Magi Quest: How I got *this* close to cosplaying Harry Potter.

I recently took a trip with my family to Great Wolf Lodge in Concord, North Carolina.  I found the whole experience far superior to any trip I’ve ever taken to any Disney park, particularly because I wasn’t constantly assaulted with Disney cheer the whole time I was on vacation, and I would gladly return.

One of the many attraction this resort offers is a game called Magi Quest, something my little brother had played during a previous visit that he insisted I give a go.  For a ridiculously large amount of money, one can buy a plastic wand (in all fairness, the wands come in various styles and varying prices: I chose to get the $20 deluxe Dragon Warrior wand, but I could have gone with a $12 Classic Wand) and activate a 4-day pass to the Magi Quest game.  With your price of admission, you get a quest book.  Hidden (or rather, scattered, as everything is quite in plain sight) are several items that interact with your wand: statues, pictures, video screens, and the like.  To start play, you visit a station called the Trees of Wisdom, where you wave your wand at a video screen and choose a quest to go on.  Your quest book gives you hints as to where certain items are found; you wave your wand at them and you get credit for finding them.  Find all of the quest items, and you get a rune: the runes you use on more complex quests called adventures.  Of course, for each quest, you get gold and XP.

Sound familiar?  It’s every RPG you’ve ever played, video or tabletop.  Sure, it’s dressed up in a family-friendly coating and is nowhere near as complex as World of Warcraft.  There is no PvP element (at least that I know of), but there is the addictive “just one more” element of questing, some light puzzle-solving, and the sense of inhabiting another character’s skin; one can even buy costumes and cosmetic add-ons to their wand, should children want the full experience (or should their parents not mind looking too ridiculous).  Structurally, it’s the same as any MMO: there is a quest giver (the Trees of Wisdom), items you have to collect (you wave your wand at them and they are added to your inventory, which you can access at special stations), and even bosses (more on that later).

There was a decent amount of variety to the quests.  There was a timed event, where players had 30 seconds to run from one point to another.  There was one quest where players had to find an item, return to a waypoint to “drop off” the item, and then find the next one on the list, stopping at the waypoint each time.  There were a few quests that involved a fair amount of gold farming and even a few Easter eggs throughout the resort; items that didn’t affect the game but reacted to your wand anyway.  My brother and I (along with a very helpful little guy) took on a dragon, using freezing spells to stun him and an ice arrow to deal damage to him.  We took him down and exchanged high-fives.

It wasn’t the most elegantly designed game, and there were more than a few technological flubs in its execution (Heaven help you should and another player wave your wand at the same item at the same time; you’ll have no idea who picked it up).  But it was fun running around the hotel, solving riddles in your quest book, and feeling a sense of accomplishment.  It was a good way to spend down-time, and when you saw a confused looking family flipping through a quest book it easily became second nature to say “What are you looking for?  Can I help you?”  In short, it had all the great things about gaming and it serves as a testament to just how ubiquitous our favorite hobby is now.  I suggest gamers of all ages give Magi Quest a try should they find themselves vacationing somewhere that offers it as an attraction.

“What’s that? Game-Breaking Glitch? Yeah, you’re just gonna have to suck that up.”

Sony fanboys: they’re a dedicated lot.  They love to belittle Valve for not being able to program for the Playstation 3 (they can, they just choose not to); they love to talk about how they have had features like Twitter and Facebook since day one (through the use of a web browser); and they love to talk about how their online service is free (crappy download speeds and unstable servers included with the price of admission).  They ignore the invasive Terms of Service that strip you of your copyrights on user-created content and pretend that Sony loves their customers like a mother loves her child, and they want only sunshine and brightness and cookies for them all.  Meanwhile, they have built this mythology about the terrible, horrible tyrannies of Microsoft, and how you have to pay $50 a year–A YEAR!–to be able to play with your friends online and have early access to demos, downloadable content, and digitally-distributed games if you own an Xbox 360.

Well, news flash Sony lovers: sometimes, Sony does things worse than Microsoft.

