Zen And The Art Of Zombies

Dark Souls done: time for round two!

2012-01-24T14:54:00.013+12:00

I finished Dark Souls last Sunday, after 73hours of awesome gameplay. When those credits rolled it was the most accomplishment I've ever felt at the end of a videogame. So many times early into the game there were moments that felt so damn 'hard' that I could not imagine getting past them, so sitting there watching the end credits I couldn't help but reflect back to these moments with a smile. That one boss that wouldn't give in, that one place that was a nightmare to cross... that one trash mob that jumped out of no where to kill me as I rushed to pick up my 50 thousand souls lying in a pool of my blood.

When was the last time a game did that for you? Not just make you go 'whoa that was a great ending' before you exited and went about doing whatever else, but to actually sit there and think "shit man... you're awesome, you're so damn awesome.... I... I love you"

When I fall in love with something, I have a tendency to go 'over kill' and blurt about it every chance I get. You get to part take in my obsessions through this blog, my friends get to hear it first hand, and my girl friend has to put up with it all the time.

Over the last few posts you might be able to guess that Dark Souls has got me by the throat. I am absolutely nuts about this game. I see it as a testament to everything that I love in my games. The hardcore play mechanics, the horror elements, the exploration and the constant need to get better at what you do.

Everything in Dark Souls seemed so well calculated, so carefully crafted that it truly felt like a work of art. At the end of it though you begin to realize that Dark Souls doesn't try to be extremely hard at all... instead to me I felt it tries to teach you how to adapt and play accordingly to meet the challenges it has for you. If you pay attention to it, and learn about it... you can take on anything in it.

I started my new game+ soon after I finished and that's been pretty sweet so far. Now that I've sort of settled into my gear and equipment I kinda regret a few of the leveling stat choices I made here and there, and because of the lack of re-specing in the game I've decided to roll a 2nd character.

I've read online how people who PVP in Dark Souls often create characters to suit a particular weapon, or pvp purpose. My guy so far is killing it with his Black Knight Great Axe, which is this massive axe that hits like a farkin truck, but swings like a katana blade. (fast...very fast)

Shit thing is that the axe is a strength based weapon, which means that the 34 Dexterity I'm mucking around with means nothing to it. This normally wouldn't be an issue, if it wasn't for the way PVP works in Dark Souls. When you invade a game or get invaded, there is a 10% margin for the character levels you can invade. Which means that If I'm level 105, I'll only be invading other players that are within the same level range. And the Dark Souls online community is so damn hardcore with the custom pvp players, that you can't afford to have 20 points spent in a stat you don't use, when that could have been used to boost your damage output or your Hit Points/ Endurance. Because there are other lvl 105 players out there who have their points for that level specifically placed to kill you.

I didn't regret spending my DEX points too much during the game because it allowed me to use all the cool weapons I found, but I really want my guy to be the best farkin axe wielding tank I can make him. So I started a new toon last night, a bandit... because the class had high numbers in all the stats I wanted to develop. I kinda wanted a knight because I wanted a noble character that I was gonna name Issac, but that's cool... now I have Issac the bandit.

Classes don't really mean much in Dark Souls anyway, soon you'll be specing them according to how you want to play.

Next week I'm planning on ordering Demon Souls, which is sort of like the spiritual prequel to Dark Souls. It's set in the same world, with the same gameplay but has nothing to do (story wise) with Dark Souls. A lot of people online say it was a better game compared to Dark Souls and had more of a coherent story... But I just want it cause I want to explore more of something similar.

So far Dark Souls has set the bar pretty high for my next game. It's totally killed most of shit I have left to play. My friends passed on Saints Row the 3rd and Assassins Creed: Revelations, but I'm just don't want to play them. Not because they're not good games, but because I'm just not in the mood for it.

As of last night I've clocked 86hours on Dark Souls.

My Dark Souls Review over at Mighty Ape

2012-01-19T11:33:00.004+13:00

So I wrote up my first game review over at Mighty Ape. I've bought a lot of games from there but they were on done on my buddy Kaos Kongo's account. Dark Souls is my first buy under my account :D

And what a game it is. Check out the review page here. Or just read my one below.

Easily the best thing I've ever played.

As far as "moneys worth" goes, this game is hours upon hours of gameplay that will keep you engrossed for a long time.

There is so much to discover in the game. From the countless weapons to find and master, the lands and it's denizens to explore and overcome, and the merciless bosses to conquer.

But be warned, this is not a straight forward hack and slash. Surviving in Dark Souls takes great skill and patience. If you are one that likes to learn about every tiny bit of your games, I'm talking game mechanics and such, this game will be an obsession. It is hard if you don't pay attention, but with every death you learn and improve, and when you get the hang of the game, it's very rewarding.

Every boss in this game is like doing the LAST BOSS in any other game... I'm 32 hours+ into it (over the last week) and it only gets more and more amazing. Nothing has ever given me a sense of accomplishment like the challenges in Dark Souls.

This is a true survival horror game in every sense of the words. The world of Dark Souls is an eerie, god forsaken place... Filled with all kinds of nasties that look like the worst kinds of nightmares given life.

Dark Souls will scare you, thrill you and kill you over and over again... But you will come to love the punishment and strike back harder every time you go down.

Buy it and play it!

Dark Souls: First Impressions

2012-01-11T08:36:00.013+13:00

I'm always telling my friends about how I finish games so easily. Even while playing on the hardest setting most games I grab are done for in a few days or even with in a few hours.

I heard so much about the Unlocked hard-mode for Dead Space 2 only to shred through it over a weekend. I'm a beast in Doom3 and pride my self at pwning the shit out of that game on Nightmare.

Well yesterday I got my hands on Dark Souls for the ps3 and very quickly the phrase "Be careful what you wish for" burned into my head.

Dark Souls is out to punish you.

It's out to punish you for the slob you have become at the hands of all these games where you gawk at the shiny visuals, and grand cinematic while parading carefree through a game world that's ready to bow down and make you it's hero.

Dark Souls is out to make you it's bitch.

Dark Souls starts off very low key. It does have a grand opening video that explains the events that leads to the start of the game, which involves old Dragon lords, witches, betrayal and then all of humanity being turned undead.

You start off in a cell when a stranger throws down a body through the roof, that comes with a broken sword and a key to your cell. The two of you share a glance and then you proceed with your adventure.

The only short comings I had with Dark Souls happened right at the beining. The character customization is a joke, they really should have just gone with the Diablo thing and given you the different classes, and not bother with the face creation and such. Cause you basically just go through a bunch of shitty looking presets, and by the end of it I had created the ugliest son of a bitch I've ever played in an RPG. No wonder they never show you any faces in any of the trailers, cause you look like a poofta. But luckily I have my helmet.

The rest of you looks great though, your amour and movement animation is farkin sweet...

The second thing for me was the controls, but this just might be for me. I had to get used to the attack buttons being shoulder buttons and not the X or the O and such. But all this is bullshit because by the end of the very brief tutorial you're running around slashing shit like a pro.

so you think...

You feel pro until you leave the tutorial area and come toe to toe with YOUR FIRST FARKIN BOSS!

Firs boss!

Just as the farker came tearing through the wall I saw a message on the floor that read: RUN!

And I did...

That's one of my immediate favorite things about the Dark Souls, the messages. If you're online then all through out the game you come across messages left by other players. This sort of gives you the feeling that though you're in above your head, another adventurer hasgone through here and been through the same shit you're about to face. You get things like "Nice view" when you're on top a high tower or "try luring out" and my personal fave "Good luck!"

Another cool feature is seeing other players 'Blood stains." Activating these will play the last 10sec of that players life... showing you exactly how he or she met their death. As you play sometimes you even get hints of these plays as they manifest in a shade like form and pass by you for a brief moment.

In the game your main currency is Souls. Souls are used for everything from leveling up stats to buying items. When you die you leave these souls in a blood smear that marks the spot you died. You resurrect at the nearest bonfire that you've lit. You light bonfires to act as sort of check points through out the game. Sitting at them also allows you to allocate souls to raise stats and such thus allowing you to level up. there's a cool feeling when you approach a bonfire and see other players gathered around it too. And you can't help but wonder what shit these guys are facing. Next to one such bonfire I saw a message that read "I can't take this any more."

There are two kinds of souls you can get in Dark Souls. The most common is the few you get from killing foes, the rare ones are souls that are trapped inside shards. You find these shards scattered here and there... what makes them special is that when you die you loose the souls on you if you don't make it back to your blood stain. But shards stay in your inventory waiting to be used for leveling.

I hope so

Dark Souls is a survival horror game in the truest sense of the words. The world of Dark Souls is terrifying and brutal. It's a rich dark fantasy world that's both grand and horrifying at every turn.

I haven't been too far yet, I'm just at these ruins on top a mountain side... but the place looks amazing. Normally this kinda thing would be sweet because I love exploring, but the grand world of Dark Souls is a menacing place. You venture forth at your own risk. Everything that inhabits the world looks like they were snatched right out of a nightmare. Believe me when I say that around every corner, death is waiting.

There's also a strange sense of melancholy throughout the whole thing. In the way the NPCs talk, the tone of the music that fills the environments, and just the constant fear of risking everything for the rewards that might come. It grips you with despair that you feel you have to fight against to overcome.

Regardless of story or whatever else, you feel like you're constantly just trying to survive in this world. Picture perfect views and lavishly designed areas are simply the back drop to the eminent death that will strike you over and over. When you face something in anything other horror game, it means very little... you do it cause you're playing. In this game you actually feel ballsy when you explore and go up against things.

Combat in Dark Souls is farkin tight. You move with such precision and response that if you fail against an enemy it never gets frustrating, because you know that you missed that block or you didn't take a shot when the baddie was open for it.

I made it through two of the bosses on my first try... but my bane of last night was this one 'mini' boss that totally owned me for like 10 fights. It's not like if you die you start at the boss fight... you actually start all the way back at that bonfire you lit. With everything between you and boss back to give you hell. But the coolest thing was... that even though he pretty much two shot me the first time around, by the time we had our last fight I was dancing circles around him. Dodging hits, blocking blows and pretty much pwning him.

Never has the fear of dying been so firmly instilled me in any other game. In Dark Souls you are afraid of dying. To say that I love this game makes me feel like a sadist. Because this game is out to hurt me, and I love that pain. It expects me to man up and fight back not just to get by, but by learning real skills and applying them accordingly. That feeling I got last night when I lost my first large sum of souls, I can't remember a game that ripped my heart out so badly.

I've been engrossed by games before, namely Doom 3 and Dead Space... but nothing has ever sucked me in like Dark Souls. As far as roll playing goes... this game really puts you into your characters shoes. Cause you really fear for his or her well being. I really can't wait to go back home to survive it.

Dark Souls is brutal, unforgiving and possibly the greatest thing I've ever "played."

This is why I game...

Dark Souls: My first fan video

2012-01-04T09:02:00.003+13:00

So I made a fan video for Dark Souls last night.

Basically I just grabbed a whole bunch of clips for the game that I really liked and put them all in one place, re-editing them to some kick ass music.

Dark Souls is such a kick as looking game with an equally kick as gameplay premise that I wanted to show case it in a really cool way. not that there aren't any cool trailers already... cause there are.

Have a look at the vid and let me know what you think.

If all goes well I should be ordering my collectors edition of the game today, if it doesn't go well... then I'll order it tomorrow :P

online experience may vary

2012-01-03T08:15:00.012+13:00

So my PS3 is online now!

Spent the whole of Sunday and bits of last night playing Killzone 3 online, which was a lot of fun. I've never really had a chance to play too many online shooters, aside from Team Fortress 2 my online run and gun experience has been very limited. But killzone 3 turned out to be very easy to get into, because of the whole objective based gameplay that emphasis on team play rather than just deathmatching.

I didn't hook up the PS3 to simply shoot shizz online though, there were darker intentions at play.

I downloaded an episode of "5 inch floppy" which is this aussie gaming show, and the episode I got was a special on DARK SOULS!

Aside from talking about more or less the same things that I've read, it had a section dedicated to the online side of the game, which is some of the coolest shizz I've seen in a game.

The multiplayer in Dark Souls is mostly pvp, but implemented in a way that really integrates with the story. For example; there's this one boss that actually summons online players to fight along side it if those players are aligned to a certain faction or Covenants as they call em in Dark Souls. Then there's a covenant that's dedicated to protecting this one forest in the game, so whenever a non faction player enters that forest, faction members get a summon to defend it.

You can also join a faction that allows you to invade other peoples games and fight them, appearing in their world as a phantom and then there's a faction that's solely dedicated to hunting down such players and keeping them in check. There's even a covenant that hunts down covenant deserters :O

Souls is the main currency in Dark Souls, and you need them to gain 'humanity' that allows you to level up and stuff. If you go up against another player and manage to kill them, you gain their souls which in turn makes it easier for you to level. So when that boss fight is happening and players get summoned in to take you down, you know they're hard out to get their hands on some quick souls by killing you.

As long as you're here...

But not all of Dark Souls multiplayer is pvp. There are covenants dedicated to helping players finish missions and do boss fights as well. There's also a cool system where players can leave each other notes and tips on up coming dangers. Leave a note that gets recommended by another player and the game rewards you.

Even story events are linked to online play, you could be sitting at a bonfire gathering your thoughts and planning your next move when you hear a bell ring of in the distance. .. that's some other play that's just completed a quest some where. So though Dark Souls is single player game, the developers have designed it such a way that you never feel alone in the world. It feels like there are bigger things at play all around you and that other people are up against the same dangers you are.

Totally looking forward to getting my hands on Dark Souls. Check out this cool covenant guide video that explains a lot more about the multiplayer stuff. Do note though that the video has some spoilers.

Dark Souls - the end to a perfect day.

2011-12-29T12:37:00.019+13:00

I'm trying to think of the last time I was in a mad lust for a game.

Batman Arkham City kept my days long and tiring because it took a while after release to get in. Dead Space 2 would probably be the last game that had me foaming at the mouth waiting to play it.

Well for the last couple of days it's been Dark Souls that's been keeping me restless and wanting.

Since I picked up the PS3 last week, I've been itching to find something on it that mind blasts me, God of War 3 was a nice offering. Playing through it on hard was one of the most rewarding challenges I've had in gaming for awhile. But just from what I've read and seen of Dark Souls, I know this is the game that will make or break me.

I'm always bitching to my friends about finishing games to early, or how games just aren't challenging enough... well it seems that From Software had me in mind when it decided to unleash it's latest bloody rampage.

Previously popular for such titles as the Armored Core series, From Software made quiet ripples that turned into raging rapids when it put out a game called Demons Soul a few years back. That game was noted for it's massive open world to explore and brutal unforgiving combat.

Dark Souls bosses are mad

Well fast forward to 2011 and From Software has decided to revisit this formula to bring us Dark Souls, a game which IGN writer Keza MacDonald had this to say about:

The fact that it even exists at a time when gaming is trending more and more towards cinematic experiences designed to entertain rather than challenge is remarkable in itself. Its world is made up of dark secrets and oblique mythology which feed your curiosity rather than satisfy it; the deeper into it you get, the more fascinating nuances expose themselves to you. How on earth did a game like this come to be?

I liked reading that...

There's a great interview with Hidetaka Miyazaki, game director of Dark Souls over at IGN.

When I get my hands on a game I really like, there's nothing more I love than tearing into every little piece of it. Learning and mastering (and I mean really mastering) the combat system, or exploring all the areas and finding hidden places, and bragging about how I play it better than you!

At the heart of it Dark Souls is a dungeon crawler, but with a massive world that's filled with areas to explore, but no real quests and shit to tie em together. From what I've read, you have the land of Lordan which is made up lots and lots of regions and areas populated by dungeons and castles and swamps and canyons and forests and whatever else... all of which are in turn populated by blood thirsty nasties that want to kill you. There are boss type characters that roam these areas, just hanging with their minions talking shit about you.

Each one of these bosses take a certain tactic or game-play to defeat, and discovering what it is, is what Dark Souls is all about. If you think that you can just hack and slash your way through it, it's gonna punish you for your ignorance. Even the games slogan is: "Prepare to Die"

I farkin love this trailer

The thrill and push for exploration is to find new areas and greater challenges, but at the risk of for-certain dearth. Combat in Dark Souls is said to be precise and unforgiving, requiring you to master every move and use it accordingly. There are NPCs through out the game who give you fragments of a story and clues to what it is you need to do to survive, but don't think Skyrim friendly NPCs, this is a world that's designed to kill you... not praise you as its saviour.

In stark contrast to, say Bethesda's gorgeous worlds, which exist for you and you alone, Dark Souls is pretty indifferent to your presence. You exist to be crushed (or, less frequently, ignored). If you're there to save the world, nobody seems to care much. - IGN

This is less of a jolly romp through a fantasy world and more of a fight for survival in a horrify nightmare that's fun to muck around in. It's here to scare the shit out of you and see what you're gonna do about it, all the while letting you explore and find death at your own pace.

The PS3 collectors edition is what I'm going to order. It comes with a kick ass art book, game guide and sound track... and pain... lots of pain.

I've been watching so many videos and reading so many things about the game, that I wanna just buy a coma till next pay so that I can skip this week and order it. Then I'll need to buy anther coma until it arrives. I hope it gets in before my birthday.

Check out this Awesome class trailer with great clips from the game:

And then?

2011-12-22T11:53:00.011+13:00

Greetings fellow Survivor!

Man have I been busy these last few weeks. The broadcasting house I work for launched a television station last month, which meant lots and lots of long nights of work for me, cutting trailers and doing graphics.

But things are finally settling down now.

I don't mind working late, it sort of comes with the job I do, but come on man... I've got games to play and horror movies to watch!

...And a Girl friend to pleasure.

So what was I doing when I wasn't chained to my editing suit?

I took a trip to the west last week. A really good friend of mine came into Fiji from Aus for a few days and we spent the whole time out and about. Lots of drinks and late nights ending with a trip to a nice beach resort. I love the beach, but I'm shit scared of the ocean, funny that.

We stayed at this nice back packers place in Nadi, swimming the afternoon away and spending the night having beers by the pool, before going out in a drunken state to hunt down some BBQ at 1 in the morning. It was an awesome trip and something I really needed, esp after the hours of late nights at work. My GF came along with us too so it was an nice little getaway for the both us. She had a pretty hectic few weeks herself at job. But nothing she can't handle ;P

View from our room at the resort

I picked up Batman Arkham City a few weeks back, that games been a lot of fun. As anyone who visits my blog would know that one thing I love more than horror movies and video games is Batman!

