More Left 4 Dead Shennanigan-ary…

I had a couple screens in the ol archive from the game that we all love to love so I thought I’d share

it with the gaming public:

Is it that time of the month Zoey?	Paris or Nicole?
Another day at the office	What the??
he’s still alive!!	ok nvm
It’s Jingle Bells the Christmas Tank	hehe bum bum…

And last but not least, this mashup from Your The Man Now Dog where Zoey and Lewis try to repopulate the Earth, one moloto baby at a time:

Left 4 Dead Demo Screens

Some time last year, I made a statement that Zombie culture was making a comeback. Amidst the popularity of the Walking Dead comic series and movies like Quarantine and Diary of the Dead, Left 4 Dead was just one of the big clues.

I just finished playing the Left 4 Dead pre-order demo, solo, and then online with a full team of survivors. If you haven’t been following, Left 4 Dead is a first person shooter, and will be featuring four Movie Campaigns, a set of stories/scenarios from which you must escape, playing as part of a team of zombie infection survivors. Your object, I believe, will never change: dont die and be get rescued. But the journey to safety will be an arduous and life-threatening (did I mention morbidly scenic and memorable?) one.

Maybe these screenshots might paint a better picture…

This one’s already dead	Pop goes the weasel!
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a human?	This one had a run in with R. Kelly
Haters wanna hate, Lovers wanna love	That red ain’t part of the tattoo
New Orange Box Juice, made with 100% pure Vitamin V	I’m sure all the crackheads and car thieves learned that the hard way

New Resident Evil 5 Screen Lovin

Just when you thought it was safe to go to Africa, little do you know, the place is overrun with friggin zombies and crazy shit like that. First lesson is to not crap your pants when you see them, that’ll just make them angrier and crazier, so dont crap your pants. If you have to soil yourself, piss your pants, theres slightly more dignity in that. Second, dont forget lotion. Africa is friggin hot, you dry out like a motherfucker in that place. Thirdly, dont fuckin go to Africa, and if you’re already in Africa, you deserve to get eaten by undead zombie people cause you should know better.

Our Secondary Fire Ninja Journalist skillz acquired for us some swank new screens of the upcoming survival horror sequel. There are quite a few of them so dont look too long or you’ll go blind from too much awesome.

Anyway, enjoy these screens of Resident Evil 5:

FaceBreaker Review

 

An hour “boxing” session with FaceBreaker left a familiarly bitter aftertaste in my mouth. I was instantly reminded of Puzzle Quest. FaceBreaker is very much like Puzzle Quest. They both feature very pretty colours, they’re both relatively simple games, making them very easy to get into; a player will find himself wanting one more match after a failed round, but will only find himself frustrated, because both games require little to no skill at all.  And while we gamers do enjoy a good challenge, a game should require some level of skill; otherwise it’s just gambling.

 

The game’s control system is fairly simple. Punches, Throws, and Blocks are mapped to buttons, holding a punch button before releasing a punch changes it from a quick jab to a heavy swing, where holding the block puts the player in a ready state to dodge. The aim of the game is to know when to dodge or when to hit hard or quick. It’s a basic rock-paper-scissors system of play. But something is very frustrating about the pacing and control mechanic of FaceBreaker.

 

While most fighter novices have a tendency to button mash on their first few attempts at more complex fighters like Street Fighter, Tekken, or Soul Calibur, they hardly stand a chance against veteran fighters. I believe it’s here that FaceBreaker just might find its niche in the fighter market. Most matches dissolve into a guessing game of high, low, slow, fast, or throw; which is really in all fighting games, but this tends to be a foundation with more built upon it, rather than the entirety of the game itself.

 

If you listen to the podcast, you’ll know expectations for me were high. I‘m a huge fan of the Fight Night series, and was certainly looking forward to a caricaturized iteration of the EA Sports’ acclaimed boxing title. I was even half expecting an homage to Super Punch Out, from which FaceBreaker’s inspiration is obviously drawn. But it’s clear now that the inspiration stops at the game’s visuals, and even then, the visuals are terribly bland.

 

Sure, the graphics are vibrant and colourful, and so very cartoony, but even in that regard, there’s a blandness about them. I can only look at the same round girl so many times. Great, her boobs are falling out of her robe. Great, we check out her ass as she walks by the camera. Great, it’s cute that she’s incredibly stupid because she manages to hold her sign upside every other round. But I want to see a DIFFERENT round girl! I don’t want to create a unique character, only to have to choose from body types whose only options are muscle, more muscle, and most muscle; and, even worse, have my character adopt the voice of the body type’s character in the game. Don’t get me wrong, the game is definitely a complete game. But there are so many cut corners here that paying full price for this FaceBreaker just wouldn’t feel right.