There’s a game-breaking glitch in Modern Warfare 2 that allows players to explode a Javelin missile after they die.  The resultant blast radius is such that you could easily take out 5-6 players on the opposite team by exploiting said glitch.  Infinity Ward, of course, is hard at work on patching this.  Why?  It upsets the balance of the game.  It allows one player to dominate a game by simply running around and absorbing bullets (even those Marathon-Lightweight-Commando guys have to flip their knife out to get a kill, and they don’t explode when you kill them), letting them rack up killstreaks quicker and have their team (or themselves) sprint to the win.  It forces other gamers to have to play in such a way that they are unreasonably handicapped and quickly creates a game environment of which nobody wants to be a part.

In the meantime, Microsoft is banning players who exploit the glitch.  It’s not a perma-ban, but it’s a ban.  It’s something.  It’s a punishment for being a bully who is exploiting something the developers didn’t intend to happen.

Sony is, of course, doing jack about it.

True, it is the fault of the developer for the glitch, and not the company managing the online community.  But that’s just it: Sony is managing the online community.  It’s their job to make sure that the players on PSN are playing fair and not cheating.  This is cheating.  Of course, PS3 fanboys will be quick to praise Sony for holding Infinity Ward responsible, but come on: they’ve just told everybody on PSN that cheating is okay, so long as you’re exploiting a loophole in the game to do it.  Is that really fair to those who are not exploiting said loophole?  Is it fair that, until Infinity Ward fixes this, players will rack up wins, kills, and XP at the expense of everyone else?  Is it fair that some gamers won’t even want to play the game they paid for on the console they paid for because they don’t want to get ganked by glitcher?  Infinity Ward is doing their part to set this right, but they don’t have the power to hold the glitchers accountable: that power lies with Sony and Microsoft, and only one of them is doing their job.

But then again, online play on PS3 is free, so who is to complain, right?  By the way, those of you that bought the collector’s edition of Dragon Age:Origins on PS3: how is that MP3 soundtrack working out for you?

Soldiers, Assassins, and (possibly) Dragons

My gaming habits, as of late:

Modern Warfare 2 really is a great game, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everybody.  If you don’t have a competitive streak, then you will not fully enjoy this game.  Yes, the single-player campaign is like playing a Michael Bay movie and the Special Ops missions provide some great, short-burst entertainment, but let’s all be honest: if you bought this game, you bought it for multiplayer.  If you do not approach it with an athletic mindset, you will die many times and you will get frustrated.  I don’t think this is all the fault of the gamer: Infinity Ward should really pump some of that $550 million they scored during the game’s first five days into improving their matchmaking and tighten up the disparity between player’s levels.  If you are at level 20 and you get thrown into a match with all level 40+, chances are you are not going to win even if you are an awesome gamer–and if you’re playing team games, you won’t feel as part of the team because you’ll spend most of your time dying (or staying out of the way so that you don’t cause your team to lose).  I do have to admit that, given the rate at which you unlock weapons, attachments, and perks, there is much better balancing in this game than its predecessor but there is still much room for improvement (and IW can start with taking killstreaks out of all but objective games; in deathmatch, they absolutely ruin the chance of a player or team lagging behind to catch up).

This past week, I needed a break from Modern Warfare 2–partly because, despite my natural competitive nature, I wanted something that didn’t feel like work.  I picked up Assassin’s Creed II after reading many positive reviews of it, all of them saying it was a vast improvement over the original.  I did not like the first Assassin’s Creed.  While it had an engaging narrative, it did not have engaging delivery after the first couple of hours.  Nothing defined “wash, rinse, repeat” like the adventures of Altair.  The sequel, however, is exactly the game I wanted to play the first time: a genuinely fun adventure with a good story and likable characters.  The real hook of this game is how well it conveys the sense of its setting:  the Renaissance Italy of Assassin’s Creed II is a beautiful place full of romance, mystery, and danger.  Ubisoft missed a golden opportunity to convey the gritty, brutal realities of the Dark Ages in the original game, but this one makes its time and place come alive.  Not being a fan of open world games, this is one of the few environments I want to explore.  A word to the wise, however: if you never finished Assassin’s Creed, read up on the plot of the original before diving into this one.