The games been hyped to death online so I'm not gonna be doing some bullshit review for it. But know that it's the best Batman sim ever. The graphics are great, the gameplay is farkin amazing and it's a lot bigger than Arkahm Asylum. I think Rocksteady, the developer, is doing an amazing job with the franchise and I wish more people that handle Batman outside of comics would learn from them. (I'm looking at you Nolan)

I bought all the DLCs for it too which lets you play as Robin and Nightwing, and adds a few extra maps to the game.

I also picked up a nice HD screen for my PC which goes well with all the shit I watch and play on it.

And last weekend I got my self a PS3 which was pretty cool. It was even cooler how I got it.

I saw the trailer for Last of Us online and then cried myself to sleep because it looked so farkin mad but is a PS3 exclusive. I have a pretty good pc and 2 dead 360s but no PS3, and I thought to my self "maybe I should get one."

Then that afternoon I was having a few beers with my friends when one of them mentioned that his brother in law was selling a ps3 with some games.

Now a PS3 sells for about a thousand bucks here in Fiji and the games locally range from like 200 to 300 bucks.

Yes ... no shit. that's how farkin ridiculous it is. Even if you convert the currency and add shipping, it would not come to that much. That's why I do all my game shopping at Mighty Ape.

But any way, when my buddy mentioned the PS3 for sale I immediately jumped at the chance of buying it. I figured it would make a good Christmas gift to myself.

I was gonna pay for it out of my next pay, but then that Friday we had a Christmas party at work, and I won the award for "Staff of the Quarter" which is sort of like "Employee of the year"but split into four winners through out the year.

That award came with a good bit of cash which went towards the PS3 :D

Ah the fates... they weave in my favor.

I have to admit though, when I first got the PS3 set up it was a little under whelming. I was mucking around with Killzone 3, which was one of the games that came with it, and it just didn't live up to the hype I had seen of it online. Another let down was Uncharted. I got part 2 for it with the console and I was really looking forward to partake in the epic action adventure everyone has been raving about, but instead I got endless cut scenes with tiring quick time events and 'hold your hand' platforming.

I am such a shallow gamer, I want to play... I don't want to watch 5min cut scenes.

The game that saved the buy was Infamous. That also came with the console, along with GTA 4. If it wasn't for those two games I'd have to punch myself in the face.

But then just the other day I went into town and nearly dropped dead when I found God of War 3 on a store shelf for $99. It was a platinum edition, but even those things sell for millions here.

When I went home and fireed God of War 3 up, I suddenly saw what all the fan boys were giggling about. Up until then I didn't really care for the PS3 over my 360, but God of War 3 has to be one of the most delightfully awesome games I have ever played.

The graphics are farkin mad, and the story is epic/ badass. But the action... shit man, how could I have gone so long without playing this monster.

I've never played a God of War game before, but it has to be like one of my top 5 games at the moment, and the most different from my current top 3 games which are Doom3, Dead Space and the Silent Hill games.

Dark Souls

Now I'm loving the PS3 and am excited right now about going home to play it. Next up I wanna get Dark Souls for it. Sort of looks like Skyrim on evil demon forged drugs. It's a darker adventuring game where the focus is on combat, very very skilled combat. I've heard that some folks spent up to 400 hours on the damn thing to finish it. Exploring a slightly horror themed fantasy world is something that has my name written all over it.

Dark Souls

Tomorrow will be a fun afternoon. My friends and I did a secret Santa thingo and we're exchanging gifts over beers :D

Hope your weeks going awesome, if not... then make it awesome; it's farkin Christmas week man.

Skyrim: First Impressions - and a bit more.

2011-11-19T09:06:00.007+13:00

I keep saying that I'm not much of an RPGer, not in the traditional sense. But whenever I play a game, any game, I like to fully engross myself into the character.

If I don't feel some kind of connection, at a character trait level, or some game play level, I just can't go on.

Story isn't always the most important thing to me in a video, Ima be really shallow and just get that out of the way. But that's not to say that I don't enjoy a good story.

Last weekend I got my hands on Skyrim, the latest Elder Scrolls game that has been killing the reviews on gaming sites across the interwebs.

I made myself some half elf/ half human guy before deciding he looked very dickish and re-rolled a Redguard. These are sort of like the barbarians of Skyrim I guess, the only other race that looked appealing and sounded cool were the Nords, but the whole farking game is about Nords so I couldn't be bothered to roll one.

Then I set off to discover my fortune, flame magic in one hand, sword in the other - hacking and burning my way through the frozen mountains of Skyrim.

Combat started off a little clunky, and though the whole sword and magic thing was working out fine, it wasn't how I wanted to play the game. I had an idea in my head for what sort of guy Hannibal was going to be. (yes that's my guys name)

He was mean mother lover, with a giant redish Warhawk and long dangling goatie. I was trying to make him look like Conan, before I changed my mind and decided to make him look like a bandit from RAGE. And because he was so bad ass I wanted him to mix shit up with a 2 handed sword and not sissy mage magic.

The coolest thing about Skyrim is that there is no class system. You sort of just do things and get better at it the more you do them. You do get these points whenever you level up, and you use them along the tress that you unlock.

Yeah so there's no class system, but your skills are divided into these trees that open up the more you use the skill. So you can't like, swing a sword all day and suddenly decide to kill something with a bow and arrow later on in the game, well you can - but your bow and arrow skills would be shit and it would take a hella long time for stuff to die.

So any ways eventually my guy became a Sword and Shield fella, because playing in whatever combat style you want results in death if your toon can't defend him self. I actually looked this bit up online and it said that most pure DPS only builds don't work in Skyrim, because the baddies are just so punishing.

And you know, if it does work for you, well than clap clap, because I thought I could play this thing however I wanted. But no worries - because the Sword and shield thing is pretty bad ass too.

On my first day of playing I must have done like 13 hours or so on it in one sitting, and then a another 6 to 7 hours the next day. Gameplay wise Skyrim brings nothing new to anything, it looks pretty meh for a current generation game, but with so many elements happening on screen the graphics feel bigger than then they look. (if that makes sense)

I did a lot of exploring, mostly because I was trying to make my way to this one place that sold black horses. If I was gonna drop a 1000 gold on a horse, it had to be black. I tried to play most of the game with a neutral moral compass, not really being bad, but also not being a goodie. This was going along very well until this one point where I was given the choice to become a werewolf. That's where I tossed the compass and just slaughtered a bunch of people so I could get 'beast form' as they call it.

That shits pretty OP.

From the first moments of the game, Skyrim is a lot of fun. It has a lot of places to explore, from villages to strongholds, to ancient ruins and farway hidden dungeons. The land of Skyrim is rich with lore and every place has a story and adventure to take up. It was also on my next day of playing that I encountered a dragon!

Man that bastard was tough take down. There I was just riding along minding my own business when I saw the beast however low along the fields ahead of me. Riding swiftly on my mighty stead soon I was along side it, and that is when the beast decided to attack.

Though the battle seemed very brutal at first, soon you come to learn that these dragons sort of just do the same thing over and over again. Aside from the ones you encounter through scripted events, dragon killing very quickly became very boring.

And then we came to the third day of my playing.

I was given this one quest - and I blame that one quest. I was to ride all the way across the map from where I was to deliver this thing to some farkin mages. Looking at the map, I was like "shit that's far"

And looking at the quest and seeing that it was 'optional' really didn't make me wanna do it. In fact, There was like 5 quests in my log that I really had to do, and about a 100 quests that were 'optional.'

This is when it dawned on me. "What is the farkin point of this game?"

I've been playing for 3 days, I clocked more than 20 hours and nothing I have done as amounted to anything. There really is on so much 'open world' one can do before you release that you are accomplishing nothing significant.

There is a single player story, but the side quests and open world was one of the major selling points of the game. But in this open world, there wasn't a story that was big enough to engross me, and the worst thing - I had not met one NPC that I gave a shit about, not one!. And that was my ultimate conclusion. With so many things to see and do, there is nothing to really give a shit about in Skyrim.

I miss u Alister

You sort of just 'play' in this world where you're all by yourself, which no other reason than to be part of thousands of tiny stories, but never part of anything significant enough to truly feel like a hero.

After discovering this idea, noting around me meant anything anymore. This is something that someone like Charlse Manson must be accustomed to feeling because as soon I had firmly wrapped my mind around this notion I proceeded to slaughter everything and everyone around me. I even lock picked and broke into peoples houses to kill them.

I killed as many people as I could before the guards got overwhelming and I was forced to flee on my black horse who I no longer gave a shit about.

Which is cool because at one point I had left my horse so I could go fight something and I came back to find that the fucker was gone. Which would gave been fine if he were free, but I paid 1k gold for that son of a bitch.

And companions, man those guys are farkin retarted. So many times I've seen them run into mobs of enemies only to get their asses handed to them, and in turn their dead asses handed to me. This sucks even harder when you're traveling on your mount, trying to get to this one location but your damn companion has decided that he or she has to stop at every farkin mob along the way to attack them.

This results in many a roads littered with the dead bodies of my ex- companions. Again I wouldn't give a shit if it wasn't for the 500g you need to pay to hire these bastards.

Now I am actually forcing myself to play this farkin game because I went through all the hassle of getting it.

Maybe this sort of thing is just not my thing. I guess I'm just a shallow RPGer who plays commercial RPGs like Dragon Age (which I farkin loved) and DA2. Not to mention The Witcher games which remain my undisputed favorite RPG games. Even Witcher 2 with all the bitchy controls and shit, I found more engaging than this. Even the exploring in Skyrim gets old once you realize your swapping one snowy mountain area for another snowy mountain area - o but this one has a ruined castle and that one had a forest.

Hell ... Risen, have you played that? That got midcore reviews, but I loved exploring in that, and the characters though not as well done as Dragon Age, felt so much more real than the dead eyed mannequins that populate Skyrim.

The closest thing I can compare this game to is Fallout New Vegas. Fallout 3 was something I spent months on playing. And when New Vegas came out, it had all the check list points of Fallout3, but I just didn't want to finish it. That's what Skyrim feels like to me.

An open world adventure that's fun if you don't mind piecing together your own story through hundreds of tiny stories that do noting towards the grand scheme of things. Exploring is fun for the first 20 hours before realize you're all alone in a single player game that feels like it's built for an mmo.

In the end Skyrim felt to me like something that would have shined brighter if it was allowed to burn out faster. How anyone can sit through the 100 hours of quests this game has promised is beyond me. If anything this game has taught me a little lesson: it's not how long a game is, it's how much fun and engaging it is that matters.

Ima go play Super Meatboy and wait for my Batman Arkham city to ship.

Rage: After thoughts (spoliers)

2011-11-06T09:55:00.010+13:00

So I just finished RAGE... like just now. Like I just put the controls down, and Twittered about it before writing this.

There I was with my BFG, shooting my way through the Authority's fortified stronghold, the enemy were attacking in little mobs of 3 to 4, easily taken care of by my awesome BFG.

Then I thought to myself that I'd better save the BFG ammo, shit will get ugly for sure soon... and I wanna be ready.

So I make my up to these computers that I need to hack (click on) and suddenly the place goes into lock down. A few mutants trickle in at first... and then a few more. They just take a shotgun to the face to take em down, still saving the BFG... and the amour piercing rounds on my machine gun.

I'll save my ammo ... cause I know something's gonna come ripping through soon. I think I'll even drop a combat drone.

O good... the satellite is sorted. Now to get out of here and...

END CREDIT!
WTF!@

And just like that... everything I had come to enjoy about the game was instantly shattered by what can only be described as pure and utter BALLZ.

The ending of Rage would have to be one of the most disappointing/ anti- climatic bits of a game that I have ever played.

It was almost as though the developers were like "Holy shit! we don't have time for this... we need to end the game NOOOOOOW!"

What happened iD?

Man even Doom 3 had more of a narrative than this, and the ending was a proper ending. It had closure.

That's all I really want from a game... something that makes it all worth while. Yes the mega-textures looked great, and the animations for all the characters were amazing, but when it all leads up to nothing but a half ass stand off (without even a proper boss fight) ... then it's just fail to me.

I can tell you now that Rage is for most parts a great game. The action is pure madness and the exploration though not extensive is still enjoyable. The weapons are a blast and iDs signature BFG is as bad ass as ever.

After working so hard to establish so much, you can't believe that it was the same dev crew that put together the last 20mins or so of the game. Cause suddenly all the exploration is gone, the crowds of baddies you were previously up against are replaced by handfuls of Authority goons who, between the BFG and my huge supply of amour piercing rounds were easily taken care of, and before you can say "Borderlands was an awesome game" ...the whole thing is over.

It wasn't only that it was a short campaign, cause I can live with that, but just the suddenness of the ending really threw me off.

With so much to see and do in the game, I couldn't help but feel that I hadn't really done anything significant. In the end I didn't care how great everything looked, it just left me feeling very "meh." The game did have more than a few great moments, but right now I have no inkling to go back and re-play any of it.

If there was some kind of a New game+ mode then maybe I'd go back to look for more sewers or something to explore... but from the looks of things that would have been too much to ask for. It just felt that iD had worked so many elements into Rage that in the end they had a bag full of bits that were left unpolished.

Watching the game develop for so long I was sure that Rage was gonna shoot its way into my top 5 games of all time, but I guess I expected too much. I'm sad... I really am.

I hope Doom 4 does better than this.

The Active Set - Famous for Dying

2011-11-03T16:04:00.002+13:00

One thing I freakin love about blogging is connecting with people who share a taste for the things I love.

Today I got a very pleasant visit a friend of an L.A based post/punk band called The Active Set, and he was nice enough to share a link to the Video for their song "Famous for Dying."

I'm actually a huge fan of post/punk and the tune was immediately catchy. As I was watching it, suddenly I was like "Wait... are those... zombies?"

There are heaps of music videos out there with zombies running around, but I can't remember the last time I saw so much blood and guts spilt to a musical number. The effects in the vid are mad, and when the zombies started ripping limbs and chewing flesh, it was obvious that the Active Set are a cool band that love having fun and know all about the fine art of zombies.

Please do check out the video, and enjoy. Gotta warn you though... it gets very messy :D

Fun on the DarkSide.

2011-10-30T14:52:00.009+13:00

So last night Traps bar had a Fashion show/ early Halloween bash and like every year my friends and I decided to dress up and head out.

We started out with a few beers and shots at Kaoskongo's house, before heading to this thing at Traps. Sadly this year the costumes were a little lacking. Unlike last year when the back bar at Traps was flooded with people in awesome outfits.

The fashion show was so so, and we got there late so the beers that the 15 bucks cover charge had lined up finished a few rounds after we got there. But it was still a fun night.

As you can see I went as a Sith :D

For something that I put together pretty much a day before, I thought the costume came out pretty good. Massive thanks to Micheal Jon's mummy for making me the hood.

It got a decent bit of attention at the clubs, which was pretty cool.

Albert and Mike in their costumes

Dani and I

Aimless: Office Doodling.

2011-10-19T06:13:00.002+12:00

Picked up a sketch book yesterday so that I can keep all my office doodles in one place. That's not to say some don't get out once in a while.

Lone Survivor:

2011-10-14T13:48:00.006+12:00

It's true, I will play any horror themed game I can get my hands on.

No matter what the subject matter, it gets an automatic +10 if the details are hack and stitched around something ghastly and disturbing.

Dead Space, Doom 3, Silent Hill, Resident Evil 2... I love these games. But my love for horror didn't start with them. Even as a kid I was a massive fan of such titles as the critically shameful Frankenstein game on the NES or Splatter House on the Sega, not to mention the awesome Castlevania games.

I actually still play Splatter House 2, I never got to play the remake that came out recently because my 360 died, but I play part 2 a hell of a lot. I can actually finish the whole thing in 20mins. Don't fucken mess with that cause Splatter House 2 is freakin hard.

Lone Survivor

There's something about taking a concept and then stripping it down to dirty, bleeding sprites. When done right it can be as unnerving as any big game engine title.
Recently one game that caught my creepy attention is a little number called Lone Survivor. I shared a video for it on my twitter when I first saw it, and just today I was reading about it and felt compelled to mention it here on my blog so it can become a part of Zen and the Art of Zombies FOREVER!

Lone Survivor is the monstrous creation of one Jasper Byrne, a guy who I first came to know of after playing amazingly awesome Soundless Mountain 2, which was a D-make of Silent Hill 2. This guy has a way with 8 bit graphics man. You need to check out this trailer to see what I'm talking about. The amount of atmosphere and sheer creepiness he can hack into a sprite is just mad.

The basic premise of the game is you are a lone survivor in a city over run by strange dead things that are out to get you, and not only must you fight to keep your life, but you have to deal with the psychological hiccups of living in your own personal nightmare.

The game seems to be more Silent Hill then Dead Space with more of an emphasis on survival, in fact reading through the devs blog it seems that his not too fond of Dead Space, but the slow sanity decaying horror stuff he is striving for is awesome. It is something that sort of lacks at the moment amongst horror titles.

Really looking forward to this... can't wait to see how it all pans out. Do check out the developer blog HERE for more info on the project.

Dead Space rocks by the way...

RAAAAGE!

2011-10-14T05:50:00.001+12:00

RAGE: First Impressions.

2011-10-13T12:33:00.019+12:00

Rage looks farking amazing.

It is easily the best thing I have ever seen on my PC. I loved the graphics in Dead Space 2, but Rage is something else. As soon as I stepped out of that vault ...um... Ark... and raised my hands to block the suns glare in my eyes, a massive grin sliced across my face.

The Post Apocalyptic future never looked this good. There were numerous comparisons to the visuals of RAGE to games such as Fallout3 and Borderlands, and though these games might share a common theme... it truly does no justice to compare Rage directly.

Looking at a screen shot is one thing, but actually walking through the rusty, dusty world of Rage is a trip. From the bright burning sky above you, to the vast wasteland of decaying buildings and scavenged settlements that await you... I spent a decent amount of time just looking around before I followed any of the markers to do a quest.

And once you get a set of wheels the whole thing just takes on a different kind of life.

But know that Rage is not a full on RPG, no matter what the trailers and dev talk might say. If anything Rage is an action shooter with a little bit more NPC and story interaction we've come to expect from an iD game (or from most shooters to be honest). There is a general story that runs through the whole narrative. You've just come out of an Ark that was set up to contain the last of mankind moments before a meteor smashes into earth. Waking up many years later the world is now a harsh Mad Max sorta place, where mutants and bandits run rampant. The 'decent' folks have banded together to form survivor towns, and these become the hubs for your missions that unfold the rest of the story.

