Reviewing the weekend +1

Since I live in the KPR school board area I got a P.A. day on friday. What that meant was I had thursday night to stay up late, I had friday night to stay up late, and I have saturday night to stay up late-ish. Also my girlfriend has been gone since wednsday (but I haven't seen her since monday, /sad) which means I had all weekend to game, and watch movies.

Left 4 Dead
Brendan (my brother) came up/over on thursday and brought Left 4 Dead with him, which meant I had a chance to play it for realz. Since he later had friends over I spent most of the night playing this, and then went to bed. He left early in the morning and forgot to take his game back with him, which meant I had it from thursday to saturday.

For everyone who doesn't know about this game, it is a zombie survival game. You play through the game as 4 survivors trying to get to safety from the zombie attacks. Sounds pretty traditional right? Bah no! The zombies are FAST, there are a lot of them, and they never stop. Oh, and there are 5 types of special infected as well - Smokers (who used to be heavy smokers before the zombie plague. They're like lickers from Resident Evil), Hunters (used to be druggies. They pounce on survivors and rip them to little bits, unless they're shot off the survivor), Boomers (used to be fat people. They can spew bile, which attracts a horde of the standard zombies to the survivor(s) that was barfed on), Tanks (used to be bodybuilders. Hulking masses, there are generally very few of these per level, but they take a lot of damage and deal out a lot more. Good thing? they're slow and turn poorly), and witches (used to be children. Bitches to fight. They sit around and cry and moan and have scary music and such. Technically if all the survivors don't want to fight one, they just have to walk by her quietly and turn off their lights. If she is startled then she will tear apart the person who startled her).

There are four campaigns: No Mercy, Dead Air, Death Toll, and Blood Harvest. Each campaign is broken up into 5 different parts, each part you and the three other survivors (Zoey, Bill, Francis, and Louis) have to get from safehouse A to safehouse B, except in the final chapter because then you have to get to whatever the mode of rescue is. The campaign can be played solo, or splitscreen, or with friends over xbox live, or with random people over xbox live.

The No Mercy campaign is set in a city - more specifically it is set in an apartment, some streets, some sewers, and a hospital. At the end of the campaign you have to alert the helicopter that is searching for survivors and then fight off hordes of zombies until the lazy ass helicopter pilot finally decides to rescue you; then you just have to cheese it from wherever you decided to fight the zombies to the helicopter.

The Dead Air campaign is set in an airport (big surprise there). This was probably by far my favorite of the campaigns. You have to leg it through this airport, and eventually you end up out on the airstip where there is a plane that desperately needs to be refueled. When you start the gas pump, the zombies get attracted to the noise and prest-o you have to fight through a bucketload of zombies.

The Death Toll campaign requires you to run your ass through some woods, and eventually a train station. In the end you get to a little house by the lake, contact the National Guard, fight off a whole lot of zombies, and get on a boat.

The Blood Harvest campaign has you running through forests again, but this time you also get to run through a farm field (which at night and surrounded by zombies is quite the scary adventure). However when I did this I was with ryan and he was on the headset. Since he has owned the game since it has come out, and played it to death, he knew his way around. So with his help of guiding me (via headset directions, he had already died) I got through this field and to the farm in about 30 seconds (most people wander around there for quite a long time). When you get into the house you give the military a ring and they tell you they're on the way, but they aren't the only ones. The house is about to get raped by zombies. Once again you have to fight off hordes of zombies and such until an army APC comes and you get on board and drive off.

This game also has a versus multiplayer mode. In this mode 4 people start off as the survivors and 4 start off as the special infected (the numbers aren't usually 4 on 4, thats just the max). The team that starts out as the survivors have to run, leap, and gun there way though each chapter of the selected campaign. The survivor's goal is to get to the safe room alive, the infected's goal is to stop them. After they complete (or get all killed by the infected) the roles switch and you do it all over again. Each round/chapter (you do the whole campaign, switching roles at the end of the chapter so the other team can do the chapter) the survivor team is ranked on how well they did - final health, final amount of survivors left, level completion, etc. The team that starts the round as the infected just have to stop the survivors. The infected team consists of 2 hunters, a smoker, and a boomer; sometimes a player might be chosen at random to be a tank. Generally they have a spawn count of 20 seconds between death, and when you spawn/respawn you spawn as whichever the missing special infected is.