There is one more game that I’m on the fence about, and that’s Dragon Age: Origins.  I have heard nothing but good things about it, but from my knowledge of the game (which does not include first-hand experience), it seems that I would just be playing all of the other BioWare games all over again.  After all, once again you’re a part of an elite unit who has to save the world from a threat older than time itself; you choose from a variety of origins and your actions affect how others treat you (meaning shop keepers will charge you more if you’re an ass); and–this is my favorite–you have to micro-manage your allies’ weapons and armor.  It’s that last one that sets me off the most.  Seriously, my party mates are grown-ups: can’t they manage their own armor and weapons?  Doesn’t the wizard know when we’ve picked up a bigger, better wand or staff?  When I play a single-player RPG, I want to play as ONE character at a time, not several.  With all that being said, I’m a sucker for fantasy RPGs and will probably pick this one up, especially if my D&D group never gets things rolling again, if only to not look like the lamest geek on the block anymore because I didn’t play the biggest RPG of the year.  And being the lamest geek on the block is a pretty bad thing to be.

No Russian

WARNING: MODERN WARFARE 2 SINGLE-PLAYER CAMPAIGN SPOILERS AHEAD.

The screen is black.  All you hear is the unzipping of duffel bags, the clicks of weapons being loaded and cocked, and the ding of an elevator.  When the scene comes into focus, you find yourself in that elevator, surrounded by men dressed in suits, wearing body armor and carrying heavy machine guns.  One of them, a young man with black hair and pale skin, looks at you and says “Remember, no Russian.”  You only now realize that you are holding a gun.

The elevator dings again and the doors open.  The men calmly file out; you follow them.  The scene is easy to recognize: an airport.  Tired-looking travelers stand in line, waiting to get through security.  The familiar sounds of an airport are everywhere: chatter, the echo of an announcement over the PA system, the distant exhale of a jet engine.

One of the travelers notices you and the men you are with.  They get the attention of the person next to them, and soon everyone is looking at you.  They look confused and scared, but they don’t run; before they even have the chance, you are holding your trigger down, tearing them to shreds with machine gun fire.

It all gets worse from there.

Every serious gamer in the country has probably finished the single-player campaign in Modern Warfare 2 as of now, so it’s a good time to address the level “No Russian,” wherein the player-character–a United States soldier infiltrating a Russian terrorist organization–participates in a terrorist attack.  The character does so not out of any hatred, political agenda, or blind vengeance; they are working to gain the trust of their enemy so that they may learn of their actions and ultimately save more lives.  So no: the game does not have you “playing as a terrorist,” as some critics have decried: you’re playing as a loyal American pretending to be a terrorist for intelligence-gathering purposes.  There is a very specific narrative reason why this level exists.  Not for shock value, but to advance the plot of the game’s story–and to advance it in a meaningful way.

Sure, Infinity Ward could have told this narrative segment by way of a cutscene, telling the player about the atrocities they committed in the name of the greater good instead of having them commit them personally, but what kind of impact would have that had?  None, whatsoever.  Instead, you step behind the gun and see the carnage first-hand.  You hear the screams, you see the wounded desperately crawl for safety, you see the confused straggler fall to their knees and throw their hands into the air and beg for mercy–and then watch as one of your comrades deny them that mercy.  Or, knowing that you must do what must be done, pull the trigger yourself.

This level brings us closer to the actual carnage of a terrorist attack than anything else ever has, and it does so from the most terrifying point-of-view possible: that of the attacker.  It’s a brutally honest experience, and dares the gamer to confront a harsh reality often overlooked in fiction.

We love to talk about heroism, and we should love to talk about heroism.  But we often ignore the evils that inspire that heroism.  We’ll gladly talk about the tragedies of September 11th, 2001 but we like to keep the screams and the blood at a comfortable distance.   There is no shortage of talk about our noble causes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the closest we come to the carnage in the streets is an occasional update on our death toll or a picture of a bombed-out neighborhood from time-to-time.  Why this is, I don’t know.  Fear, more than likely.  We know there are monsters out there and we want to kill the monsters, but we don’t want to know all the dirty things those monsters do.

In Modern Warfare 2, you–for a brief time, and indirectly, but nevertheless–become the monster.  And afterward, you realize just how bad the bad guys are.