In these towns you meet people who have tasks for you, some of these tasks lead the main story, and other ones add to the richness of it. And this is where the game really shines for me. The characters you meet are just awesome. Each one of them brought to life with amazing animation, the kind where I sometimes just couldn't help but stare at the way they move and talk.

Hey babe... nice polys.

Every expression just feels so 'real' and every movement looks so "un-thought" of and natural, iD really out did themselves with it. If you wanna compare Rage to Fallout and Borderlands, the NPCs in those titles come off stiff and lifeless compared to the people of Rage.

And it doesn't stop there.

The first time I came across the baddies of Rage, it seriously scared the shit out of me. My first encounter was with these Ghost bandits. Mutants that were hold out in this abandoned building, half of which had crashed and gone underground. You spend a good 15 mins or so exploring the world before you meet these guys, and when they attack it's farkin mad.

The canon fodder of Rage. Always in packs, always deadly

I aim my sawed off shot gun at one of them and fire a shot, only to see the creature quickly duck and do a barrel roll towards me. Behind him another mutant came flipping and jumping through the pipes ahead. And beyond them I could see even more of them scuttling all over the place.

Who the fuck do I shoot first? this guy in front of me for sure, o fuck he dodged... ok that guy over there... I got him in the leg. Shit his crawling for cover... still firing. I can hear him though - telling his friends that his hurt. I turn the corner to see him staring at his leg, this guy was actually worried about the wound on his leg... as he looked up to stare me in the eyes with a snarling growl ,I empty my double barrel into his face.

one down, god knows how many more to go.

come at me bro!

To say the combat in Rage is frantic is an under statement. These baddies seem so alive. There have been so many games in recent years that deliver an enemy that looks as though the AI is really thinking and reacting. But nothing like this.

It really felt like these guys were up to no good for years before I showed up, and from the screams and aggression it really felt like I fucked up their day.

I found my self creeping and popping, not wanting to stir these guys. And by the time I finished the first mission - I was pumped. And so far I've only been up against the mutants and bandits, I can only imagine what I will be like when facing off against the organized Authority.

The weapons in Rage are also freakin awesome. Every gun you pick up you can be modifed to suit your needs. Smack a scope on a pistol, kill the recoil on your assault riffle. I'm not sure as yet if I can grab all the up-grades for everything, as you need to buy these upgrades, but the customizing in the game feels very good. They also sound great and pack a punch, and why wouldn't they? if there's one thing iD knows how to do is make a good gun.

You get money from quests, or from selling the numerous items you pick up on your missions. Some of these are simple vendor trash, but some are items you can use to make things.

As someone who needs to survive the wasteland, you have skills that allow you to craft certain items. Some need specific items, others have parts that are shared by other items... so you make stuff according to what you need.

These items range from bandages to mixed brews, or even drilling devices that break through locks that lead to otherwise inaccessible storage rooms and areas.

Speaking of areas, scattered through out the wasteland are these sewer entrances that lead to underground networks of caverns and pipes that are home to the meanest and nastiest mutants. Why would you go down there? Because these bastards like to kill shit and take their stuff, so if you're brave enough to go down there and take these fuckers out, you might find your self a nice gun or two.

So far I've found one sewer entrance nd there was a guy standing outside it who was all like "don't go in there stranger... you're gonna fucken die"

... and I believed him.

After mixing it up with the crazies on the surface, I think ima build up a bit more skill before I go fight them on their own turf.

I'm playing the game on Hard by the way... which makes these encounters mad as.

And what ups the stake even more is the lack of an auto-save function. If you don't F5 it now and then, you're stuffed.

If you do take a lot of hits though and get taken down, you get to play a little mini-game with your armor suits built in defibrillator, and depending on how well you do you get to come back with a certain amount of HP. Fuck it up and you come back with just enough health to bite it again, and this time for good.

You can only use this thing once before it goes on cool down.

There's also the Wing Stick. The signature weapon of Rage. This is basically a boomerang that doesn't come back. It occupies a grenade slot and allows you to carry out stealth kills.

So far these stealth kills have been a little redundant though since most of the baddies are really good friends and like to hang out very close to one another. I assume they do this so that they can gossip about the hot new guy who just came out of the Ark, that they can go all "Deliverance" on.

If the world of Rage isn't that big as most reviewers say, you can't really tell from the offset. The areas so far have been huge, and for getting around you really do need a vehicle. It's sort of similar to Borderlands in the way you have these areas that are linked through load points in the form of gates and such.

The driving handles very well. It's more arcade then anything else. It actually reminded me a lot of Burnout. The steering is very forgiving and allows for very tight controls, along with boosts and jumps to make it very exciting. I don't have mounted guns at the moment, so in between missions I get to have these chases with the roaming bandits along the wastelands.

And it's pretty freakin cool too. These guys pull up along side you and call out to you... shooting and threatening you as you try to get along with your business. I actually can't wait to get me a mounted Gatling gun so I can find these fuckers and shoot the shit out of them.

The vehicles like the guns are also customizable, and picking the ones you want really adds to the feel of making the ride your own.

Funny thing is, it's the driving parts that make me miss that one thing from Borderlands...

I actually per-ordered my copy of Rage back in June. So after months of waiting, yesterday I finally got my bloody little hands on it.

The game released last week, and the initial reaction by the majority of the gaming community wasn't too kind. Sure a lot of people agreed that RAGE looked freaking awesome and played great, but a shit load of bugs and graphic issues for the PC edition pissed a lot of people off.

It didn't really piss me off so much as disappointed me slightly. I mean here we have a game that's been in the development for so long, winning so many freaking awards at numerous game conventions, being done by iD software, the grand father of PC gaming... and what do we get?

An awesome console game that fudges up on the PC.

I think this kinda messed up the game for a lot of critics. When you're waiting in anticipation for such a high profile title from a developer that's such a major part of the game industry, you can't help but be shitty on them when they deliver a broken game. If you can't play it out of the box... then it's a broken game, there's no two ways about it.

I had to wait for a patch before I could play it, but lucky for me it was a Steam installation and not that horrid Windows live bullshit. When I first started the game after installation it crashed to desktop. That's just not on... luckily I had already downloaded the ATI drivers recommended by the Bethesda forums, so after the crash I went like this >_< and then loaded the drivers.

But all this was very quickly forgiven once the game started up. From the amazing opening FMV to the first time I fired a weapon. This game has all the hall marks of being one of my all time favorites.

I can't wait to get back to it...

I'll have more up as I play along.

FedEx Zombie Outbreak!

2011-10-03T10:07:00.003+12:00

When you need that anti-virus in a hurry...

Check out the making of too

Hard Reset - back to basics.

2011-09-21T14:43:00.013+12:00

So last night I picked up the controller and pressed Start on Hard Reset, the new Cyber punk FPS that's making the rounds online, and as reflect on the game right now all I can think is that it's farking hard.

But we'll get to that later...

Right from the start this game looks freaking sweet. The start menu twists and turns as you swap through options and pick things, in the back ground gadgets and gizmos click into place and the whole thing really sets you up for what's coming up.

The opening cut scene is a bit of a drag because it's done in this limited animation style, with moving pictures, which would have been cooler had the art been a little better. It goes from awesome art piece to lame scribbles and kind of spoils the other wise polished feel of the game.

As you enter the world you are greeted by Blade Runner-ish back ally, with neon lights and flying vehicles scattered across a decaying urban back drop. It all looks very fancy, but you don't get much time to take it in immediately because just up head are a pack of robot drones, that sort of look like the Mousers for the old Ninja Turtles TV show.

I going to admit to you right now that I have no idea why these things are attacking me and what it is I'm actually suppose to do. All I know is that I have a weapon in my hand and I have to shoot stuff... I guess.

So yeah, whatever story this game has is lost on me, I did try to pay attention when I played the demo, but with the actual game I sort of just skipped the intro about half way through it and now I have no idea what is going on. At one point in the game I had to place some sort of device that did something to these machines... fuck it... shoot stuff.

Aside form the story, the rest of the game is pretty straight forward. Things get in your way, and you have to blast them to pieces. Where Hard Reset cooks the beans is with its mad action, mad unforgiving action.

This is game developed by the creative minds that gave us Pain Killer and Bullet Storm, so one thing it knows how to do is pump the adrenaline. When talking to a friend of mine about the game, he said something about how he only plays "tactical shooters." What does that mean? Is that when you crouch behind something and then pop every now and then to deliver a head shot? Or is it when sneak around a corner and then through in a flash grenade before busting down to pull off a Mozambique Drill?

man fuck that... seriously... tactical shooter my ass.

I don't think you can afford to crouch behind anything in Hard Reset, there's actually no crouch button, the minute the action starts you find yourself jumping over obstacles and side stepping baddies as they rush you to rip you apart. You find your self constantly moving, while unleashing an unrelenting chain of gun fire at everything that moves. Make that an unstopping, relenting chain of gun fire because you never have to reload! As you kill enemies they drop items which replenish your health and ammo as well as give you points to upgrade your gear.

And health drops is what you pray for because there's no bull shit 'regenerating health bar' to baby sit your ass.

I will admit that while the action is mad and frantic, constantly keeping you on your toes, the weapons of Hard Reset leaves me feeling a little empty. You start of with these two guns, one of them is some sort of plasma/ energy weapon that I hate using cause I hate energy weapons, and this one particular looks pretty fucken lame.

What I have been using is this other weapon which is some kind of sci-fi assault riffle. Now these are the only two guns in the game, but what you can do is spend upgrade points to modify these weapons. What these upgrades do is essentially give your weapon the ability to morph into other weapons.

Upgrade station.

This is a pretty cool idea I guess. The "machine gun" mode that it starts off with is alright, but once you set up the grenade launcher and the shot gun addon, that's when things really start cooking. Down the tree for the gun there's also a RPG mode and some other cool stuff. So far I've spent all my upgrade points on this gun, so if I get to a point where I need to use the plasma gun, I'll be proper stuffed.

You can also upgrade things like sprint time and some sort of awareness thing that shows you where enemies are, which I think is a bit redundant because like... they're right in front of you >_<

The baddies in the game are some of the meanest mother huggers I've had the pleasure of shooting up. These guys rip onto the screen with only one goal, and that's to tear you a new one. They smash aside dumpsters, jump off of buildings, crash through windows and whatever else, just so they can mess you up. And the difficulty isn't because they come in massive numbers, which they do, it's the mixture of enemy types during any given encounter that makes the blood boil. But no matter how hard this monster gets, it never feels cheap or unfair. As the game pushes on, it forces you to develop your trigger finger, as the fights only get bigger and badder.

When it comes down to it, Hard Reset is a shooter in the purest sense of the word. Remember when you first played Call of Duty and thought "shit man... this is so damn cinematic". it was special... now days every single shooter plays out like a Jerry Bruckheimer film, and I'm not saying this is a bad thing. But it's just a nice change of pace to simply player a shooter to shoot stuff. The team behind the game obliviously had some hard set idea about what they wanted to put out, and they stick to their formula relentlessly through out.

Hard Reset looks great, plays frantic and doesn't even know it's own story... all in all... a great way to kill some time. It's definatly a great game experience, especially for fans of sci-fi/ cyber punk and action. The pick up and play nature of it is also a plus.

It definitely fills a niche for me right now, between Borderlands and waiting for Rage.

and then?

2011-09-19T11:40:00.009+12:00

It's been a busy few weeks for me.

As the launch date for our up-coming TV channel draws nearer, I've been running around like a headless zombie making sure trailers are ready, graphics have been sorted and show titles have been made.

In fact, the team and I are going to be pulling a late night tomorrow to get some stuff out of the way.

But it's not too hectic. When I'm not at work, my girl friend and I have been killing time watching Dexter, which is a show I can't believe I didn't get into sooner.

O yeah she's back by the way... from the Pacific Games, bringing with her two silver medals for Badminton and a bottle of Tequila.

Dani (2nd from right) with her team.

I was pretty sure that that one week she was away was going to have some pretty slow nights, but I started the week with a bottle of Vodka and friends on Monday night, which is where a friend of mine gave me the install files for Team Fortress 2, and that pretty much killed the rest of my week.

So many hours were spent online meeting new people and then blowing then blowing them up.

I've never really played a competitive shooter before, and for the longest time I wasn't even sure if my inter-webs speed could keep up with one. I'm no stranger to online PVP though, because that is what took up most of my time on World of Warcraft. I used to shred faces with my Druid (who made it to rank 10 Champion before Burning Crusade came out) and once I got my Warlock... it was nothing but death and destruction all around.

But for the FPS thing, Team Fortress 2 would be my first time getting into it... and I love it.

The game's been around for a while and recently became free to play, and the moment you buy something from it's online store you become a premium member. As soon as I could I got some stuff for my favorite class; the Soldier and decked him out to perfection.

For those that haven't played the game, it's your standard first person deathmatch/ capture the flag type of game, except you have these characters that make up the games classes. You could pick one that fits your play style, or one who you think is just really cool.

When I started out I would muck around as the Heavy, but I just found him to be a little OP. He takes a massive pounding when being taken down, and is able to dish out a steady stream of pretty high damage, which is cool... but I just wasn't feeling the class mechanics and the character.

But the Solider, his fucking bad ass. And his got so much versatility to him which makes him a lot of fun to play. Plus mucking around with a shot gun and a Rocket launcher is pretty cool.

Like I said I got him a few things online, then I crafted him the Original, which is the rocket launcher from Quake, and being such an iD fan-boy I had to have that.

The Original

As I went through the list of cool things that the soldier can use, there were very few things that I wanted, and my toon was pretty much set with what he had. But there was this one item that kinda caught my attention.

If you had purchased a copy of Plants Vs Zombies before a certain date, you were issued with an item called the Brain bucket, which is basically a bucket on your head with blood stains on it. the flavor text on it reads: Zombie tested, braaaains approved.

Now the item it's self may not seem like much, but come on... I'm the guy with the 'zombie' blog! I had to have this thing. For those that bought Plants Vs Zombies they get a "genuine" version of the bucket which was a limited thing. The rest of us need to either wait for a drop or get someone to craft it, which would mean having an item with someone else name on it. (crafted by - )

I tired trading for this item a few times, but without luck. But last night I managed to score myself a trade that didn't just get me a Brain bucket... but a Genuine one!

:D

Now all I need is a Strange Rocket Launcher and I'm sorted.

Lets see how this week goes. I predict more Dexter and TF2 when I'm not working, and some Magicka since I'm hoping to pick up a new item pack for it today.

You favourite toons - zombified.

2011-09-08T15:08:00.003+12:00

It's been a while since I've posted something that's actually zombie related on this blog. Not that my love for zombies has nullified or anything, because it hasn't.

But every so often it gets a jolt.

I can't remember what I was looking for when I found this site.

It's called the MEGATHERIUM and it belongs photographer/ Illustrator Andre De Freitas, and I just spent the better part of the last hour or so just pouring over the images on this site while trying to get some work done >_<

The art on this site is amazing... but of all the sets of work, one in particular caught my fullest attention, and it was his collection of zombie portraits. He doesn't need me to say that this guy has some serious skill... but I'm going to say it anyway: "This guy has some serious skill"

Please do have a look, and while there make sure you check out the other art bits as well.

and then?

2011-08-27T09:47:00.008+12:00

And then we've come to the end of another week.

It's been a pretty busy one for me this week. The TV station I'm working for is launching soon and I've got a whole bunch of titles I need to do for these in-house shows that we're producing.

There's seven of them that need to be done and I've managed to dish out one and a half of them. Half because the one I am currently working on still needs an end frame. We would have gotten through them a lot faster, but the guy I'm working with (My GF's brother) is also working on some branding stuff for the station, so a lot of his time is taken up and divided.

The week started off great though, with me winning a Steam copy of Limbo, compliments of Indiegames.com. I don't think I've ever won anything online before, and Limbo is a pretty solid win. I played the game to death, and am gonna try to get the "No point in dying" Achievement, which requires you to finish the game in one sitting with no more than 5 deaths :O

Limbo

Wednesday night was pretty much spent spilling blood on the War Hammer 40k: Space Marine demo. And in the middle of all of this I'm also trying to squeeze in as much time as I can with my girl friend who flies off to Noumea (New Caledonia) next week for the South Pacific Games. She's a Local rep for Badminton and she did awesome with 3 silver medals in the last SPG. Check out an article on her here.

So yesterday her and I grabbed some dinner and shared a nice chill night together, because of her training I hardly get to see her.

I also picked up Borderlands on Steam yesterday for like $10 bucks Fijian... so that's pure win. I woke my friend Kaos up to use his card, and he ended up buying a 4-pack of the game :D

Borderlands: Island of Dr Ned (DLC)

That's gonna kill some time with my GF gone... and it should almost hold me over for Rage which hits in October. I pre-ordered that off my friends card too. (But I applied for a card for myself - so soon I won't have to wake you up Kaos)

We also had an interesting visitor this week. My GF and mum were mucking around in the garden when they stumbled across this little guy.

Phylliidia - or Bini to his friends.

This was pretty cool cause I didn't even know we had these here in Fiji, at least I've never seen one. We gave him room and board for the night, feeding him leaves and stuff, before letting him get back to his adventure in the morning. We also named him Bini cause he really liked eating Bean leaves. We didn't ask him what his real names was because we didn't want to seem nosey.

Aside from that, this week we also had the ever popular Hibiscus Festival (that actually ends today) and our company (FBC) entered a Queen contestant, so our boss had us attend all the events that she took part in. Which I didn't mind too much. I've also been eating down at the festival everyday because it's right near my office. There's a shit load of BBQ stalls there, so it's sort of starved for variety. Most of the time I just come back to the office with a plate full of Pani Puri or idli. But tonight ima get me some BBQ!

Snow cone!

Today at 1pm we have a float march through Suva city, which all the FBC crew will be taking part in. I'm taking my little sister and my niece (along with my brother) down for the march, and Kaos is gonna bring his little girl down... so it's gonna be fun :D

Later on my GF and I are gonna enjoy the last night of the festival, by eating loads of cotton candy and maybe hitting a few rides. (maybe)

I'll be sure to post some pics of it after.

