crackdown was guaranteed to sell because it included the much-hyped Halo 3 beta, but nobody expected the game to be really good. Nobody saw it coming, which is what made playing it more exciting since it's getting increasingly difficult to play a good game that hasn't already been hyped for years. On the surface it appeared to be a plotless, gleefully violent sandbox shooter, but its attention to detail and shockingly sophisticated story kept gamers occupied for months. Naturally, everybody was excited for a sequel that would up the carnage, up the abilities and assume its rightful place as king of sandboxes. What nobody saw coming was a standard plot, a broken targeting system and - you guessed it - zombies. Not only did Crackdown 2 make the first one seem worse by not fixing elements that nobody noticed were flawed until they had to play them again, it added a whole new side of things that made gamers wonder if the new developers had even enjoyed playing the original. And zombies? Taking on a city full of gangsters using an arsenal of automatic weapons and superpowers is fun. Fighting zombies using the same mechanic is NOT FUN. Despite its other flaws, Crackdown 2 would actually be an okay game if the zombie designers had just gone on vacation during development.

Alien is another phenomenon that nobody saw coming. It was little more to the studio that financed it than a Star Wars cash-in with a half-written script, but what nobody expected was one of the greatest monster movies of all time. Claustrophobia, sexual overtones and unparalleled creature design by HR Giger produced a sci fi horror piece that still endures over 30 years after its debut. Naturally, a sequel was not far behind (Aliens, with an -s), and on board was the usually reliable sci fi guy James Cameron. Replacing the horror with explosions and bullets, it is more of an action movie but a fine one...until Newt shows up. The first time I saw Aliens I was about Newt's age, 10 or so, but I hated her from the moment she opened her mouth. Always getting into trouble that inexplicably draws attention away from the, y'know, aliens, all she does is whine and get everybody into more trouble. Apparently deleted scenes elaborate on a story about Ripley having a motherhood complex that compels her to unreasonable lengths to protect Newt, but if that was cut it makes one wonder why the whole kid wasn't just cut as well. The movie had a solid plot with solid acting, it had reason to exist and is otherwise very competently made, but to this day I can't watch it all the way through because of that damn kid.


3) Resident Evil 5 - Attack of the Clones/Revenge of the Sith

You're Not Supposed to Want the Good Guys to Die

The Resident Evil series is to survival horror what the Star Wars saga is to space opera - neither were the first of their kind, but both were groundbreaking and forever changed the tropes of their respective genres. They also began to get stale the more the franchises were milked, and attempts at reinvigoration came off as middling and patronizing.

RE5 attempts to capitalize on the breakthroughs of RE4, again putting the camera over the shoulder with dynamic cutscenes and similar targeting mechanics. The controls are designed to feel familiar if you played RE4, and for awhile they seem intuitive until you slowly realize that nothing you try to do seems to work. This is tolerable at first, with enough interesting baddies and tense context-sensitive moments to keep things moving, but the worst of the game's sins is in the partner AI character Sheva. Bad AI in games is often forgivable though annoying, but it's not supposed to be so bad and unhelpful that you really want your partner to die. I swear, when the Majini took her out the first time, I had to take a moment to decide whether I wanted to save her or not.

The highlight of a movie shouldn't be the mass slaughtering of innocent children, but it's much easier to stomach when it's not children we're dealing with, it's foils. You may remember a scene in Attack of the Clones where Obi Wan can't seem to understand why a planet isn't in the database, even though it should be there and gravitational readings show evidence of something in its place. Instead of figuring out what the audience already knows immediately, Obi Wan visits Yoda as he trains a group of classically precocious, Lucasian young Jedi prospects. Obi Wan explains the problem, then Yoda repeats it as a question then they need a kid to tell them what the entire audience WAS ALREADY SCREAMING AT THEM - that somebody with security clearance had erased the planet. The only reason this scene is in the movie is so that Yoda could then say the most nauseating line of the franchise, "Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is." The whole movie could be 5 minutes shorter and a whole lot less pedantic if that scene were completely cut out.