Of course, Infinity Ward gives you the option to skip this level–without penalty–altogether, before the game even begins no less.  And if you start playing it and find it too intense, skipping the mission on the fly is just a few button presses away: pause the game and choose “Skip Mission.”  That’s not to say the rest of the game isn’t populated with brutal combat that does not apologize, but at least it’s against people who shoot back.

It must be said, also, that for all the terror that this game depicts, there are true moments of hope and glory in there as well.  Late in the game, you (as a different player-character) and your squad of Army Rangers have to fight across Washington, DC after an atmospheric nuclear detonation renders all electronic systems dead.  Stripped of your most sophisticated equipment, you must battle through a destroyed office building against invading Russian forces, engaging in firefights in the dark.  You eventually push through to the White House lawn, where you soon learn that the Air Force is going to start bombing the city unless they see green flares on the roofs of buildings, signifying that Washington is still in friendly hands.  In a desperate race against time, you fight to take back the White House; you finally make it to the roof and pop your green flares as planes that were meant to bomb the city straight to Hell fly harmlessly overhead.  As you look around, you see green smoke on the roofs of several buildings, and you realize that America still holds the Capitol, that it has not fallen, even in the face of insurmountable odds.

I don’t know about you, but for me it was a pretty stirringly patriotic moment.

Halo is the New Star Wars

Halo Waypoint was released in the past week.  You’ll find it in the Game Marketplace on Xbox Live, but it’s not so much a game as it is a service.  From one place, you can track your progress on Halo series achievements, see how many of your friends are playing a Halo game, and view all kinds of interviews, including full episodes from the upcoming Halo Legends DVD.

People love to pick on the Halo franchise, and admittedly, for good reason.  The games come across as mindless bullet slingers, and with Halo merchandise available in all forms from action figures to WETA statues to Mega Blocks to men’s underwear, it can be easy to get sick of the franchise.  Unfortunately for those who don’t delve into the games and the fiction surrounding them, there is a wealth of complexity in the Halo universe.  The games have surprising complexity in their mechanics, the multiplayer is active and intense (it’s easy to see why so many gamers picked up Halo 3 just for multiplayer), and–in the novels and comic books–one finds deep examinations of the nature of heroism and a gut-checking view of warfare from a grunt’s point-of-view.  It’s deep stuff, really; you just have to give it a chance.

After all, Halo is not the first franchise to be everywhere at all times.  You might recall a huge entertainment franchise that was kind of a big deal for thirty years, until its creator all but destroyed it for some untold reason: Star Wars.  At the height of its popularity (meaning: before it became a kids franchise–not that that’s a bad thing, just saying), Star Wars was everywhere.  Toys, video games, approximately 1 bazillion books and comics, and oh yeah–the movies.  There were those as well; let’s not forget about those.  Nobody seemed to care though.  There were those who liked Star Wars and those who didn’t, but nobody really complained about the omnipresence of the franchise.  People who didn’t like Star Wars knew that it was popular and just kind of lived with it.

Yet, Halo having the same amount of exposure and influence seem to be a problem with people; enough that the overexposure of the franchise is a common topic on the blogs and forums I frequent.  It’s not an invalid complaint: Halo is everywhere nowadays, and there is a great deal of risk in that.  It could get watered down and stretched thin.  But is it really there yet?  Is it really worth complaining about it being milked?

After all, gamers should be excited about the popularity and fandom of Halo.  After all, it is quite an achivement.  Most of the major entertainment franchises out there were kicked off by a big, splashy movie or a long-running TV or comic book series.  Halo is only eight years old and has yet to see the silver screen.  Bungie and Microsoft gave birth to a consistent fictional universe that people love to explore, and they did it with a video game.  Halo is indeed the new Star Wars, in more ways than one.  It’s the big sci-fi franchise for the nerds who think they’re cool and it was launched with this great new media called video games.  It’s going to be here for a long, long time.  Big fan or not, if you’re a video gamer you should be happy about that.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to welding my handmade replica of a BR55HB SR Battle Rifle to go with my Master Chief costume.

Left 4 Dead 2: It could have been one of 2010’s best games.

While I didn’t sign a petition trying to block its release, I was a bit disarmed by the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2.  The original is not even a year old, has a massive fan following, and even after you earn all the achievements it has infinite re-playability thanks to its always-changing difficulty dynamics and the mere fact that SHOOTING ZOMBIES IN THE FACE NEVER GETS OLD.