Envy (Short Film)

2011-08-25T08:17:00.007+12:00

So my friends and I did another short film this year. Costing F$150 (US$75) and shot over two nights and an afternoon, we made a little sci-fi/ horror film and called it Envy. I did a little Director journal for it that was supposed to go up on one of my friends blogs, but I thought I'd share it with you guys too.

Check out the short below and then have a read :D

Getting into the Kula films this year was an interesting experience. After our effort last year, which was met with so much positive response, as a group we knew we had to do something that would be seen as an immediate step up from Kania Na Yalo Bula.

As we were kicking around ideas for this years short, a number of things swept through my head. I knew I wanted to do something different from our last short, but exactly how different?

At one stage of the production we had actually settled on a script that was very different from what we ended up doing. It was an idea that I have had for a very long time which involved a young rugby star who gets mislead through drugs. This was interesting because even though I am open to watching any good film, such a story would not attract my immediate attention, because of this I thought it would be an interesting direction to take our short this year, it would be something that the audience would not expect after Kania.

This script went as far as gathering actors and even establishing a rough shooting date, but there was a part of me that wasn’t totally convinced by it.

At this time I was attending FNU’s Film and television course, and had learned a number of things that brought a new dimension to the way I saw my work. As artists or creative minds in any form of media, the trick is to always learn and expand on what you know, so I like to think my friends and I had come a long since making Kania, and this needed to be showcased.

It was then that the inspiration for Envy creeped it’s way into my head.

I get ideas in a number of different ways. That’s one reason I like to read a lot and watch as many movies as I can get my hands on. These things seep ideas and concepts into my work in many interesting little ways, and when I got the idea for the script that would be “Envy”, it came to me in a dream.

When I a woke from this dream, there I was at five in the morning, quickly turning on my pc to jot out what would become the first draft of Envy.

I quickly finished it and sent it off to the rest of n00b production guys who got pretty excited about it. Our producer was a bit worried about the actors we had lined up for our previous script, but I convinced him other wise :P

With Envy we had something that fell into my favorite category of Horror, and as an amateur director/ writer I really wanted to explore the genre more. I have always believed that when it comes to creating anything, you should always work around things you know, and things that keep your own personal attention.

Unlike Kania na Yalo Bula though, Envy was different in the sense that it wasn’t as straight forward . I wanted to work in a sense of suspense, and I wanted the audience to guess at what was happening and what might happen, then I tried to do my best to spin things the other way.

This years Kula entries had a run time of 10mins, as opposed to last years 5mins, so this allowed us to inject a little bit more time for the ‘set up.’ The script went through several revisions, most of it involving dialogue, but the core concept was always the same.

When it came to finding actors for the script, it was not my immediate intention to not have the same actors as last time, but because we had some new people who were interested in being part of our work, we ended up with fresh faces.

This I thought worked out very well for us.

This however brings us to one of the biggest problem I think any potential film maker would face locally, and that’s the lack of proper actors to pull from. There were a lot of comments made about the lack of acting skills the cast of Kania had, but you have to remember, these are my friends who are helping me out. They are not professional actors, and I am not even paying them. In fact, these guys actually give me money to make my films. So there’s only a certain level of believable performance I can get out of these guys, and there’s only so many times I can tell them to do a scene over and over again before I call “take.” Especially with Envy when we were working till 3am in the morning for 6 long hours with maybe one or two five minute breaks, with ‘actors’ and crew who paid their own cab fare to be at a certain location to help me out.

This however does not mean that our stars Gabriel Gravel and Michaela Asen didn’t give it their all. As in Kania, the small cast of Envy had to endure hours of fake blood, sweat and tears to get things done, and at times I considered my self very lucky to have friends that would put up with so much to bring my ideas to life.

Someone who brought a lot to Envy would have to be our last minute camera man Damien Light. We had made arrangements for a camera and a camera man, and on the actual day of shooting these plans fell through. At one point I had convinced the crew to shoot the whole thing on a handy-cam. But our Gore-effects man, Michael Jon Light, ever the skeptic, was a little apprehensive about using a handy-cam, so he spent the day hunting down his brother Damien, who only a few hours before shoot confirmed that he could help us out.

It was Damien’s keen eye for film and camera work that resulted in the visual flare of Envy. With his magic hat full of lenses and home made dolly rigs, he captured my ideas almost better than the way they looked in my head. I’m very particular about my shots, and story boarding is something I take very seriously, and working with him was one of the few times where changes were suggested that made me go “Whoa that looks awesome!”

Speaking of story boards, they were really important to Envy because even though we had them for Kania na yalo bula, we shot that pretty much in continuity. But Envy required actors to be in various stages of make up, which meant certain scenes would need to be done first so that our actors could dress up or ‘dirty up’ for other scenes. On the first day of shooting we actually shot the last bit of the short, before moving on to the other bits. Also unlike Kania that was shot in 8 hours on a Saturday, Envy was shot over two nights and a day. The lead actors and I met up during the week to go over their parts, so on the day everyone knew what to do.

We were using my buddy Michael Jon’s house; so on the nights of shooting, we had to let the family finish off with what they were doing before we invaded their home. But they were very kind and welcoming to us, even going as far as staying in the rooms or going over to the neighbors so as to give us space to work.

The second night of shooting involved the “Hatchling” in the basement, which was a lot of fun to shoot. So an afternoon was spent finding materials and dressing up what would be the creatures ‘nest’. Our Hatchling was none other than the star of Kania na yalo Bula, Danielle Whiteside, who stood patiently for about half and hour while we applied make to her. In the end it was a cold, dark and very uncomfortable role, but I think her hard work came out great.

The idea behind the Hatchling was to have something that looks human, but is clearly something else at the same time. Because of our lack of access to advance make-up and what not, we had to work this out in other ways. Eventually I had an idea of something that could be barely made out in the dark. Something slimy and slithery that blends in. For this bit I made some of the crew watch the last scene from Ridley Scott’s Alien. This one bit where the creature is blended into a space crafts wall, hidden amongst the machinery, barely visible until it moves.

In fact Alien would be a massive inspiration for me as far as Envy is concerned, aside from the obvious relation to the “Body snatcher” movies. I am a massive fan of body horror, and I like the idea of things from another world, be it biological, alien or supernatural, that come to destroy us, but they need our bodies to do their dirty work. The concept of something that looks like your best friend, or lover, but is not them is very creepy to me. Though the idea behind Envy has very little in common with Alien, that atmosphere I wanted to create, and the pacing of our short was very much inspired by it.

When it came to putting the film together after the shoot, it became very clear that we had something a lot bigger that our last project. When you sit through a raw cut of Kania, you can tell what’s going on, and you can get some sense and feel of the narrative even without the sounds and music. But watching a very rough draft of Evny, it was evident that solid visuals would not cut it. The suspense that I wanted to put across and the creepiness, relied a lot on sounds and music. Up until the Sunday before the movie was handed into the FAVC, I was still looking for sounds and music beds. Subtle sound queues and sound effects really enhanced the whole project, and once Meli Tuqota’s amazing graphics were added to the bloody mix, the whole thing came together better than I had hoped.

In the end we had something we were all proud of. Shooting out of sequence and applying ideas that involved some tricky shots, relying almost blindly on storyboards to keep things in order, and having faith in the end vision, all paid off for us.

I can only hope that the audience find our short as interesting and exciting to watch, as it was for us to make.

For the Emperor!@#$

2011-08-24T19:23:00.011+12:00

War Hammer 40K: Space Marine Demo - Impressions

So I just ripped through the Space Marine demo that I got off of steam earlier today... and all I can say is

OMMFG!

This game is full of pure awesome. Awesome that has been stuffed into a power armor and allowed to spill blood and havoc for your gaming pleasure.

For those that came in late, the War Hammer series of games have been around for a very long time. Originally a table top game with a massive following, I got into it through the fairly resent Dawn of War series of RTS games that my friends and I have burnt so many hours to.

What I love most about the 40k series is how bad ass the good guys are. The Space Marines are just mean machines of massive war and destruction, and after hitting START on the Space Marine demo, you become this Bad Assness.

The game plays with a third person perspective, and right of the bat you're armed with these four bad ass guns and the Space Marines signature ChainSword. And let me just say that these are probably the most satisfying guns I've fired in a game. They fire with the most meaty bang, and when you see the results eradicate the baddies in front of you... it brings tears man, sweet sweet tears of fucken joy.

Couple the shooting with the ultimate bad ass weapon, the chain sword, and you got some mad combos that leave nothing but a bloody mess.

The game sort of feels that it suits a few different play styles, as in you could either shoot your way through it or get up close and personal with the melee. You get to string together hits between bullets and blade, and if you stun the baddies you get to perform a bloody execution that totally punishes your foes before finishing them off. These are such that with a bit of timing, you can slip them in at the end of your combos, and whenever you do, you get a little bit of health back. So if you keep this you can become a perpetual machine of death.

As far as graphics go, they weren't as mind blowing as I was expecting it to be. The little of the world I got to see in the demo was very gritty, but the levels sort of felt a little empty. I felt as though there were just rooms for you to mess up, lacking any other characteristic. But you don't have too much time to ponder about this because the sheer amount of baddies that are on the screen at any given time are just mad. There are moments when everywhere you turn, all you see is something that's trying to kill you.

The Camera gets a bit funky at times when the action gets thick, and you end up having to re-adjust it to see what's happening, this can be sort of frustrating.

Mucking around on line I've seen that Space Marine has been getting a few comparisons to the ever popular Gears of War series, and at times I did think to my self "hey this is just like Gears."

It does have the same "hide and get healed" thing happening ...but at the same time the gameplay in Space Marines seems to be more frantic. For one thing, Space Marines seems to have an approach that screams "A good defense is a good offense." With the lack of any fixed cover system, you often find yourself hurtling guns blazing at the enemy. If you see something that looks like it could be trouble, you either shoot it down, or run up to it and bury your blade into it's face.

And wait till you get you hands on the Jump Pack... that's when shit gets really crazy, and a whole new level of combat options spring up that start from aerial assault :D Nothing beats the rush you get from blasting into the air, and crashing down upon your enemies, scattering them all around you in a bloody mess of bolts and blades.

The only shit thing about the demo is that it's very short :( And as for the overall game... it's a lot of fun to handle. I really wanna play more of it.

If I have any hopes for the final release, it would be that it comes with a decent length single player campaign. O and that they fix the camera and make it a tighter for all the mad action.

Ima hit it again after a quick dinner and than maybe some more before I pass out. If I'm lucky maybe I'll be able to inject so much 40k into my brain that I'll be playing in my sleep.

But yeah... awesome Demo for an awesome game... that I will be definitely pre-ordering next pay.

Off Topic: Bastion

2011-08-18T10:29:00.010+12:00

So over the last few weeks I've played Dead Space 2, FEAR3 and Silent Hill: homecoming. I play horror games, it's my thing.

Regardless of story or game genre, if it's mixed in with more than a bit of horror I'll be all over it. But every now and then a game comes a long that taps into some other side of my brain, a side that remembers all the other elements of gaming that I have come to love over the years. A side that doesn't need to be drenched in blood to have a bloody good time...

Well right now that one game is Bastion.

I had been following Bastions development for sometime now, having seen an article/ interview on it a few months back over at Indiegames blog. I didn't know too much about it back then, but I was won over by the games art style and level design. As more and more info started pouring out, Bastion started looking like something I had to play.

So as soon as it released on Steam, I started bugging my friends to let me use their card to get it. Finally my buddy Kaos sent the game to me as a gift yesterday afternoon while I was at work, and then I counted the hours till I got home to play it.

From the moment I pressed start and made a new game, Bastion had me grinning like crazy. Watching trailers and staring at screenshots is one thing, but playing through this masterpiece yourself is something else.

And the world of Bastion is a gem to play through.

In a nutshell, the story revolves around an event called the Calamity that has destroyed the world you knew, literally tearing it into pieces. So you set out to collect these core fragments that are needed to start rebuilding the world. So on your adventure you get to see the world around you come together and take shape around you. Path ways rise up to meet your feet, trees and buildings form as you approach them, and it all looks amazing.

But what really grabbed me by the throat and makes me not wanna stop playing is the games awesome combat system. It's not the hardest one to pick up, but it's very pleasing. The world of Bastion is littered with things that insist on standing in your way, so you have no choice but to dispatch of these things with your awesome arsenal of weapons.

You know how in some games you find items that you sort of tolerate till you get a cooler weapon, well in Bastion every weapon is cool, and are extremely effective. Yes you end up having your favorite weapons (mines the Machete/ Musket combo) but even as I play I'm already thinking about what weapons I wanna try for my next run through. All your weapons are customizable to very specific degrees.

As an example, I like fighting close range. So as far as upgrades for the Musket goes, I chose things that gave it less of a spread, and a faster reload time with a push back. So when shit gets up close I just blast em with my boom stick! I could have just as easily made it spread out further and loose the damage penalty for range combat, but that's not how I roll yo!

The story of Bastion progresses through these floating land masses that become available for you to explore as you find more and more pieces of the core. Some of these areas also serve as a sort of 'proving ground' for weapons, and play like a mini game where you are given tasks that require a specific weapon to accomplish. Once done, you get graded and different upgrades become available to you based on your score. I for one love this sort of thing, and I spent a little bit of time out of the story to do this for my Musket and Machete. (I also did it for the Berserker bow, cause that's another awesome weapon)

You also get these potions, that you equip rather than drink, and as you level up you can equip more and more of em. There are a wide range of them and they do anything from up your health to make you crit harder when at low health. It's just another fun way to further customize your character depending on your play style.

And to top it all off, your entire adventure is narrated by this guy called Rucks, who does a play by play of everything you do. One of my fave moments was when I wanted to try out this riffle, and then swapped it back for the musket, and the narrator mentioned something about how I prefer to stick to my trusty Musket and Machete :P

I do have one quarrel with the game though, and I'm not sure if there's a way around this.

You can only swap out weapons and special moves from these Arsenal shops that are found every now and then around the world and at the hub from which you set out on your missions. You can't just flick a button and then cycle through your inventory. This is cool though, I don't mind this.

But what I hate is finding a weapon while questing and then automatically switching to this weapon, not being able to switch back until finding an Arsenal shop. This happens when you find a new special move too.

Can i get my Blade flurry special back please?

It's cool that I get to try out these new weapons, but now my weapon that I've spent so much time and money on upgrading is sitting back at the shop >_<

This is my only grip with the game, but I can live with it.

Another cool thing is that whenever you want, you can actually up the difficulty of the game and pull more xp and credits while at it. It's not as simple as selecting 'Hard' over 'Normal', instead you visit these shrines that are in the game, and each shrine, depending on the old god it's built for, offers a different challenge to you.

One might make the enemies more aggressive, another will make em hurt you when they die. So this is a fun way to get a little more life out of the game play.

So yeah... Bastion. A great game that you should definitely check out if you're up for grand little adventure. It's the kind of game that's just really really fun to play. It's not as heavy as some of the other titles that are out there, though it does have it's touching moments (I made my way through the Hanging Gardens with a heavy heart), but it's something you can pick up and have an awesome time with.

Movie night!

2011-08-13T23:26:00.008+12:00

My girlfriend and I just got back home from an awesome movie night over at my buddy Al's place.

It started off a little sad cause we wanted to watch Tucker and Dale vs Evil but for some reason the DVD player had the sound out of sync, so we decided to skip it and watch this one French flick called À l'intérieur (Inside).

I've been watching a lot of these French horror films recently and I had heard a lot of good things about this particular one.

Although my friends are always keen to jump in front of the camera for my horror shorts, they aren't too mad about horror movies. So whenever I get the chance I like to fry their nerves with some of the films I pick up here and there. I was gonna get them to watch Martyrs, but I've seen it quite a few times, and so has my GF. Then there the option to watch The Woman, but then I decided to go with something that I hadn't seen.

Inside was such a great film.

Some of the plot details were a bit iffy, and a lot of the time we were screaming at the main-girl to do things that were so stupid of her to over-look. But it was all a lot of fun. It wasn't the goriest movie... but it had exploding heads, scissor stabbings and knitting needles being thrust all over the place, which resulted in a lot of screams and uncomfortable laughter from all of us.

I gotta get my hands on more of these kinds of movies. Where the suspense and character building is balanced with awesome amounts of blood and madness.

Speaking of madness... we also watched a fun little Spanish short film called Deus Irae, which I would love to see made into a feature length movie. Check out the trailer below.

I really wanna do another movie night soon, but I want to try and get something that's more of a classic to round up the night. It's a lot of fun being tensed up watching an awesome horror film, but I love ending nights like these with something that we can watch without feeling violated at the end of it.

Like an old Christopher Lee movie, or maybe something with Jeffrey Combs :P

Lost in Dead Space 2

2011-07-30T07:13:00.016+12:00

So earlier this month I got my bloody little hands on Dead Space2, which would have had to be one my most anticipated gaming titles this year.

I had ordered the game through a friends credit card, and it was supposed to be sent to his mailing address, so for about a week I kept bugging him to check his post office box over and over. When it finally arrived, my buddy dropped it off at my office, which was pretty awesome.

This was the beast that I had been waiting for since release and now it was firmly within my grasp!

As soon as I got home I slipped the installation disks in and waited anxiously as the game did it's thing. Surprisingly it took a little bit of time installing the game, so instead of sitting there watching the install bar fill, I put on Pandorum and chilled for a bit.

Then the moment had arrived, the game had installed and I was about to revisit my favorite nightmare.

Right from the start menu I was as giddy as a school girl. The original Dead Space would be number one in my list of top three video games of all time... and playing through the opening moments of Dead Space 2, it was clear that this game was soon to join the ranks. The game looks great, the visuals are just stunning and the art direction (just like the first one) is incredible.

I started my first play through on Zealot which was the hardest difficulty to begin with, and I managed to finish the game in about a week. Needless to say that I played this thing almost religiously every night till the early hours of the morning.

The game experience Dead Space 2 offers is just awesome. It feels like the first game, but with additions and not really changes. I'm sure the Dev team over at Visceral games knew they had a winning formula with the first game, so they simply perfected that formula to create a new yet familiar game play experience.

A lot of this contributes directly to further developing Isaac Clarke as a character. His no longer the engineer who's caught in something that's way over his head, instead his the guy who has lived through this mess before and now his ready for anything. Well... almost anything.

From the way he handles his weapons now, to the more effective melee attacks, all of which checked into place with the uneasy way he looks around when walking. Isaac is fun to navigate around.