Then Dark Side Anakin kills them all in Revenge of the Sith. Normally I'd feel bad, but these children had "Kill Me" written on their foreheads the moment Lucas decided to make them husks, filling them with platitudes instead of souls. I was not meant to enjoy this scene, but it did guarantee that they'd never open their stupid yet preternaturally prescient pieholes.

Fable III Review

Fable III

Playing a Peter Molyneux game is a little like listening to your friend's band's demo; good or bad, it's not easy to enjoy objectively when they won't stop overselling it. This often makes these games difficult to review because it is unclear how much of the review should have to do with the hype.

Molyneux himself aside, there are many promises made by Fable II that go unrealized in Fable III. Fable II was an exceptional game that was sure to keep players occupied for well over a month in its epic quest and enormous number of sidequests. The main story was huge and incredibly satisfying to finish with many twists and turns along the way, but some of the most interesting missions were only available after the story ended. The moral choices made for compelling storytelling and had dire consequences. All in all, a full RPG experience.

As a successor to Fable II, Fable III - while still rather good - is disappointing. The biggest disappointment of all is the length. Whereas its predecessor took this reviewer over a month to finish to 100%, Fable III took about a week and a half, including sidequests. Even more disappointing is the amount of loose ends that result from some of these sidequests, particularly the escort missions.

Just Can't Wait To Be King...but you could draw it out a bit longer...

Fable III's story puts the player in the role of one of the two children of the Hero King/Queen of the previous game. King Logan is your older brother who rules Albion with an iron fist, cracking down on the slightest disobedience and thinks nothing of killing innocents who are not even in his way. This prompts a rebellion among many of his generals and officers with the player assuming the lead. You must gain allies by proving your worth and promising to make changes once you assume the throne. Once you do, it's up to you whether to honor them.

The inherent danger in making a game with two separate parts is that neither is fully realized. Spore was a fantastic game, but many felt overwhelmed by the sudden space component, while Brutal Legend appeared to be an amusing hack-and-slash but suddenly threw RTS at the player with no warning. The two sections of Fable III - the lead-up to the revolution and the rebuilding - are each far too short on their own, and when added together barely amount to 15 hours. When my character became King, I thought "Wow, that was shorter than I expected, but now the real game is gonna begin! That's what Peter Molyneux said!"

Two hours later, I beat the game.

The Pros and Cons of Streamlining

Fable III does apply some very clever improvements to the series. The leveling-up of individual weapons works wonderfully and is extremely involving, holding hands makes unavoidably tedious escort missions slightly less so, and the creative take on the Start menu (pressing Start whisks you away to "The Sanctuary") is probably the most clever innovation in an RPG since Mass Effect's dialogue system. It is also much easier to be a landlord with the new overhead map that allows the player to buy, sell and manage all owned property from the Sanctuary map, eliminating needless running back and forth for hours.

However, Lionhead makes a misstep in streamlining the leveling-up system. As the game progresses, new sections of what is called the Road to Rule open up and allow the player to open chests containing new abilities, new expressions and new features such as Entrepreneur Mode. Initially this is more fun than Fable II's system of learning everything from books, but increasing weapon and magical abilities by opening chests as the story progresses ends up feeling rather cheap and easy, requiring almost no reward for diversified gameplay as Fable II does. Whereas the aforementioned changes give the player more control over certain aspects of the game, this system takes control away from what makes RPGs so engaging.

Final Thoughts

Fable III is a good sequel to an excellent game. It seems like more attention was paid to the improvements in gameplay than to the actual story, which makes the whole thing feel like a wash. The reason people endured the flaws of Fable II was that the core of the game was the story and epic nature of the thing, and while Fable III fixes some of the technical flaws, it forgets to preserve the core of what made it interesting in the first place.

B- (though DLC may be submitted for extra credit)