With that being said, it’s no surprise that there is a sequel.  This is how video games work, after all, and anybody that has played video games with any degree of passion in the last thirty years knows that.  Developers make a great game and publishers make a whole lot of money off of it.  Developers, being the artsy folks they are, see room for improvement in their art even after its sold a million copies.  Publishers, more than willing to capitalize on brand recognition, generously fund developers’ efforts to improve the original in the form of a sequel, so that the publisher can make even more money off of it than they did the original.

The thing that bothers me about Left 4 Dead 2 is not its existence, but its timing.  I never feared a Madden-esque franchise exploitation; Valve treats their fans better than that.  I didn’t think, however, that it was fair to push a sequel to such an excellent game so soon, simply because there wasn’t many improvements that could be made to the established material.  Valve could have sat on it for a year and spat it out next Christmas, when interest in Left 4 Dead may have started slipping.  As for implementing the new features introduced in the sequel via downloadable content–well, I’m not programmer, so I’m not sure how difficult that would have been for some of the deep-seeded changes to the core game engine (such as melee weapons, new items, and–especially–new Special Infected).   So again, a sequel was inevitable; just released too soon.

Of course it’s on my wish list at Amazon.com for this holiday season.

The demo is out now for Xbox Live Gold subscribers (and all Steam users), so we finally get to see if this sequel is worth being rushed out the gate.  I have to say it would have served better being released next year, when the new ideas would have seemed even more fresh and original–and Valve could have taken the time to better implement them.

There are many things I like about the sequel, namely the characters and setting.  Bill, Francis, Zoey, and Louis are now iconic characters that will forever be associated with the undead apocalypse, and I love them just as much as I did the very first time I booted up the game.  But Ellis (my personal favorite), Coach, Nick, and Rochelle feel better developed and more human; they seem weaker, more helpless, which in this kind of game is a good thing for the narrative.  Let’s be honest: Francis and Bill could have probably split up and handled the zombie apocalypse solo.  You get that sense from their personalities.  The four leads from L4D2 seem to really depend on each other; any one of them would die alone, but together they keep each other alive.

The zombies are also more complex.  The standard Infected are more varied in their design, with some of them being former police officers and thus wearing body armor.  Spitters present a real challenge; they function like Boomers, except they spew venomous bile on the ground that saps your health.  Jockeys are similar to Hunters, except they don’t pin your character; instead, they ride you, similar to their namesake, taking you all over the place.

The setting is much more rich than in the original.  It’s no longer “typical American city and the surrounding community;” this is the South we’re talking about.  Cheap lawn chairs and fences, lots of greenery, wide open streets, and the chirping of cicadas and the buzz of mosquitoes pervade the two chapters that comprise this demo.  Somehow, Valve even nailed the humidity of New Orleans; you get the sense that the air is thick and heavy (the daytime setting probably helps).  In hindsight, the backdrop of the original game was just a placeholder; this is a real place with real personality.

Even the music is better.  The bluegrass interpretation of the music that plays when you die is more sorrowful than in the first game, and the jazz riff that plays to herald the arrival of the Horde is–oddly–more menacing than the B-movie fanfare from the first game.

Unfortunately, where it matters the most–game play–the sequel is a bit more weak.  Yes, new Special Infected present new challenges, but they are blatant variations on the existing characters; they don’t really feel new.  Melee weapons are a huge disappointment.  Yes, they offer one hit kills and a valuable way to conserve ammo, and they are fun to use, but one has to be in melee range of a zombie to use them, meaning you’ll be charging towards them instead of hanging back and suppressing them–this leads to lots of deaths (believe me).  What’s more, the melee weapon replaces your pistol; better functionality would have it replacing your melee attack (you press the left trigger and, instead of a jab with the butt of your gun, you perform a swipe with your melee weapon, just like how melee attacks work in Modern Warfare).  This would have made much more sense and expanded combat options much more, giving you a fallback option when you are swarmed but not forcing you to take risks to use your new toys.  The new guns are a lot of fun to play with, but there’s not enough new ones–and not enough variation amongst them–to feel like a big change to game play.