Isaac also gets to do a bit of tinkering here and there with machinery and computers to show of a bit of his engineering skills. Every now and then you'll come across something or other that's not working, and you can go through what could be called a very small mini game to fix it. I like the inclusion of the engineering vents here and there too, which Isaac can crawl through to get to otherwise unreachable areas.

Isaac Clarke is so bad-ass this time.

And the weapons... god I love the new weapons.

I think every Dead Space fan loves the trusty ol' Plasma Cutter. But my other favorite weapon would have to be the Ripper. Nothing beats cutting down Necromorphs into little messy bits with a circular saw. And it's also my 'out all the time' weapon that I carry around. It sometime feels like I'm cheating with it, only because I've gotten so good at using it. It cuts through like 3 or so baddies when it's fully upgraded and it saves you a shit load of ammo. And I just the love the mess it creates... and the way the baddies are all like "AARRGGHHH!" as I carve my way through em.

As far as new weapons go, my fave would have to be the Javelin gun. This thing is so much fun to use. It fires a high powered Javelin at baddies which can impale them. Upgraded it's pretty much a one-shot kill on most Necromorphs, but what makes this awesome gun even better is it's alt fire.

Smack the alt fire and it activates this electricity thing on the last javelin that you fired, which starts to electrocute and hold down baddies within it's range. And then when you upgrade this bad boy, the javelin also explodes after the electrocution. This is another gun that makes you feel like you're cheating because it just totally murders anything you come across. In fact, this makes the last boss fight easy as cake.

Speaking of upgrades, there's a lot more options in terms of customizing things this time around, and at anytime you can pay a little fee and even remove upgrade nodes that you've spent and apply them to something else. There are also a number of new rigs that you can put on for varied types of protection and item storage space... These also add different perks to Isaac as well, such as extra weapon damage for a particular weapon or even better hacking skills.

Shop smart...

The zero-gravity areas are a lot more fun now with the added 'flying' upgrade to your rig. In fact, one of my favorite areas in the game is this one place where the gravity is out, and you get to hover through the area floating past dead bodies and ghostly masses of blood moving past you.

It's so eerie.

And that's another awesome thing about the game. This time around there's so much action happening around you, but the game never stops to creep you out.

There's also a number of cool new Necromorphs in the game this time, but my favorite new baddie would have to be the Puker, the design of this things is just so sick.

The Puker

This is a guy with this massive gash running down his front from the neck to the groin, and he spits out this acid thing that not only hurts you, but also slows you down, so his other necromorph buddies can take you out.

The Puker doing it's thing

His also got one of the best kill animations, where he opens up your helmet and spews his sick, vile puke all over your face.

That's how I wanna take out people who piss me off... just hold them down and vomit all over them.

Nasty...

You can check out the video below for the other awesome new Necromorphs too.

PS3 Games - E3 2012 - Dead Space 2

As far as objectives go, you do end up fixing a lot of stuff here and there just like the first one, but a lot of it just involves exploring places. No one is telling Isaac what to do this time around, and he kind of decides for himself what to do next.

O and he talks!

That definitely adds a lot more to Isaac. Just seeing his tired, worn out face at the end of the first game made me feel some sort of connection, but hearing him speak his mind instead of just quietly walking around taking orders is awesome.

I must admit that I was a bit iffy about the talking in the beginning, only because I felt without the talking in the first game, Isaac is able to become sort of your avatar in the game, and it's actually you going through all the messes of surviving. But this way you start to value Isaac as a character and not just your toon. I can actually say now that he is pretty bad ass because I know what his thinking when his doing all the crazy things I make him do to survive. So the voice is a great addition.

With all the added new stuff the game felt so fresh to play, and yet it felt very familiar. This was the best thing about the game too me. I wanted more Dead Space 2 and Visceral delivered with added goodies and I thank them so much for it.

I would consider my self a bit of a Visceral fan boy. I actually own all three of their titles now, not counting the ones before the name change, and I feel these guys really share some sort of wave length with me. Cause they make games that I would so definitely play. The only other developer I feel this way about is iD software.

I <3 Visceral

At the moment I'm ripping through Dead Space on the Hardcore setting and it's proving to be a lot of fun. I read online about how Zealot and Hardcore are immensely hard to get through, but I think it sort of depends on what weapons you wanna run with. I've got my trusty Plasma cutter by my side, but my two bad boys, the Ripper and Javelin gun are tearing shit up like mad. For the forth slot I have the line gun which helps a lot on Hardcore.

Well this has certainly been a long post. There's much more that I can think of saying about the game, but it's been out for awhile and you can read up on the details any where online.

In the end I just wanna finish off by saying that Dead Space 2 is awesome, and it was more than anything I could have expected... and that I can't wait to see what the Dev team does next.

Waiting for Dead Space 2: A fanboys journey

2011-07-24T10:41:00.008+12:00

When I found out about the first Dead Space, I knew it was something that I absolutely had to play. When I finally got my hands on it, it was clear that Dead Space was going to be one of my favorite games of all time. I played that thing over and over, and it was the first game I got all 1000 points for on my 360.

Before Dead Space my favorite gaming experience was Doom3.

Being a horror and gore fan, plus a sucker for the darker side of sci-fi (Alien, Event Horizon), Doom3 filled a niche for me that was sort of lacking at the time. I played that game to death, and I did a little post a while back which talks about my unholy love for it here.

I had been following Dead Space 2 ever since I heard it was being developed. Just going through some of my posts on it before I started writing this one, I saw that I might have been on the verge of becoming slightly stalker-ish over it.

But the sad thing was, that when the game finally got released earlier this year, I was actually too damn broke to buy it :(

I had sort of fallen in between jobs, and I was running around like a headless Necromporh looking for freelance work, so what little money I was getting at the time, I couldn't just spend it on a game. Even if it was Dead Space 2. Another shitty thing was that my freakin' 360 had died, but Dead Space 2 was coming to PC as well so that wasn't too much of a worry.

With the game being on PC the idea of playing it through other means did cross my mind, but honestly I just could not bring myself to do this. Not to sound like some lame-ass fan boy, but I just loved Dead Space too much (and even the whole Dev-crew behind it) to do that. So some how, I just had to block Dead Space 2 out of my head till I could afford to buy it.

Well as months went by, I still kept following things concerned with the game. I was a fan on the Facebook page for it, and I followed the dev crew on Twitter. I don't know why I did that too my self, because it was total torture. But I wanted to see what was happening with the game that I longed to play. I watched the animated prequel to the game (Dead Space: Aftermath), read the Dead Space: Salvage Graphic Novel and even read the wiki for the Dead Space: martyr novel.

This went on for a while, and I tried to fill the empty void in my heart with other games that I borrowed off friends... but then... after months of the 'free lance' crap...

Finally I scored a job.

I got hired as a Producer at a local TV station, and to slash this already monstrously long story slightly shorter, when I got my first pay... I bought my self Dead Space 2.

Finally!

It got in on the 12th of this month and it took me about a week to rip through it on Zealot (Two levels above Normal) I wanted to play at the hardest available setting because I figured it would take me longer to finish the game. I'm going through the Hardcore difficulty now... and man is it awesome.

I'll do a write-up on my game-play experience and more soon, but for now let me just say that this baby was well worth the wait.

F.E.A.R 3: First Impressions.

2011-07-06T18:36:00.013+12:00

It has been a long time since I've written about a video game, but it's been a long time since I've gotten a game that I've had so much fun with. (Not counting Magicka which is just pure awesome and should not be allowed to compete with ther games)

The other day I got my hands on F.E.A.R 3, and from the moment I hit "New Game" it's been giving me the smiles. I wasn't even about to get it. I had played a bit of the first one at a friends place and the demo for the second one, but it never made me wanna get into the series. Which was weird cause if it has anything remotely to do with horror I'm usually all over it.

But I had been following FEAR3 for a while, and then the John Carpenter directed live-action trailers started popping up online and my curiosity began to grow. When I found out Steve Niles was part of the bloody mix as well... a section of my brain started melting. But then even upon release I was a bit skeptical, and a lot of reviews were saying that despite the developers claims of having a more horror focus to the game, it wasn't really that scary.

Then I saw this video, and I thought fuck it... I'll play it.

And like I said, right from the start the game is a lot of fun.

It's not as demanding as some of the more hardcore shooters out there, such as COD or Crysis 2, but it's every bit as exciting. At least to me anyway. (BTW I loved COD: Black Ops, but got hella bored of Crysis2)

FEAR3 has a more "arcade-shooter" sense to it, in the way that it does require some strategy, but mostly it just lets you run around like crazy pulling off cool slow-mo kills that make you feel really bad-ass. Couple this with the horror theme on the side and it's a win for me.

The graphics aren't the shiniest, but it's not at all bad either. I was very pleased when I put everything on full and it ran super smooth on my pc. Think of it this way, if Dead Space is the big summer block-buster, then FEAR3 is the indie-horror action movie.

FEAR3's Gritty looks works well for it.

The gritty look of FEAR3 really works in its favor though, and is almost reminiscent of some of Carpenter's earlier films, it even has this 'old movie grain' filter on it. Seeing as how he was the hook that dragged me into this game, I thought that was very fitting.

The game handles the same as most shooters, but with a sweet little 'active-cover' feature that slightly reminds me of "Gears of War." Pressing the cover button next to walls or objects makes your character slide and stick to it, pressing 'jump' allows you to either leap over these cover objects or slide to another one near by. This adds a fun little 'something to do' when the action gets mad around you.

You start off each level playing "The Point man" who I read up was the main dude in the first FEAR game. As you play along you are followed by Paxton Fettle, who is his dead Brother. Point Man doesn't say much which makes him kinda lame for me, but Fettle is a cool character, who is sort of a tormentor to Point Man. There's a co-op mode that allows you to play through the levels with both of em, but in single player Fettle is reduced to a evil voice in your head, which for me keeps things entertaining.

Mad action is mad

There is however one small grip that I have with the game, which might be the result of the way I play games.

But before I get to that let me just talk about this one feature that some other games have. It's that thing where some games turn or control your view to look at some sort of action or event that's happening at the time. Like in "Gears of war" whenever something important happens you automatically look at it. Normally I find this feature to be slightly annoying, but I think for FEAR3 it might have been useful.

Now back to my grip.

When I play anything I love to explore. FEAR3 is very linear, but it does have a lot of side hallways and doors that you can explore for more ammo or dead bodies for you to draw psychic energy from, this makes things a little more interesting when your looking around. I'm also the type of guy who will read shit on the walls. Something written here? I'll read it... what's this? A puddle of blood? ... where did it come from? is there a trail?

It's because of this I miss a lot of FEAR3's scare moments. I'm only up to the Department store level, but I had seen a lot of jump scares in clips online, and I was looking forward to playing through em myself. But a lot of the time all I get to hear is the que music and a sound, while I'm looking at something on a wall here, or checking for enemies behind doors over there, and then I turn around and see ...nothing.

O phew I thought I missed you.

Yes it would be scary if I turned and just barely got a glimpse of something, but a lot of the time it's like "what? ...o shit I missed a scary bit."

I'll give you an example, and I don't think it's a spoiler. In this one trailer for the game, I saw this bit where you're in a rest-room looking at a pile of dead soldiers, when suddenly something skittles past one of the dead bodies and then runs up a wall... into the ceiling... then we see tiles fall as it makes it's way across the ceiling before jumping out and running out the door. I thought that bit looked farkin sick,

Now when I got to this bit, I was stuck with a pistol that had like 12 rounds left. So when I found the dead soldiers I started searching them for ammo. Suddenly I heard the que music and a slight sound, when I turned to look ...there was nothing there... and the tiles where on the floor. Now maybe this could have been scary, but I was like "Shit I missed that bit from the trailer!@#"

This is a very silly grip and I know ... but I really think that whole "hey look over here" feature might have really worked for this game.

department store level.

When I got to the Department store I also had to put the difficulty up a bit, because I found that these zombie things were simply lining up to grant me head shots. This is not a brag in any way as I'm not the best at FPS's (in fact I get shit from one of my friends for using a 360 controller on my pc), but I simply didn't want to have an easy ride through the game. A lot of the time for any horror game, the harder enemies and lack of bullets add to the scare factor, and I found this to be the case for FEAR3.

But whatever... I'm having a lot of fun with this game, and I just wanted to share a little bit about it. It might not make or break your game collection, but for anyone who likes a fun shooter and horror thrills, FEAR3 might be worth a look. If you have the option to rent it than you should definitely try it out.

I'm not going to bother rating the game as there are many reviews available online for you to look at, but for me I'm happy I have a game to hold me over till the end of this week, when something special arrives for me :D

Off Topic

2011-06-01T10:58:00.003+12:00

Click to enlarge

HellBoy

2011-05-29T22:35:00.001+12:00

Aimless Sketching while watching HellBoy.

Head Shot

2011-05-29T13:53:00.003+12:00

What does a head-shot sound like?

Happy Space Radiation Fun Time

2011-05-28T13:52:00.002+12:00

Dead Island

2011-05-24T10:36:00.014+12:00

As far as Zombie games go, they spill out almost as frequently as zombie movies. I've watched a lot of zombie movies and god help me I've played a shizz load of zombie games.

As fas as my favourite zombie game goes, I think it would have to be the original Resident Evil games, especially part 2. I spent hours playing that monster. In fact when I first got it on the PS1 I didn't have a memory card, so I got insanely good at it.

Resident Evil 2

As far as more recent games go I'd say Left4Dead would be the best zombie title for me, especially part 2 with the added atmosphere. Sure the game play isn't as extensive as say Dead Rising, but I fell in love with the undead through the blood and gore action of the movies, and that's what Left4Dead has in bucket loads. Dead Rising1 was a must have for me, but by the time I got to Dead Rising 2 I felt the series had become too satirical.

Well enter D ead Island... now this baby looks interesting. I'm not totally sold on the graphics on a shot by shot basis, but as a whole the setting looks pretty mad.It feels like it could sit somewhere between Dead Rising and Left4Dead. In the most basic sense of this, it looks to combine the first person zombie action with undead adventuring. Plus living in Fiji, messing up zombies on a tropical island is something I dream of everyday.

Check out this video on Dead Island, it has 11 mins of game footage with some narration by the develops, and it looks pretty interesting. The game looks like it could do with a few animation and graphic tweaks here and there, but otherwise... I'm sold.

The Bear Thing!

2011-05-20T16:29:00.007+12:00

Bear is The Warmest Place to Hide.

Witcher 2 is out!

2011-05-18T19:12:00.007+12:00

So Witcher 2 has been released. Now I need to sell some souls so that I can afford to pick it up.

And then?

2011-05-18T15:45:00.010+12:00

I know my updates for the blog haven't been as frequent as I'd like, but I have very good excuses as to why that is.

First off as you know I've been attending film school these last few months, so most of the time when I come home I just feel too damn tired to do anything that involves coordinated button sequences and lateral thinking.

Except maybe video games, I did spend all of last week playing Dragon Age 2, which although entertaining, was pretty lacking when compared to the master-piece that was Dragon Age 1. Portal 2 was pretty sweet, loved every moment of that one...

My Dragon Age 2 hero

Now I'm waiting to get my hands on The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, that's probably my most anticipated game title this year, well that and Dead Space 2 which I still haven't got my hands on because I've been dead broke these last few weeks. (I got DA2 and Portal 2 off of friends)

While I waiting for Witcher2 I've been mucking around with this little side-scroller called Capsized. It's a pretty little time filler, though it takes a messy time to get used to the controls.

Capsized (pc)

I've also started pre-production on a small horror short that I'm doing with my friends. I don't want to give away too much about it... but it's a small sci-fi horror film which involves lots of blood and gore.

Actually that gives nothing away... well I'll post stuff on it as it comes along. But I don't really wanna share anything short of the whole thing. So that's something to look forward to. But here's a little something:

Short film creature make-up test

What else?

O if you saw the previous post then you should have a fare idea what I'm planning to do with those darn bears I came up with a few weeks back.

Think famous horror movie scenes... but... with bears!

I've been doing a lot of reading these past few weeks too, but none of it's horror related so I feel like I shouldn't talk about it here. But then I have had non- horror posts before... so...

Well I've been reading a lot of stuff on Vietnam. I'm not sure why or how but a few months ago I got Nam crazy and started eating up anything to do with the war I could find. Books, movies and documentaries... I've collected heaps. Some where in there I got mad about Hunter S. Thompson too, so I started watching a lot of stuff on him, as well as reading as much of his work as I could find.

... again, not horror related.

But sill awesome stuff.

As part of film school I've been watching a lot of movies too. At first I kind of tracked away from the usual stuff I like watching. I started getting my hands on films that are known for stuff like 'awesome editing' or 'great screen play.' Somewhere in that mess of movies I found a whole lot of David Lynch stuff... and soon I was back to watching my favourites: good ol' horror movies.

That would have probably been the majority of my last few months. Trying to watch as many good horror movies as I could find. I watched a shizz load of em... but I found myself kind of watching the same ones over and over again. The thing with me is, I'd rather watch an old horror movie that I know is awesome... than risk watching something new that's shit. Thank god I have the Horror Club to help me sort through em.

Shit this post is getting long... I know most of you savages aren't even going to read it. So Ima head off now and watch a bit Adventure Time before rushing off to see if my friends are up for some beers.

BearRaiser

2011-05-18T15:12:00.006+12:00

"The box. You opened it. We came."

Da bears

2011-04-24T21:01:00.003+12:00

Click to enlarge

Did these a while back... but I really like it. Need to find more things for these bears to do.

Late nite snacking

2011-04-24T09:26:00.000+12:00

Friends

2011-04-23T19:32:00.003+12:00

Fish Breath

2011-04-23T10:43:00.003+12:00

Lights. Camera, smoke break

2011-03-09T21:24:00.004+12:00

So one of our local universities here in Fiji started a certificate program in TV and Film production. Since my free lance gig has been a bit slow so far this year, I decided to enrol for the course because it beats stating home all day mucking around.

I was trying to plan little projects for my self in between jobs, but most of the time I would end up playing video games till the late afternoon, before shooting off to grab a beer with my friends. If I had a little bit more self control I might have made something of the spare time... but I didn't see that happening any time soon.

I kinda did want to go back to school and was thinking about it for a while now. I've been working forever as a sound editor and learnt video editing and scripting, but I've never had any formal training in it.

The course has been pretty good so far. Though very little of it is new to me, it has been interesting to go over the finer details of video production, particularly some of the theory stuff.