The coolest thing about this game however is that pretty much everything changes from time-to-time. It is extrememly rare for a survivor to repeat something you've heard him say before - they have a huge data-bank of things to say. The placement and density of zombies in a level will always change, the amount of special infected and their placement will change, the location of witches will change, the amount of times you see a tank will change. Pretty much the only thing that doesn't change is world-objects.

My only real problem with the game is people are really stupid online. The game really focus' on teamwork, but most of the time everyone does their own thing, and dies frequently (as the infected). Since the zombies will actually never stop coming the survivors have to keep moving and leg-it to the saferoom; that rarely happens. Usually the people playing are really friggen thick; everyone moves through the level going room-by-room, or they double back often, or they just pretty much walk through a level, or you have Johnny the brave/stupid idiot who startles the witch often, etc.

My Rating: Definitely a game that has an enormous amount of replay value. The zombie killing action in this game is top-notch. It has a good balance of multi-player and single-player-story.
91/100

Prince Caspian
Saturday night I took a quick 2 hour break (it is quick in comparison to how much I was playing) from my video games and sat down with my parents to watch Chronicles of Narnia (2): Prince Caspian.

Personally I found the first movie to be on the high-side of crap, and the only thing it had going for it was that it had a pretty cool battle scene at the end. Boy was I surprised by the vast improvement in Prince Caspian.

The story takes place 1 (and 100 of Narnia's years) after the children left Narnia before. The children get summoned to Narnia when Prince Caspian (of the evil humans) blows the girl's horn. They find their old Narnia is gone, and it is no longer the happy place it once was. The [evil humans] had quested into the lands of Narnia and all but extinct-ified the Narnians (their word, not mine) not long after the children disappeared. The movie takes on a pretty dark tone becuase now almost nothing in Narnia is magical - most of the animals are wild now, the trees don't dance, etc. At one point in the movie Lucy (the littilest one) goes up to a bear trying to talk to it and it attacks her.

Prince Caspian had to flee to Narnia because his Uncle [spoiler: who killed Caspian's father, Caspian] wanted to kill him so he could take the throne. Caspian meets up with some nice dwarves, and a badger, and finds some other animals that still talk. Eventually he joins up with them (im just browsing over this so as not to give too much away) in the fight against his Uncle, who now knows that Narnian's exist.

The cast of the movie is quite good, especially Caspian, Peter, Edwin (who doesn't suck in this movie), the girl who's name I don't remember, and couple new animals.

In this movie Peter is much cooler. He is much more the valiant knight type. Even though he does get stupid-moody in certain places in the movie, I still found him to be much more epic this time around.

He is also quite dashing, and looks good in armor.

Susan is the archer of the group, and even though she is quite annoying sometimes I still found myself looking at her and going "she is quite attractive".





Edmund in this movie isn't annoying or useless. In fact he is quite the opposite. He fights, he doesn't ever cry or accept sweets from a hideous ice-witch, and he looks quite good in armor.




Ah, Prince Caspian: the Latino Lord. Since this movie is shot in Spain (I think) the majority of the cast is spanish, including the Prince here. Even though he does have an accent it really isn't that big of a deal because all of the [evil humans] have the same accent.

He's a really good character because he's flawed, but at the same time gorgeous epic and courageous (and looks good in armor).

Oh that lucy...

If you thought she was an annoying, bratty little tree hugger in the first movie well I have a story for you: she's still an annoying, bratty little tree hugger. Only this time because everyone else is much more epic and awesome, you notice it a lot more. By about 10 minutes into the movie she was getting on my nerves, by the end of the movie I decided that if I ever met her actress I would punch her in the face.

If you don't recognize the actor: its the midget who is in everything (with... midgets...). He plays the "Children of Adam" 's guide/friendly dwarf in the movie. He is actually a pretty cool character, and I was impressed that they did a really good job with makeup and what-not that it is really hard to tell who the actor is.

Reepicheep: think puss-in-boots, just smaller. He's a valiant warrior of Narnia, but about 4 inches tall. Reepicheep provides much of the comic relief in the movie, because of the obvious: cute valiant warrior mouse aspect. He's not just for comic relief though, he does fight, and kill, and does a damn good job at it too.

My Rating: its a watch again movie for sure.