There is also one glaring problem with the demo.  When I played single player, it ran flawlessly.  When a friend asked me to join him for multiplayer, it lagged like a three-legged dog.  We couldn’t enjoy the game because everything jerked and sputtered and chugged along.  We would empty whole clips into regular Infected and they would stand there wailing on us, and then all of a sudden there we are: on our backs with pistols in the air and a perfect circle of Infected all around us.  We finally decided to quit and hope for the best upon full release; there was no way we were going to enjoy playing like this.

So, judging from the demo, will Left 4 Dead 2 be fun to play?  Yes, it will be.  The new characters and setting add a few extra layers and some very delicious icing to an already delicious cake.  The action is just as fast and frantic as ever, and popping zombies upside the head with a frying pan feels as awesome as it sounds.  Is it worth the $60 price tag?  Yes, it is.  This is a full retail release; it is not an expansion.  It has a wealth of additional play modes not found in the original, a brand new campaign, and changes to how the core game is played.  Was it released too soon, so soon that it will feel like an expansion despite being a totally new entity, spawned from something already in exsitence but with an identity all of its own?  Yes, it was.

I Want One of These Things RIGHT NOW.

It’s the only way a grown man does not look ridiculous practicing his “Hadoken” stance.

Why GameStop will lose the Digital Download Wars

GameStop had a little Halloween special going on via their website.  You could download Ghostbusters for the PC for $9.99.  I had played this game on Xbox 360.  It was boring and repetitive, but it was vintage Ghostbusters; it’s the closest thing to a third movie that we’ll ever get.  For that alone, it’s worth ten bucks.

So I click on “Add to My Digital Cart.”  At the next screen, I get a big surprise: the option to add “Digital Insurance” to my purchase for $3.95.  Not familiar with this concept of digital insurance, I click on “More Info.”  It seems that if I want to recover this game should my computer crash, I’ll need to purchase said coverage; and the insurance is only good for 18 months.

Now, I’ve expressed my feelings about the digital marketplace before; I’m not a big fan of it as the main outlet for video games.  As a supplement to retail, it’s a great thing.  But far too often it’s used to rip off customers, with its pretend currency and charging gamers the same price for a data packet as one would pay for a box, a disc, a manual, and the right to resell said media should one grow tired of it.

But at least when I purchase something from Steam, I can download it again should I have computer problems that wipe my hard drive clean; I should know, because it’s already happened on my less-than-one-year old rig.  I can even get tired of a game, uninstall it from my computer, and months later download it again and reinstall with no problem at all–and at no additional cost.  So other than the whole pesky lack of physical media and wavering the First Sale Doctrine, buying a game from Steam is essentially the same thing as buying a game from retail.

So if GameStop is trying to move in on Steam, why are they not offering the same service?  True, you can’t buy a physical copy of Ghostbusters and get a replacement for free should your house burn down, but this is data we’re talking about; all the digital GameStop clerk has to do is click on an “allow” button.  Plus, consider that your competition–nay, the DUDES DOMINATING YOU IN THIS ARENA–are doing it.  If GameStop is trying to be compete–you know, be competitive–they’re doing a poor job of it.

Sorry, GameStop.  Your days of getting my retail business are limited to when you offer outstanding, must-have pre-order bonuses on games I’ve been salivating over for months (re: not all that often) or when friends and family give me gift cards.  Now, you’ll never get my digital business.  Granted, there’s probably a GameStop exec sitting in his corner office, lighting a Cuban cigar with a hundred dollar bill and sipping on a single-malt Scotch that costs $200 an ounce as he digests his dinner of deep fried bald eagle thinking about how scared he is over the loss of one customer before enjoying a violent laugh; but just you wait until the day that most gamers feel the same way I do.  I don’t know how well GameStop’s digital branch is doing now, but it has nowhere to go but down.

A Double Dose of Zombie Goodness

There is probably some deep, complex, socio-psychological reason why zombies–and the killing of them–are such a popular motif for fiction, be it movies, books, or video games.  But you know what?  I don’t care.  It’s enough for me to know that zombies are the perfect enemy: we can all agree that they are bad, their presence creates an oppressive environment, and the only way to effectively deal with them is with a variety of guns, explosives, and heavy blunt objects.  Not sharp objects.  Sharp objects dull with use, and you might now always have time to spit on your honing stone and drag your machete across it a few times in the midst of fighting off a zombie horde.  No, no: for the zombie apocalypse, you want the cold, unfeeling steel of crowbar.