So I'm learning how to fine tune scripts and better storyboard and break down scenes. We also shoot a project every week and then use that as our study subject for the week for practical things like editing and camera work. The whole thine is very cool because it doesn't feel like I'm sitting in a class; things like this is shit I love doing ...

Plus during lectures is when I do some of my best doodling.

Trapped Dead: First Impressions

2011-02-17T08:59:00.016+13:00

There are a number of things that make a game great.

The obvious one is the game simply being a polished product. Oozing quality in graphics, control mechanics, story and what have you. Games you can look at and read a review raving about it, buy it and know you're in for a treat.

But there's one other factor that determines whether the game is a must have or not that can not be judged by such scales; and that's the "subject matter" coupled with "interest".

For instance, I've got a friend that'll play anything with robots in it, that's his thing. If it has a ten for robot that fires guns and blasts other 10 foot robots, he'll play that game with a 10 foot erection. And what ever the game review score is, it immediately receives +10 points because it has robots.

That how games work for me. If it's a horror game, or more so, a zombie game... I will check it out. Especially if it fills a niche that was lacking.

Trapped Dead fills such a need.

Made by German developer HeadUp games, Trapped Dead is not just another zombie game... it's a farking Real Time Strategy game.

Right of the bloody bat, that had my attention. I caught news of Trapped Dead some time ago, and had been casually following it's development since. When I finally got my grubby little hands on it, I will tell you that I wasn't blown away by it... but I played it for 2 hours straight fully sucked in.

This game is basicaly a playable B movie zombie flick. You're out with your friend one night just driving around, when suddenly you run out of gas. Lucky for you there's a gas station near by. So you get out of the car and decided to have a look around for some gas and maybe some snacks.

Along the way you learn the basic movement mechanics of the game, which is similar to most RTS games; where you control the camera with W,A,S,D and rotate it with the middle mouse button. Soon you've navigated your hero to the gas station, you go in side and what this? A FARKING ZOMBIE EATING SOME GUY IN THE CORNER!@#

Pick up the baseball bat! Now bash that damn things head in. Now get out of there! Fark! the doors locked! There's gotta be another way out! Shit there's another zombie in the next room, Don't run... it'll hear you. Walk... walk up slowly behind it. Now bash it's farken head in! Get outside to your friend. O no! his being attacked... don't walk man... run up and help him. O shit man... his been bitten and his loosing a lot of blood. We've got to get him to a hospital, there's one not too far from here. But god knows how many of those rotting flesh bags are out there.... lets find out.

If you bother to keep up with this blog, you have to be wet by now just reading that.

Eventually in Trapped Dead you have a group of survivors that need to be guided through a small town over run with zombies. Along the way you will gather resources, fortify surroundings and basically do everything in your power to keep these guys alive.

The story is told through a series of comic book panels with some cheesy "B grade" voice over work. It has a sort of 80s horror movie feel to it at first, though it does get a little lame after awhile, but not enough to distract too much from the game.

As far as game-play goes. You pick up items, collect shizz to get you through the level and right click on zombies that you want dead. It's not the most innovative game-play, but when was the last time it was applied to a zombie game?

Strategy comes in because different weapons have different fire power or range and depending on the number of zombies, you might be forgiven running in guns blazing... or you might need to fall back to a secure part of some building to hold off the undead at some choke point. Don't get bitten though, cause if the zombies smell that blood, it will attract more undead nasties.

You end up in control of four players in your little horror party, but if one of them should get their brains eaten out, then it's sadly game over for everyone. I thought this was a little lame; it would be cooler if you lost a guy and had to play the odds with whatever you have left... eventually ending up with one man (or lady) struggling to stay alive. But I guess the game was designed to have four players hacking it out and to replace a fallen comrade might complicate things.

You can sneak past some threats too, or if you wanna risk being heard you can run. But you have a Stamina bar that exhausts when your player does too much, this slows him down and renders him zombie food.

Adding a little bit of the survival horror aspect, you won't find too many ammo clips and such lying around, this forces you to pick your battles and not just stand around shooting everything in the face. Environments also have traps and various hazards that you can use to your advantage when dispatching the undead.

Things do get a little hectic at times and giving orders to four different people in the heat of a zombie massacre could have been a pain in the ass, but Trapped Dead has a Dragon Age kind of pause function where you can stop to give out orders and then un-pause and watch it carried out (most of the time)

The graphics aren't the flashiest either, but the environments are very detailed. From every day homes to hospitals, fully decked out with everything you'd expect to find in them, but with an added bonus of bloody messes here and there, a bloody trail leading to someone's death or signs of a struggle that definitely didn't end well. Sound wise too the game manages to dish out what you need to get things done. But all these things put together really hits home the classic zombie movie feel.

You meet a few people and who you put together to form your team of survivors gets interesting. To get a little more fun happening you can invite your friends to play with you, thus turning the game into a 4 player co-op. So there's something to do when you're not all playing Left 4 Dead. The controls are a little tough getting into, but aside from this the game-play it's self has a sneaky way of letting you think you got the whole thing under control... before turning around and biting you in the neck.

Make no mistake... Trapped Dead is hard. It is a hard, tricky ass game, and this challenge alone was one thing that kept me going. It's not hard in the way where things seem impossible and adjusted to make you fuck up. But instead it's hard because the developers actually did make a strategy game that you have to think your way through.

As far as RTS games go, just because you're a StarCraft fan doesn't mean this will be something you would want to try. This is one for the horror/ zombie fans that want something fun to kill the time with. I don't normally grade stuff but if I had to grade Trapped Dead I'd give it a 2/5 in terms of it being a RTS... but then add a +1 for it being a zombie game, thus making it 3/5. Which means as a horror fan this would definitely be worth checking out.

In the end Trapped Dead is a very fun game, and exploring new areas while dishing the hurt on zombies is made to be a lot of fun. Meeting new survivors is fun too, because each one brings something fun and unique to the mix.

The game actually won an award for Best Action game of the year in Germany, so that's pretty cool. All in all ... If you look past a few flaws here and there; there's a bloody good time to be had with this one.

Major geek thread

2010-10-29T14:33:00.010+13:00

So I start work at a local News Paper next week as a lay-out artist. Which I'm really looking forward to because I applied there as an illustrator for the their daily editorial. But with the lack of work heading my way, I feel like a cheat every time I call my self a Free-lance artist.

My buddy Al and I did get an email from UNICEF though, asking us to do some work for them... so I sent em a costing on our behalf and I hope it works out.

In the mean time I've been doing a bit of writing for a second movie project, which involves a massive CGI snake :O

But that's more of a side project.

I've been hitting World of Warcraft pretty hard too, mostly PVPing my Warlocks ass off (Player vs Player). I did hit up the Ice Crown Citadel last week and cleaned out like 11/12 bosses, but then I got booted because my damn toon was lagging :(

... So I didn't get to kill Arthas.

That really pissed me off... so I decided to leave the raiding crap for a bit and just kill the Alliance. I managed to get my Lock from tier 9 to full Tier 10, as well as deck him out with ICC weapons and stuff, so that was kinda cool. O and I finally got done with this one achievement quest in the game called "Glory of the Hero" which granted my Lock a kick ass Proto Drake mount.

My warlock in PVP gear

But as far as PVP goes... man I forgot how much I missed it. Managed to deck my lock out in the full PVP set, so now his running around with like 1k Resilience and a shit load of spellpower. His Affliction so he rots faces :P

The hight light was defiantly last night though when during a session of Warsong Gulch I went one on three against a Hunter, warrior and a mage... and came out pwning em.

Today though I went shopping with my GF to pick up some stuff for Halloween. She's decided to go as a sexy witch... my outfit however is going to be a surprise :P

Coincidently, me being in this massive PVP mood as fas as my games go, today I got an invite to play the beta for Bloodlines Champions Online. It's this mad PVP based online game which is kind of along the lines of games such as Defence of the Ancients and Heroes of Newerth.

Igniter

But it's got these mad ass characters that I find very intriguing, which kinda lifted it over the other games for me. I tried out a few of the classes but ultimately settled on the Igniter as my fave class. His this freaky little dude who looks like a tribal pygmy guy on fire. All his attacks are fire spells and his all about burning things ... basically causing chaos. I'll be spending a bit of time with this one for sure. But it's all just killing other players, and the battles are very short... so you end up kinda burning out pretty fast when you've done like 20 battles back to back in like 15mins.

But being the new comer in this sub genre of RTS games... I hope it manages to pull a following.

I'm going to go put together my Halloween costume now... and will have pics up before I hit the clubs with it on the night :D

Rock on

2010-10-25T15:01:00.002+13:00

... the wallpaper!

My lines coloured and put together by my buddy Albie.

No Photoshop

2010-10-23T23:32:00.005+12:00

I have to re-install it. In the mean time here's a loading screen doodle of a guy playing the Bass.

I was actually going to make his guitar in Photoshop... That's when I remembered that I don't have it installed right now.

It's cause my hard drive died and I had to get another one... Don't worry; I didn't loose anything. I managed to find all my Witcher Saves.

I was going to do up that little demon thing in the pic with PS too. Maybe even add some fire and lighting, this would have been the most amazing doodle... in the world. It would have blown your mind.

Now it's never going to happen... until I re-install PS.

Occupied... for eternity!

2010-10-15T09:03:00.001+12:00

Between loading screens

2010-10-04T12:26:00.003+12:00

Been playing a few RPGs lately, and in between loading screens and decision making I like to doodle.

Click pic to enlarge

Based on true events

2010-09-26T18:27:00.004+12:00

Click yo enlarge

Rejected :(

2010-09-20T16:07:00.004+12:00

Mines on the right (click to enlarge)

Here's a cover remake I did for Coveredblog, sadly it got rejected. Original cover details here.

If I had gone to Colo-i-Suva

2010-09-14T16:14:00.003+12:00

In relation to this.

All play and no work

2010-09-12T08:19:00.006+12:00

Warning: Content may be too geeky for some readers.

A friend of mine gave me Dragon Age: Origin on the PC last Sunday, and I can't seem to teat my self away from it.

Let me just add before anything else, that I really enjoy getting into characters in RPGs. Thought the extent of my RPG knowledge is the Diablo series of games and Fable 1 and 2.

... O and world of Warcraft.

Actually thinking about it as I just wrote that last sentence, those are actually some of the bigger mainstream titles.

But I've never really been into the "Hardcore" ones... Usually I play anything where you just zone out and click in something until it dies.

I love a game where I can explore though... what ever the design of the game maybe, if it offers huge areas where you character can wonder around and discover things at his leisure, that stuff really ices my cake. As I said earlier, I also really get into my characters. To the extent that I played World of Warcraft for like close to four years and only ever had two serious toons.

My Warlock from WoW

I had a druid who was my noble hero, defender of the weak and champion of the Horde. When I'd play him I'd make sure to be very courteous and helpful when ever I could. I know it sounds super geek-fest lame, but that's how I saw the character.

I think that's why I started having so much fun when I made my Warlock. Now that guy was a farkin dick. I'd be the jerk who swears when ever something goes wrong, or diss on people if they didn't know what they were doing, and then swear some more at people who dissed ME for not knowing what I was doing.

Of course it helped a lot that I strived to have my Warlock in the best possible gear and such that I could get my hands on. If there was a armour set or weapon that caught my attention, I would "farm" a dungeon for weeks and weeks until I got it.

So of course being the highest on the damage metres meant that I could be a dick and not have people kicking me for it. But I did it not to be liked or kept around, I did it cause I could have nothing less for my character.

... what was the point of all this again?

O right... so I've been playing Dragon Age, and man is it awesome.

I love the way the game totally allows you to shape the out of of everything around you. Everything you do in it (EVERYTHING) snow balls into something that could either be a good thing or something that will totally mess you over. The game also has some of the most memorable characters I have ever met in a video game. To the extent where my best bud in the game, this warrior guy named Alister, I made sure that he had all the best gear I could possibly get before I started to find stuff for my self.

Clarence and Alister (Helmet)

My guy's name is Clarence :D

And he isn't a bad guy, but I do play him according to what I personally feel is the right choice at the time. But if it means anything to anyone who's played the game;

> I'm a Berserker/ Reaver, so yes I desecrated the holy ashes.
> I killed the elves and made friends with the werewolves
> I made a deal with that mage in that warehouse and sacrificed his salves to make my health bar longer.

... so yeah I guess I'm not the nicest guy either :P

I'm not going to do some bullshit review of the game, as there are lot of em available online, but as far as RPGing goes, This would defiantly be one of the bigger, better titles to pick up. Or even if you're out for something with a solid story and dialogue, this game is serious drama.

Now I'm hacking my way through the games expansion, but after this weekend I think I'll pace my self a bit.

Expect some Dragon Age related art to be up soon.

Just breath

2010-09-01T11:09:00.001+12:00

I'm drawing some commissioned work about different types of breathing.

...and it's proving to be a challenge to stay focused.

Bored

2010-08-30T11:17:00.004+12:00

I really need to ditch this free-lance thing and get my self a proper job. Free-lance kills in Fiji.

Goat Guru

2010-08-30T08:58:00.004+12:00

This was meant to be be a sample for some commissioned work.

Waiting at the Doctors

2010-08-28T11:42:00.002+12:00

Did this while waiting at the doctors this morning. They had colour pencils and I have the flu.

I was planning to give it to this kid that was watching me draw it, but in the end I couldn't part with it.

Shank: First Impressions

2010-08-27T08:29:00.012+12:00

Yesterday I got my hands on Klei Entertainments mad side-scrolling beat 'em up SHANK.

Before I go on let me just mention that I am a massive fan of beat 'em ups; there's nothing I like more than zoning out and dealing a mess of death and carnage through wave after wave of enemies who all shop at the same store.

I still play Splatterhouse 2 every other afternoon just too see if I can finish it any faster. (25mins)

So when I heard about Shank and saw what it had in store about a year ago... to say that I was pretty damn excited would be an under-statement.

After months of following Twitter posts and development blogs, I finally got to play the damn game yesterday, and it was freaking awesome.

From the opening cut-scene to the awesome grind-house sound track (Downloadable here) and setting, Shank is a love letter to all things "action". Every Stallone movie, every Arnie pun... has prepared you for this game. And you get to live the action of those over the top movies that you grew up enjoying in glorious style and colour.

There have been a lot of comparisons between Shank and the movies of Directors Robert Rodriguez and Quieten Tarantino. Though the the game and these movies share the over the top action and characters, I see it more in line with the mock Grindhouse trailers they had put out with their movie ...um... Grindhouse.

The game looks like a Cartoon Network show on drugs, mind altering AWESOME drugs. The stylised visuals give way to a grim (granted a little shallow) plot that's enough of an excuse to spill some death.

... o and you will be spilling A lot of death.

Shank is a man out for vengeance on those that beat the crap out of him and had their way with his girlfriend. The story is told through both a single player and co-op campaign, which takes you on a frantic quest to take down the men who wronged you.

This is a bloody game; and even the said cartoon graphics don't do anything to take away from the sheer amount of violence and gore this game smacks into your face.

Shank is a monster with his his moves, as he slices, dices and shoots his way through a path of destruction that would have made the sensors crap their pants in the old days of Beat 'em ups.

And he does all this with such ease and delight thanks to Shanks user friendly controls. My GF was racking up 40 - 50 hit combos last night. But don't let this fool you, just cause the game is easy enough to get into, doesn't mean it's simple to master.

Yes you can just shoot stuff, or just grab people and stab em. But where's the fun in that?

Chaining together slices and gun shots is more rewarding when you mix it up with weapon switching and Shanks ferocious leaps. To some extent the combat is as mundane as YOU allow it to be.

It's up to you to use Shank's arsenal of weapons to kill shizz as entertainingly as you can.

You have three moves; which is a light Shank/shiv attack, a heavy slice attack and your equipped guns. As you gain new items you can switch between em through the D-pad.

So there's nothing more satisfying than slicing a baddie with a Machete (Heavy Slice) and then immediately switching that Machete to a Chainsaw to finish em off :D

If you have baddies keeping their distance, Shank can also leap at them with his pounce move, pinning them down thus allowing him to either stab the crap out of them, or my personal favourite, run a machete up along their belly, popping out at the head.

I am a sick bastard.

Slow-mos, zoom-ins and motion blur brings the in Shank to life

I've read some reviewers saying that the controls for Shank are not as responsive as they'd like it too be, I though it handled just fine.

Speaking of reviews, there are some out there that aren't too favourable towards the game, while there are even more out there that absolutely love it. As a fan of the genre, both the side-scrolling beat em up side of it, as well as the blood and violence, I can say that the game did not disappoint at all.

If the game does have any flaws, I couldn't see it through the awesomeness it puts out. Just looking at the details and the beautiful hand drawn graphics, you can tell that a lot of love went into making this game. As well as a lot of respect and appreciation for the source materiel.

I'm playing through this monster on Hard at the moment, and it is a killer. Because the baddies are badder and there aren't any save points. So if you die... you start at the beginning of the level. Which is better than the three lives limit you had back in the day, at the end of which you start at the beginning of the game.

But when you make it through a level in one bloody, flawless sweep of combos and death... the warm fuzzy feeling inside is sweet.

The outfits.Number 10 is DeathSpank

Towards the launch of the game, Klei Entertainment had put out Tweets on the many unlockable outfits that are in the game. I was immediately drawn to the Horror/Grind house outfit which is number 7 on the above list, and that was the first thing I set out to get as soon as I got the game. Which I did by killing a 100 guys with the Chainsaw.

It would have been cool if these outfits could be used to somehow customize your play style a bit. I remember a few years back there was a Spiderman game where you could get different outfits for Spidy, and they would enhance some aspect of the game. Like the symbiont costume I think gave him unlimited webbing.

Maybe in the Shank the Horror costume boosted like your Chainsaw damage or something, or the "Bruce Lee" yellow jumpsuit made you leap further, or the Ninja suit extended the time between hits to allow longer combos... nothing too major, but just a little something to make it beyond a cosmetic up-grade.

...meh.

Shank is an awesome game, and I barely tore myself away to write this blurg about it. It's definitely a nice little something to hold me over till I get my hands on the Splatterhouse remake in October.

I'm looking froward to playing the co-op campaign this weekend with my buddy Al... it's gonna be so damn sweet!

Had an idea...

2010-08-18T00:59:00.001+12:00

...That failed me.

By popular demand?

2010-08-17T00:39:00.003+12:00

Ok so it was a whole two requests but still :P

And try as I may I didn't want to touch Kurt with the zombie stick... would have been too obvious. I used the idea I had for him on Krist instead.

I'll get back to drawing zombies

2010-08-16T11:32:00.003+12:00

Sorry Krist, your just too tall.

Just as soon as I finish listening to Nirvana :P

What am I seeing here?

2010-08-06T16:44:00.001+12:00

????? from David OReilly on Vimeo.

Back on the Interweb!

2010-08-01T00:53:00.006+12:00

So I've been off-line for the last three days because I was told by my internet subscriber that I had used up my monthly data allowance. This wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be.

I mean sure I missed going through my Google reader and chatting with people I see ever afternoon anyway, but I managed to get a lot of work done because I wasn't alt+tabing every five minutes to check out something random online.

I also watched a shizz load of Curb Your Enthusiasm which was mad fun. Plus I also got to catch the last episode of Death Note which mad me very sad, because it didn't end up the way I wanted it to.

But I still love it!

Watching all these comedies and anime stuff really makes me want to do a comic again. Looking back at some of my old stuff I can't believe I had the patience to do half the art I did, but working on 10 drawing pages a day has really built up my resilience.

I've kind of got a half baked idea for like a horror/ detective thing that I'm stabbing at in my head, and I want to get some of it out this coming week. I'm not going to tell you too much about it yet because I'm still going over the finer points of it my self, but I will tell you that I'm seeing an Adrian Brody looking guy in a suit that has tentacles coming out from under his shirt.

Plus I want to kind of go back to doing some black and whites, though I haven't really been away from it so long as to totally miss it. But I'd like to do something that uses my line art with some of the vector stuff that I've been mucking around with. Maybe use the vectors for background elements.

I don't know... we'll see.

Here's a few of the bits I did this past week for that magazine I'm working for. I think I'm slowly getting the hand of this vector stuff.

The Goon

2010-07-26T07:48:00.004+12:00

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

I love this movie trailer. The crew behind the film did an amazing job of bring this awesome comic to life.

The film's suppose to be out sometime this year, you can keep up with news on the project over at the movies official site.

Trapped Dead

2010-07-21T07:55:00.009+12:00

As I have mentioned numerous times before on the blog, there are certain video games that I would play no matter how they turn out.

Regardless of review scores or whatever... if it some how fills one of my shallow, sometimes absurd needs/ niches, I'll be all over it like a zombie eating a fat kid eating cake.

Well coming out sometime this November is a Real Time Strategy game titled Trapped Dead. It's being put together by a German developer called Head Up games, and it's just the kind of zombie fun that I'm lacking right now. The game will be presented in the traditional RTS isometric view, and it follows the exploits of these collage kids who are trapped in the middle of a zombie out break caused by some people messing around with a type of genetically modified corn.

Don't roll your eyes... you've read worse zombie plots.

So some how a virus stems from this CORN and is spread through a small Kansas city town called Hedge Hill. The two collage guys eventually meet up with some other people I guess (by looking at the screen shots) and then you gotta help these guys hide, scavenge and survive against the hungry undead.

Apparently the game is set in the 80s, and comes with a soundtrack to match... so I'm not sure what I should be expecting here. Is it going to be moody Cure-ish goth rock, or Soft Cell-ish synth pop? It might take away from the thrill of the game when your bashing heads in with a crowbar to the sounds of Kylie Minogue's I should be so lucky... lucky ...lucky ...lucky.

But the game is also said to have 4 player co-op, which should make it fun regardless of what's playing on the radio.

Man... who am I kidding, you an I both know that this game had me at zombie RTS, and I could be popping head shots to Boy Goerge and the culthure club and I'd still be rocking it.

There are so many zombie games out there, like so many that it could be considered an out break in it's own right... but zombies infecting the RTS genre is new to me. And though Head up have dished out some pretty mid-core games in the past, I'll defiantly be keeping an eye out for the Trapped Dead.

Plus I'm just a sucker for isometric games... which reminds me: I'm going to go down load Valves Alien Swarm now off Steam. Cause it's FREE!

L is bored

2010-07-14T17:46:00.001+12:00

...gotta type faster L.

Watching a lot of DeathNote

2010-07-13T19:58:00.002+12:00

Click to enlarge

... And I've been loving it :D

Kania Na Yalo Bula (Short Film)

2010-07-07T19:03:00.002+12:00

Hey guys... here's the short film my friends and I made for the Fiji Kula Festival 2010. Shot in 8 hours on a budget of $80... we hope you enjoy it :D

It's called "Kania Na Yalo Bula"... which in Fijian means "Eat the Living"

Tomorrow I take on illustrator!

2010-07-05T15:28:00.005+12:00

Yes it was a little random.

Yeeeeeah!

It's after the book!

2010-07-05T00:08:00.001+12:00

What else was I going to try this new style on if not zombies?

Trying something new

2010-07-04T20:14:00.003+12:00

So I've been doing a lot of drawings lately, all of em for the Aussie magazine I've been working for. Sometimes when I have a lot of stuff to draw, and I don't feel like sketching, inking and scanning... I just do something like this:

It's pretty much just making shapes and such with the selection tool and then filling it with colour. I'm not really sure what it's called, but I would like to find out so I can look at some other peoples work for ideas and such.

But I kinda like the style of. Since I'll be free for awhile, I think I'll do some thing with it, maybe like a ... I don't know... a Zombie?

We'll see.

Kania Na Yalo Bula (Eat the Living) Teaser

2010-06-23T11:02:00.002+12:00

Here's a REALLY short teaser I made for our zombie short film. The film it self will be out at the Fiji Kula Film Festival next month :D

Video Editors Diary

2010-06-22T06:33:00.002+12:00

A quick piece I did to accompany a guest blog journal entry I did over at my buddy Wilson's Failed Paradise site. It's for our up coming short film's production diary.

Check it out: Zombie Movie Production Diary 5: A video editors *slash* directors Journal

The Adventures of Lil Cthulhu

2010-06-18T14:22:00.002+12:00

The sheer awesomeness of this... is just awesome.

"...souls make his tummy happy"

It also serves as a quick and easy Cthulhu 101 lesson. Know your elder beings!

Rick vs Cthulhu

2010-06-17T23:10:00.001+12:00

Back to work

2010-06-17T10:54:00.004+12:00

I've been so caught up with editing the short film my friends and I have been working on that I've been neglecting my work.

Plus I'm sick :(

So today I had to get back into the groove of jobbing again... thankfully I had an interesting page to get me started.

I had to do a drawing based on a poem about creepy things in the dark, lurking in a kids room. I really wanted to go all out with this one, but had to remind my self that it's for little children. But I still like it.

Maybe I'll revisit this and do a special one for the blog...

Dead Space hands on gameplay

2010-06-16T21:35:00.004+12:00

These Dead Space 2 videos are bleeding out like crazy at E3. Check out this mad one with actual game-play and some tense cinematic moments.

Waiting till the end of Jan next year is going to be so damn hard. I needs me some Dead Space!

The sheer awesomeness of these clips is just awesome!

Film Project: Editing done

2010-06-15T23:09:00.005+12:00

So I've finished editing our up coming short zombie film, which my friends and I will be submitting to the 2010 Fiji Kula Film festival.

After a couple of days of editing, I was very pleased with the results. It's been awhile since I sat behind a video editor, but getting into editing was like riding a bike. (I used to be a video editor over at Fiji Television)

The film came together very well, aside from a few sound issues here and there which I'm trying to sort out right now. But with the small budget that we had, and considering we did everything in one day, we managed to get done everything we wanted. No shots were left out because we couldn't do it, no scenes were too hard. And our long hours of practising the fight sequences really helped.

I also just finished laying out the colour filters for it, and am loving the look of the film.

After trying a few different colour choices, I decided to go with a cool blue look to the film, it's a look that I've seen a lot of indie horror films use. Aside from making the footage look slightly creepy, it was very useful to fix shots that were too bright or too dark. Maybe that's why the look is so popular?

The pics I've put up a little stretched, but that'll be sorted in the export render, which I'm hoping to try out tomorrow.

I'll put up a small clip of the film sometime this week, followed by a trailer next week, all this is for the Facebook page that I made for the movie, because all the other cool kids are doing it.

Can't wait to see this thing on the big screen at the festival.

La Horde

2010-06-15T22:35:00.006+12:00

I got to watch the new French zombie film La Horde today, and man was it good.

I had seen the trailer for this film a few weeks back, and thought it looked pretty brutal, so I had some expectations when watching this movie... gladly it didn't disappoint.

Though not mind numbingly action packed like the trailer suggests, the Horde starts off with what is essentially a pretty thin yet highly effective story. Some cops are out to take down the crummy criminals who iced one of their buddies. They get to a location, intercept the baddies, and then suddenly there's a zombie invasion.

... like I said: thin.

But it don't matter at all, because the Horde is to zombies what Dusk till dawn was to vampires.

It sets you up for one story and then drops you in the middle of something else.

The version I saw was French with subtitles, so it was kinda hard for me to judge the acting. But everyone filled their roles convincingly, though there were a few through away parts in there just to get the initial body count up and running. The movie looks great though with mad pacing awesome action shots that kept me excited the whole time I was watching.

Sometimes the film was so frantic and the visuals so over the top that it almost felt like a comic book movie.

The zombies in the show were not Dawn of the Dead remake standard in terms of make up and what not, but they ran and screamed very well. The make on these guys were a little more than blood and injuries, but the film moves to jarringly that the lack of detail is totally lost, and what you're left with is a mad zombie feeding frenzy that you just want to run away from.

My favourite part would have to be this one bit where the main guy is on top of a car in an underground garage, just hacking and shooting away at an ocean of zombies that's gathering around him. And his not even the most bad ass guy in the film.

Watch out for the crazy guy with the axe!

This is not at all a review by the way, if you want one keep checking out The Horror Club cause they'll have a review for it up soon. But I do want to say that if you like action and if you like zombies, this film will let you pass the time with a smile on your face.

It gets weak sometimes, but it very quickly picks it's self up and gets back into the gory zombie action, which is really all I want from a zombie movie.

Splatterhouse E3 trailer kicks ass

2010-06-15T22:26:00.003+12:00

I haven't bought anything new for the 360 for a very long time. The last game I got on it was Super Street Fighter 4, bought for my by a friend of mine in from Australia.

Up until awhile ago all I was waiting for game wise was Dead Space 2 that's been set to release some time in January next year. I might pick up some other odd titles along the way, but Dead Space 2 would be my MUST HAVE tile.

...well that and the new SPLATTERHOUSE!

I've been going on about this game for a few posts now, and so far everything I've seen regarding this game has been mind blowing. Including the new E3 trailer that recently came out.

It looks totally awesome, and shows us a little of the main characters with a bit of story too. Including poor old Jennifer being taken from little old Rick, before he puts on the terror mask!

Check it out for ya self... I swear of there is one game I pick up for my 360 for the remaining of the year, it'll be this one.

I think I'll just stash some of my next pay somewhere for this, in case by some odd reason I don;t have money when it comes out :P

Isacc Vs the Puker

2010-06-15T07:42:00.003+12:00

Got this footage in my email today, the illusion of it being exclusive is nice until you find it on Youtube too :P

But hey... this way I get to share my joy.

Dead Space 2: First Gameplay video

2010-06-13T07:25:00.004+12:00

Of all the games in all the world right now, nothing else has me by my throat like the impending Dead Space 2. This is the game I would cut of a limb for...

And this morning I woke up to an awesome delight; Dead Space 2 footage that was revealed at E3!

When I saw the vid it gave me chills.

Check out Isaac's new hover move, and the awesome blood splatter effects when you put baddies into stasis.

Will try my darndest to pick up a special edition for this one.

Film Project: Done with shooting

2010-06-06T23:19:00.006+12:00

So yesterday we had the shoot for our up coming zombie short film: Kania Na Yalo Bula (Eat the living)

Man was it mad fun!

We got to the location at about 10 in the morning, had a run through of the shots and then got to work. With the three weeks or so of planning, everything went pretty smooth, but it still ended up being a very tiring day.

But it was the kind of tired I didn't mind at all because it was a lot of fun. My friends who took part in the film went through some serious stuff though, including my girl friend who was our leading lady.

Of all the things the guys had to out up with, I think the worst would have to have been the fake blood. It started off ok, but after filming for like almost 8 hours, that shizz got pretty sticky and very uncomfortable.

But I guess the irritation it provided helped a lot with all the screaming and running (yes running zombies) that was going on. Also because we only had one camera we had to do multiple takes to get the different angles.

At the end I realised that we had a lot of shots, which was good because they would prove very useful when editing.

While we were shooting though, it was apparent how bloody and gruesome our short film actually was, and it left us wondering if it won't too much for the film festival. I've seen some of the stuff they've accepted, which is horrendous in it's own right, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

My buddy Wilson should have a production diary up which in turn I'll link when it's done.

Great Cthullhu rises!

2010-06-03T15:58:00.002+12:00

... to surf the net.

Walking Dead zombies on the loose

2010-06-03T09:36:00.004+12:00

So I doing my normal rounds of the various websites that run through Google Reader, when I came across the beautiful pic.

This is part of the "first looks" shots of the zombies from the up coming Walking Dead live action TV show. As mad about the project as I was, looking at these pics have me foaming at the mouth in anticipation.

This show looks to be shaping up very well... and after the horrible season of Supernatural that just ended, I need a new show to follow.

Head over to Bloody Disgusting for more pics and a video interview with the projects director.

Ghostbusters Vs Cthulhu

2010-06-03T08:09:00.004+12:00

So I've been watching a lot of The Real Ghostbusters lately, ever since I got my hands on the new PC game a few weeks back, and last night I came across a particularly amazing episode.

I don't like to believe in coincidences, but when I'm not working or playing Ghostbusters, I'm been reading a lot of Lovecraft; seeing how I just got my self the Necronomicon. So I was pretty stoked when I came across an episode of Ghostbusters called "The Collect Call of Cathulhu."(I'm guessing they stuck an "A" in there for pronunciation)

I was kind of expecting some half ass story about some ghost or such thing that kinda has some resemblance to everyone's favourite elder god. What I got instead was a full on homage to not only the Cthulhu mythos, but some of the more notable writers that shared the pages with Lovecraft back in the day.

The story starts off with the Necronomicon going on exhibition down at the New York Museum, when it's stolen by a horrible tentacle creature. The guy running the museum, Clark Aston (nod to Clark Aston Smith) calls up the Ghostbusters informing them about the theft. Immediately Egon starts freaking out because he know's all about the kind of dark powers the book has, Stanz even makes a reference about how he used to read about the book and Cthulhu in Weird Tales magazine as a kid.

Peter of course is oblivious to all of this and is more worried about a date he just missed out on.

They track the tentacle creature from the museum into some swears, but when confronting them they find that their proton packs are of little to no use, even against the mere "Spawns of Cthulhu." So they make a retreat and decide they need to know more about what their up against.

To find out more about the book they enlist the help of Necronomicon expert Alice Derleth (August Derleth) who informs the Ghostbusters of how the book can be used to summon Cthulhu once very 60 years.

So our heroes head off to find the doomsday cult that Derleth believes is responsible for the theft. But they get there just in time to see great Cthulhu rise from his acient slumber.

The episode is full of quotes from many of lovecraft's books and even the feel of it is a little spookier than a normal Ghostbusters episode. And having the show treat Cthulhu like the empedning doom that he is and not just some smuck ghost was very cool.

There's even an appearance by a Mr. Howard (Robert Howard) who is a rare book collector that helps the Ghostbusters by lending them some old copies of Weird Tales that might have a way of stopping the elder god.

I've actually said way more than enough, how about you just check out the episode below :P

THE COLLECT CALL OF CTHULHU - RGB

Edward | MySpace Video

Call that a book? This is a book!

2010-06-01T07:29:00.001+12:00

Film Project: Blood Test

2010-05-31T21:03:00.003+12:00

For our up coming zombie film project, which we're shooting this weekend, my buddy MJ was we put in charge of the blood and gore, so here is trying out a "blood test"

We're looking for cheap yet effective.

The Outsider

2010-05-31T11:49:00.005+12:00

I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.
- H.P. Lovecraft

Off topic: proud of this page

2010-05-29T20:43:00.006+12:00

Here's another page I particularity like from my many pages of drawings that I've been working this week.

The article was about the Sky Ride from the 1933 World Fair. I wanted to make something that look like period advertising, with heavy inspiration from the covers of my pulp sci-fi collection. I found some pics of the ride online and just went from there.

I'm still getting the hang of this page design thing, but at least I'm having fun while learning.

Film Project: On location

2010-05-26T23:45:00.007+12:00

So some of my friends and I drove up to the location where we'll be shooting out upcoming Zombie movie for the local Fiji Kula Film festival.

The Fiji Museum who own the place told us today that it was ok to film their free of charge, in return we give them credit for helping us out.

The place in question is called Bilo Battery and it used to serve as an artillery base during the 2nd world war. The place has long since been abandoned and there wasn't even anyone up there except this one kid who watches the gates and his two friends.

The location is absolutely perfect, and felt as though it was made to be left in ruins only so we could one day shoot our movie there.

Looking at the place I have no idea why no one has ever bothered to film a horror movie there, it is just screaming to scare you.

I spent about 20mins or so just taking pictures and going over the script for the movie in my head with the scenery I had around me. Then I decided to grab my mate's mobile phone and put together a little mock shoot, just to get the feel of the place and try out some of the angles that were coming to mind.

I put the whole thing together by simply pausing the camera on the phone and then running around to reposition for the next shot, then I added some music with a software called Video Pad that I got online for free. For the real edit I'll be using Adobe Premier though.

Check out my buddy Wilson's blog for more info on the short film.

Off Topic: Find the Duck

2010-05-26T16:20:00.002+12:00

So I've recently started working for an Australian kids magazine.

Which is a pretty sweet deal cause I do all the drawings at home and then just email them over and then get paid on Friday. The down side is that there are a shizz load of drawings to do, which pretty much keeps me busy for most of the day, so it's kinda like a real job.

I've been doing a whole bunch of pages based on articles and stories that's provided to me, but today I had a fun page. I was told draw something and then hide a duck some where in it.

... yes. Hide a duck.

In fact the page is called Find the Duck!

So I did this page here and I was actually really happy with it, though I think I could have hidden the duck better.

Mind you it is for little kids... hopefully they'll be distracted by the nice colours and not see the duck right away.