Not that I’ve put a great of thought into this or anything.

Speaking off the zombie apocalypse, there are two great games available on Xbox Live right now that will help you train for said apocalypse simulates it quite nicely.

Zombie Apocalypse is developed by Konami and I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!!1 is developed by Jamezila, an indie developer.  They are both essentially the same game: they are both twin-stick shooters with multiple weapon pick-ups, they both have multiplayer (but only Zombie Apocalypse has online multiplayer), they are both panic-inducing in just how much the zombies swarm.  If you’re looking for the best interpretation of the Horde mode of Gears of War 2 (perhaps the most influential thing in video games in the past five years or so), you’ll find it in both of these games.

But which game is better?  Is it the slick, professionally-developed game with 2.5D graphics, multiple game play modes, unlockable  content, and some pretty fun achievements to unlock?  Or it is the somewhat simple game made by some guy with XNA and some spare time on his hands?

You would be surprised.  Zombie Apocalypse is a fun game, but only with multiple players.  The weapons don’t really feel all that different from each other, though the chainsaw weapon, which you always have on you, is great for when you get surrounded (and a welcome addition to the video-games-where-you-fight-zombies standard arsenal).  All in all, it’s a fun game with some decent humor, but nothing that makes you stand up and shout.

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!!1, however, is a true game play treat.  A surprisingly deep weapon system, some truly unique enemies, trippy level design, and one of the greatest theme songs ever.  “Welcome, to my game…I put zombies in it…for your pain…” and it just gets better from there.  Zombie Apocalypse is a fun game inspired by a multitude of zombie fictions, but it’s ultimately a party game and is best enjoyed as such.   I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!!1 is a truly unique, creative, and charming game that shouldn’t be as impressive as it is.

Zombie Apocalypse is 800 MS Points ($10) and I MAED A GAM3 WITH ZOMB1ES!!!1 costs 80 MS points ($1).  That’s right.  $1.  So  you have no excuse to not play it.

Tricks AND Treats with these Halloween Video Games

Halloween is awesome.  It’s one of the few genuinely fun holidays left, one that’s not obsessed with Olympic-level shopping for over-priced gifts, political correctness, or putting up with THOSE ANNOYING IN-LAWS.  No, Halloween is about partying with your friends, consuming massive amounts of candy, and letting your creativity stretch its legs with that best part of Halloween: the costume.  And even if you don’t go all out with your costume, you at least get to goof off a little bit; surely you can at least put on a black cape and pop in the trusty vampire teeth (yeah, that’s totally what I’m doing this year).

Video games play a pretty big part of Halloween as well.  Sure, when we think video games, we usually think of Christmas–namely because, for most gamers, video games comprise most of what is under the tree on Christmas morning (and it’s one of the few days our families are totally cool with us spending twelve hours in front of the TV, chiefly because of all the new shinies).

But think about it: how many video games scream “Christmas” to you when you consider their content?  How many video games are about warmth and sharing, about giving more than you receive?  How many video games depict Santa and his reindeer?  Sure, there are a few out there, but very few.  Contrast that to the number of spooky, scary, and weird games that are right at home during the month of October: games that make you think of Halloween, as opposed to Christmas making you think of video games.

Here are a few of my favorites–from the past and present–that I like to break out when the air goes chill, the leaves turn, and you get the odd suspicion that there is a vampire waiting outside your door.

Doom

It might not be the original horror video game, but with its demons, occult symbols, and intense violence, it is certainly one of the most viable entries in the genre out there.  Doom is one of the first video games I played that would, at times, instill into me a sense of panic and dread.  The disembodied snarls of some dark beast, the eerie silence of a newly-discovered room, the attacks from all around you, the confined spaces–John Carmack and company knew what they were doing.  Like so many old-school games, Doom didn’t want to empower the gamer; it wanted to make you feel helpless, and few games do a better job of  it.  Sure, Mega Man makes you feel helpless, but I don’t remember any goat-headed enemies in Mega Man; there is just something about that to make you feel extra-screwed.