Behold the Necronomicon!

2010-05-25T22:09:00.004+12:00

I got my hands on my very own copy of the Necronomicon today, and man is it awesome!

With a whole lot of work in this week, I was barely able to read the first few stories, but just holding this beast in my hand and going through the pages and the art was enough to slice a grin ear to ear across my face.

The proper title of the book is NECRONOMICON: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, and it is a collection of over 30 stories and poems by the master story teller himself. I've heard the book get some slack about how some of the lesser known Lovecraft work isn't in it, but it has all the ones I was looking for, along with the popular ones.

The art work scattered through out the book are wonderful to look at, and add a very cool feel to the book, though some of them are repeated here and there ><

Sadly I don't have a working camera right now so I can't post shots of me slicing my palms and giving blood sacrifices to the book, but I found some pics of it over here.

All in all this is an awesome addition to my ever growing old horror/ sci fi collection of books, with the other two recent additions being William Hope Hodgson's House on the Boarderland and The Boats of the Glen carrie.

Next week I'm expecting The Horror stories of Robert E. Howard and The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, so I'll be quite the slimy book worm for awhile. With work and all these books, how will I ever find the time to finish Ghostbusters: The Game?

Zombie Film project

2010-05-24T14:52:00.005+12:00

So we have a film festival coming up, and ever since this festival has been running my friends and I have been wanting to enter.

But for various reasons we have done so.

Well this year my buddy Wilson has really been rally up the guys and pushed all the right buttons to set our film entry in motion. When he asked me what sort of movie I would like to do, my obvious answer was:

"Lets do a zombie movie bitch!"

... I didn't say bitch.

But we are doing a zombie movie! We call it Kania Na Yalo Bula which is Fijian for Eat the Living.

I'm not going to give away too much just yet, but we have done up the first draft of the script and scouted a few locations we want to use. There's this mad abandon millitary site that we want to use, and we're currently working on getting permission for that, but we have a back up plan in case that fails.

The basic premise is that a couple heads into the woods to meet up with some friends who are out on a camping trip. They discover that their friends have been messing with things they shouldn't have, and now they're on the tun from crazy flesh eating zombies.

The idea may not be the most original, but it will defiantly be a first for the Fiji Film festival, plus as an editor and camera guy, I'm looking to try out some interesting stuff with the shots.

Like I said I'll keep you guys posted on whatever's new... And I'll be looking to put the film up somewhere for you guys to see when it's done. My buddy Wilson has a write up about the project over at his site.

Off Topic: Frank Frazetta 1928-2010

2010-05-11T08:13:00.008+12:00

I was sad to hear that yesterday one of my favourite artists of all time passed away.

Frank Frazetta, one of the great artists who defined the look of savage sword and fantasy, passed away at the age of 82. No cause of death has been put out yet, but he had been sick for some time having suffering from several strokes over the years.

The first time I was introduced to his work was through his involvement in the 1983 rotoscoped film Fire and Ice. I watched that movie to bits, and would spend hours just scribbling out the imagery in it.

Then I went mad for his art when I started getting into Conan, and became fascinated by his awesome Conan covers. To me he his vision of my favourite Cimmerian was the defining interpretation, and most every other artist that followed on Conan would pull from his powerful images. His Conan is what I see in my head when I read the stories.

If you do a Google search of Frazetta's name, it will bring you to a lot of his work, but if you'd like more of an "In depth" look, be sure to check out Frazetta: Painting with Fire which is an awesome doucumentry on his life and work.

Frank Frazetta was a great artist who has left us a massive legacy in his amazing work, and he will be dearly missed.

I'm Not Alone: Good till you get something better.

2010-05-09T06:58:00.010+12:00

So the other day I came across an interesting game titled I'm Not Alone.I found out about the game via a link over at Bloody Disgusting while going through their games section, and by the looks of it I became very intrigued.

Not that looks are everything when it comes to video games, but you just looking at this pic below, how could I not want to play it.

They had me at "creepy zombies"

You play the part of an exorcist hired to rid a mansion of the nasties that haunt it, this puts you up against hordes of flesh hungry zombies, nasty poltergeists and creeps that look like they stepped out of the Grudge movies. Behind all this there's somewhat of an intriguing plot to be found, which involves bloody ritualistic kills which plagued with the evil that haunts it.

The game looks pretty good for what is essentially an indie title, but it has a few shortcomings which get in the way of what might have otherwise been a cool horror title.

Relax I'm an exorcist... who sounds like Antonio Banderas.

The controls feel a little clunky, with ridiculous things such as not being able to equip weapons while moving, and when you finally do get them out there a slight issue with hit detection, which means you standing there trying to hit things that are right in front of you, but sometimes your hit will find them, and other times that same hit will just slide right through them.

The game plays a little like the first Silent Hill game, where you walk around, collecting clues to things and solving puzzles. Things such as playing the piano that unlocks a sequence here or finishing a chess game that gives you an item. But a lot of this just feels really dated and progress sometimes becomes really slow as some of these puzzles can be very vague and even illogical at times.

The graphics are good, but not good enough to warrant the long load times that clutters the game. Having to escape the game to save your progress only makes this more tedious, as there are not quick saves or save points in-game.

What saves this game is despite all it's shortcomings, I'm Not Alone manages to establish a creepy atmosphere, and though some of the voice acting is horrible, it gives the game a sort of B-movie feel that serves well to some extent. The baddies you fight have interesting intro animations, as you watch zombies struggle to climb out of the floors to get you, and death animations where a bigger evil reaches out of the ground in the form of creep tentacles to claim the dead bodies. There's also this interesting feature where you are able to step into the unseen world of ghosts and demons to combat things you otherwise wont be able to see.

The somewhat large scale of the game world allows for decent exploration, which I enjoyed a lot, and solving puzzles relating to the murdered victims lead to some unsettling details.

As I had mentioned, being reminiscent of titles such as Silent Hill or even the ps1 Alone in the Dark, with very little to no innovation of game play over these past titles, I'm Not Alone provides decent entertainment.

You won't even be picking up the title if you had a big name horror game to play, so if your out for a quick fix of some horror action, this be the game for you.

Marian Call: Zombie Cheerleading Camp

2010-05-08T07:04:00.002+12:00

Watch out for the punk mandoline ... it's awesome.

Shellshock 2: Some B movie fun?

2010-05-07T22:35:00.010+12:00

Shellshock 2 gets so much slack from so many game review sites. Some of these critics flat out tell you that this game is shit and that you should avoid it like the plague, maybe not in so many words though.

But when I watch all these videos of people bashing it, and saying it sucks, all I can see is the messy zombie kills and cheap thrill scares that make me think of it as some kind of B-grade horror movie, and some of those can be a lot of fun. I'm not arguing that this isn't a shit game mind you, I'm just saying that it's a shit game that I would like to play.

The story follows the games hero who is a solider in the Vietnam war, who ends up at a research site that's working with a new top secret bio-weapon. It seems somehow this weapon got out of hand and now there's a strange infection spreading across the area which is bringing the dead back to life. One of the first casualties of this infection is your very own brother....

Now you have to survive this whole mess... and find out the secret behind Project: White Knight.

Funny thing though is that even though the average rating site Metacritic has no site review higher than 55 with an average of 40, the user reviews for this game are mad though. So it seems some people enjoyed it, and enjoyed it enough to take the time to log into the inter-web and tell other people that they enjoyed it.

That says something right?

This scene looks pretty cool

Ah well, this thing is selling for like $8 at a place in town, so I'll pick it up and give it ago. If it sucks it just means I'm 8 bucks short for cigarettes.

Besides... I liked the first Shellshock game, though that was made by Guerilla games who went on to make the Killzone franchise for the PS3, while Shellshock 2 is made by Rebellion Development who specialise in epic fails like Alien Vs Predator 2010 and Rouge Warrior.

If anything maybe this game will be like a B grade horror movie, you know it's not going to be great, but it's spotting some ideas that you kinda like, and all you can hope for is a few cheap ass thrills.

Bloody Childhood memories.

2010-05-07T08:02:00.011+12:00

There's no denying the greatness of such classic games like Yoshi's Island or Castslevania on the old school game systems. These games and many others like them, shaped the childhoods of the gamers of today, laying the basics for the skills and appreciation that games of today thrive on.

Ever since I saw the advert for it inside one of my comic books as a kid, very few retro games continue to thrill and fascinate me like Splatterhouse.

Click to enlarge

Adventuring into the horror mansion of Doctor West (possibly inspired Lovecrafts Herbert West, from the Re-Animator) our hero Rick finds himself an artifact called the Terror Mask, which transforms him into a hulking mass of bone crushing muscle, aiding him in his quest to save his kidnapped girlfriend Jennifer.

Releasing originally in the arcades in 1988 by Namco, Splatterhouse is arguably the maddest horror title of its time. The game made great use of the generations graphics, pumping in tones of horror movie inspired blood and gore, with baddies straight out of some fever induced nightmare, looking at it now you can see that somehow the game managed to get away with a lot.

Hey baby go home!

Fighting giant dangling foetuses with chainsaws, ripping off the head of animated teddy bears which then turn into blood filled demons, rummaging through cellars filled with cut up body parts, if this were a movie it would have been a video nasty.

The release of Splatterhouse 2 on the Sega Genesis brought the game into the home, which is my favourite of the series. Sadly the port of the game outside of Japan was heavily watered down, but thanks to the goodness of ROMs and such, getting your hands on an uncut version of the game isn't hard. Part three rounded off the series, but not before giving way to some weird spin off game that I can not understand.

Well now seventeen years since the release of part three, a new Splatterhouse will be busting onto our video game consoles, boasting every bit of the blood and gore that was the series trade mark.

In fact, it looks as though this game will be redefining the term "Blood and Gore" for video games, as it has buckets loads of it all over the damn screen. Being developed by Namco Bandi Games, the game is set for a late 2010 release. I've been following this thing for awhile now, and so far it's looking like a title that will definitely be one of my must haves this year. It will follow the same beat em up style of the old series, but with a supped up combat system that developers say will be very brutal. It gets so extream that Rick can now be dismembered, and he can use his limbs as weapons.

There's an official websit e up for the game, which has heaps of screen shots and videose, as well as a cool model viewer where you can check out some of the new nasties you will be taking on. There's pics of the developers taking part in all kinds of crazy promotions too, like a recent metal music awards show where the game team sponsored some of the awards.

If you want to find out more about the series be sure to check out this awesome fan site, which has lots of details on the titles as well as other cool things such as the ROMs for the games.

Literally getting chills

2010-05-07T00:12:00.010+12:00

Video games are a lot like movies in the way that you have your big studio movies that take everything by storm, and you have the smaller studios that are doing their own thing.

It's a real treat when you come across that small time movie, that just grabs you by the throat and screams greatness. Movies like Dog Soldiers, 28 Days later or even 500 days of Summer (:P), these films tend to have a charm that the bigger budgets just can't buy.

Games work the same way.

You have your massive titles that come out with such fury that every game site has them plastered across their front page, boasting mad reviews and what not, and then you have that one game that you didn't even know was out there... and it totally hits the spot.

Cryostasis: The sleep of reason is one such game for me. I had posted some news about it a long time back, and had totally forgotten about it.

I came across it recently when I was fishing around for horror titles that I could get for the pc, and on some site somewhere I came across the games cover. Then one search led to another and a few links down the line I knew I absolutely had to get this game.

Developed by a Russian studio called Action Forums, who I can't seem to find anything about, the game is a survival/ exploration horror game unlike anything I've played.

The game takes place in the North Pole, where you play the part of Alexander Nesterov, a Russian meteorologist who boards a nuclear ice breaker called The North Wind, which has been wrecked on some ice burgs. At first there are no signs of the ships crew, but as you continue to investigate you find that something quite sinister has happened aboard the North Wind, turning it's crew into crazed zombie like monsters.

The most interesting thing about the game is the way the story unfolds itself. As you play through you come across the remains of some of the crew who didn't become monsters. These people died in either horrible accidents when the ship hit the ice bank, or at the hands of the crazed crew. Normally what ever killed these people becomes an obstacle for you, and to get past this you need to tap into the dead persons Death Echo.

O yeah... this is where this game gets interesting.

The death echo allows you to relive the moments that lead to the persons death, and by saving them, usually by means of avoiding an accident or fixing some bit of the ship, you get to progress further.

For example; You come across a body holding onto some floating debris in a flooded part of the ship, you can't get across because the water is freezing. So what you do is tap into the dead persons death echo, in this case it's a guy trying to cross the flooded area. You find him a rubber raft, guide him through the zombie infested waters, and then park the raft where you main character can reach it. When you get the guy across safely, the echo ends and your staring at a rubber raft where the floating body used to be.

There are tones of puzzles like this through out the game, and the echo bits are freaking tense and scary, because you know if you don't act fast enough the person is going to die.

Aside from these encounters, you also run into the zombie crew members while your exploring. You can dispatch of these guys with a cool assortment of make shift weapons, as well as old time guns and pistols that you find here and there. My favourite weapon though is the axe, swings slow, but nails em good.

Another interesting bit of game play is the importance of keeping warm. Being on a wrecked ship in the middle of the North pole is not good for you at all. Lose a little heat and simple things like running and walking around become harder to do, lose too much heat and your dead.

Luckily though there are lights and machinery scattered about the ship which provide just the right amount of heat to keep you going. Some of the bigger machines juice you up for quite a bit.

I have to say the biggest star though would have to be the ship it's self. Being inside the ship is like walking around in the belly of a monster. Massive in size but divided into destroyed sections, the environment perfectly captures the feeling of dread and isolation. As you scurry around, your breath steaming in front of your face, while you peer through your frozen goggles, seeing icy walls and flooded areas, giant machines and huge dark industrial areas of pipes and ladders, the North Wind is a cold, dark death trap that's already claimed it's crew... and now it wants you.

There is a story that plays out about the crew and what happened, as well as a sort of interwoven tale that explains your death echo trips, but I don't want to spoil that.

All in all this would have to be one of the coolest horror games I've played, and easily makes it into my top 5 list of all time favourites. Sadly the game didn't get the mad review scores I thought it deserved, with Gamespots review being one of the few bigger game sites that really liked it, but when it comes to these review scores you really need to take em with a grain of salt.

What's often important to me is the games hook, that is something unique to a game that appeals directly to me. Like if say there was a mad military shooter that got outstanding reviews, and a zombie game that is said to be bloody and fun. You know I'm grabbing that zombie game. Classic example would be The Evil Dead series of games which weren't the favourites of many a game sites, but I played those games to bloody little bits and still consider Evil Dead: Fist full of Boomsticks one of my favourite ps2 games, not to mention Hail to the King which made the last days of my ps1 mad fun.

Cryostasis came in at number one on Gamesutra's list of Top 10 over looked games of 2009.

I heard the call late.

2010-05-04T21:38:00.007+12:00

So yesterday I brought home my brand new PC, with the whole graphic card and the quad cores things. My last PC was about 5 years old, and it did everything I needed it to do. It ran photo-shop, and let me go online. I could type in word and listen to my music, and I could play my SNES Roms.

What more could one ask?

Well when I came home with the pc, my friend MJ who put the whole thing together gave me a whole bunch of games to try out. He gave me Just Cause 2 and Borderlands... this one really creepy game called Metro 2033 that I was looking forward to playing.

It's not like I didn't have games to play, every now and then I'd rip shit up on my 360, but my buddies Wilson and MJ get tones of new PC games every month. My brain hurts just thinking about all the games I'm eventually going to leach off them.

Today though I got myself a game that totally made me forget about all the fancy titles I have on my pc right now. As soon as I came across it I knew I had to play it, and after spilling two hours non stop into it, I needed a coffee and a smoke.

The game is called Call of Cthulhu: Dark corners of the Earth, which came out back in 2005 and it is one of the most engrossing games I have ever played.

As the title would suggest it's based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and it follows the tale of a private detective who is hired by a store owner to find one of his missing workers, who has disappeared in an isolated town called Innsmouth.

But right from the beginning you know that things aren't what they seem, and that the people of Innsmouth are hiding something sinister. A dark force hangs over the town, and its presence is nothing short of cosmic.

The story is told through a first person narrative, but this game is not a first person shooter. In fact I didn't even get a gun till like two hours into it, and even then I had to run away from baddies. The game focuses more on the story elements, developing characters and tossing in lots of dialogue. This combined with all the written material you pick up, makes it almost like an interactive horror novel.

In fact the story is so good, that after awhile I forgot about the 5 year old graphics, and I just got sucked into the creepiness tension of it. The game does a great job of creating an eerie atmosphere with old world buildings and moody music, plus I had my GF "Back seat playing" through it with me, which made the whole thing a fun experience.

In terms of game play there isn't much that is new, there's a few bits where you need to sneak around in "Stealth mode" which is cool, because your character sort of holds his breath and you can imagine him all tense as he creeps about trying not to be seen.

You also collect clues through the dialogue as well as through books and notes you pick up. These let you know where you need to go next, or what you need to do when you get there. The game doesn't have your standard interface layout, with the health bars and ammo and such. Instead you have bleed effects that consume the screen, and all it takes is a one or two hits before your out of it.

No recharging shields here sorry.

One really cool aspect of the game is the sanity meter. Though not something you see represented as a bar on screen, the sanity meter kicks in when you directly look at something that's unsettling. It could be anything from a weird shadow that crept past your window, or a dead body lying on the floor, or simply pictures of yourself wallpapering some creeps room.

Once you get exposed to too much messed up shit, the screen messes up and you start to see things and even hear things. Sometimes you hear your inner child crying to go home, other times you hear multiple voices in your head telling you to do things. It can get so severe that you could even kill your self.

The game is full of things that is creepy and sometimes disturbing, all the while keeping true to the spirit of Lovecraft. The amount of mythos lore that is in this thing will make any fan of Lovecraft very happy. As far has fans of horror games go, let me say that this plays like a point and click adventure game that's been slapped into FPS body, being more Silent Hill 1 than Resident Evil 5.

Definitely give this ago if you get the chance.

Aquaman behind you!

2010-05-02T16:50:00.004+12:00

Drew this after I read a very cool issue of the DC monthly Brave and the Bold today, which had Aquaman and The Demon taking on a Cthulhu inspired sea monster and it's underwater fiends.

The art was fantastic and the story was slightly creepy, and it also showed Aquaman to be a really cool hero. It actually made me want to look up some more Aquaman reads.

Check out the IGN review of the issue here.