Resident Evil

I kind of stopped liking the Resident Evil series after the first one.  Oh sure, Resident Evil 2-4 are all well-designed games, and RE5 looks great (I haven’t played it, other than the demo, but I hear it’s a pretty awesome co-op experience).  But most Resident Evil games are action games with horror elements; the original Resident Evil was pure B-grade horror goodness, and for a high school boy who was just starting to dabble in scary stuff, it was the Greatest Thing Ever.  I often credit this game with introducing me to the horror genre, with getting me into zombies and vampires and werewolves and heavy metal music.  I feel confident that I am not unique in this.  It’s also the first game to introduce me to setting and atmosphere as a game play mechanic: the mansion was just as much of a character as the giant snake, those terrifying dogs that crashed through the windows, and the last big boss Tyrant.  And that character was so, so scary: I would even say deliciously scary (and I really hate saying that).

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

If Resident Evil launched a thousand horror fans, then Castlevania: Symphony of the Night launched a thousand goth kids–or at least it should have.  This game was a bit of a sales flop when it first released, but as with most critical successes/commercial failures, it earned the respect of a classic and has been re-released on both XBLA and PSN, allowing it to earn the love and respect from the masses it truly deserves.  As for its Halloween appropriateness, it doesn’t get much better than this: Dracula’s good-natured son rises from an eternal slumber to traverse his father’s haunted castle on a quest to end the Dark Lord’s reign of terror forever.  It’s not really a scary game, but it is certainly a dark one.  The sprawling, seemingly endless castle is populated with a myriad of fantastical creatures, and every gothic flourish you can think of can be found–from ruined turrets to an eerie cathedral to a whole lot of artfully applied blood.  Other than the original, this is the best Castlevania game, and it’s one of the best video games ever made, period.

Left 4 Dead

I could write at length why this is a great game to play for Halloween, but really: do I have to?  You and three other friends have to make it from point A to B in a zombie-infested world.  You’ll creep through deserted hospitals, traverse dank sewers, and make a desperate run across a cornfield in your travels–and that’s just a few of the utterly terrifying places you will go.  At the end of each chapter, you’ll have to get onto a rescue vehicle of some sort, while EVERY ZOMBIE IN THE UNIVERSE is bearing down on you.  In short: this game is concerned with zombies and the killing of them.  Enough said.  With about one hour needed for each chapter, a full play-through is a great way to spend Halloween.

Dead Space

Do you like Alien?  Have you played Dead Space?  If not, you should.  There are all kinds of things that make it scary: constant feelings of dread and loneliness, doubts about the main character’s mental stability, and the old sci-fi standby of an imposing monolith older than time (which, in this case, really does look like something Satan made).  But the blood-red cherry on this horror sundae are the Necromorphs: an alien race that re-animates human corpses.  Zombies?  Well, sure: but horribly deformed zombies that–going along with the whole Satan theme–look far more demonic and grotesque than your typical undead human.  The Necromorphs are the most nightmare-inducing creatures I have ever seen in a video game or movie, and on top of dealing with them, there are moments when you will enter the unforgiving void of space with only a limited supply of air.  As your air gauge dials down far more quickly than you need it to, your pulse quickens and your palms sweat.  This game doesn’t let up for one instance, and it all culminates in one of the most tense final boss battles ever.  A great game to play in the days leading up to Halloween, when the last big battle reserved for Halloween night.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Not really a horror game, but as any Batman fan will tell you: Arkham Asylum is the scariest place on Earth.  With every major villain he has ever faced actively working to break his mind, Batman faces a challenge no less terrifying than anything in any other game on this list.  Chief among the scares is the encounters with Scarecrow: mind-bending battles of will that build up slowly and grow in intensity as they progress.  With bonus material that probes the psyche of Arkhman’s most terrifying alumni (some of it would make Hannibal Lecter feel…uncomfortable), it’s hard not to consider this game a great play for those chilly autumn days where twilight lasts a little bit longer than it should.

So there you go: spooky gaming that is perfect for Halloween time.   Grab a bag of Reese’s Pumpkins and settle in for a long night of gaming–a long night because, you probably won’t be able to go to sleep.