“Epic!” – A great looking game.
“Cool.” – Solid mechanics and physics.
“Eeh…” – Repetitive missions.
“…Bleh…” – Headache inducing cameras.

Sometimes on my way home from work at night when there are no cars on the road with me, I like to pretend that I’m the only person left in the world after a zombie apocalypse, I try to imagine what it would be like to know that right over the next hill a swarm of the undead could be waiting for my headlights to awaken their primitive minds with the promise of fresh brains behind the wheel. I pretend that I’ve got machine-guns and rocket-launchers rigged onto my truck, and a simple button on my steering wheel will set off the turbo-boosters allowing me to accelerate ridiculously fast and easily ramp off the hill and soar over the zombie fiends.
That’s normal to think about while your driving, right? Right??
The folks at EXOR Studios took all of the above and produced Zombie Driver, a game in which you control a vehicle of your choosing and go around rescuing survivors of a zombie apocalypse that are stranded throughout the city.
Just seeing that the game was called Zombie Driver had me expecting very little from the game. I really thought I was going to get three basic things from the game: 1.) Fast cars 2.) Running over Zombies 3.) Weapons for my fast cars.
Check, check, and check. But wait, there’s more.
Not only do you get fast cars, you get environmentally invincible cars. That means that you can be going 100 mph and slam straight into a wall and take no damage. Of course the zombies will beat the bejesus out of your car if they get a hold of it, but this removes the added stress that would undoubtedly come from trying to obey traffic laws, thus increasing the arcade-y feel of the game by a lot.
If you take the time to slow down enough to look around you will see nothing but great looking environments, the graphics in Zombie Driver are surprisingly well done for such a simple game. It seems a shame that because there is no need to slow down, except the few times when you are picking up the stragglers, the only time you see the scenery is when it’s a blurry streak passing you by at 85 mph.
Speaking of blurry, if you get the slightest bit of motion sickness from anything, Zombie Driver is not for you. There is something about the movement of the camera that was just giving me a headache, and I never get motion sick from anything. I could only really play Zombie Driver for about 20 minutes at a time with a short break in between to avoid getting too dizzy. Perhaps a top down camera angle wasn’t the best choice, it seemed too…claustrophobic. Like, I couldn’t really see past the edge of my screen, and in a city full of zombies I think seeing where you are heading is a pretty important thing.
If you are expecting me to go deep into the story of the game, well I’m going to disappoint you, not because I like to disappoint you, but because there really isn’t a story. There is a bit of narrative during the loading screen to each level, which makes it seem like some sort of story was attempted, but it just kinda got old reading the same sort of “go rescue these people” message between each level. I stopped reading the briefings after the third level. The developers might have just been better off sticking with a “just rescue the people at each level” overall message, then try to correlate it all into some sort of plot.

Zombie Driver is a straightforward vehicle based zombie-slaying arcade game. If you think running over zombies with a limousine and a flamethrower attached to the top of your limo sounds like fun, well then head on over to: The Zombie Driver STEAM download page and download it! It’s only ten bucks, too!
Final Grade: C+

PS: While writing this article I came across a video of a “Darkness Mod” for Zombie Driver, it makes the game happen at night and the only lights are coming from your car’s headlights and wherever there is a fire burning. It looks really impressive and adds a whole new feel to the game.

EXOR Studios Homepage

*According to new blogging regulations I must tell you that the kind folks at EXOR Studios provided me with a copy of Zombie Driver which I based my review upon.*

Brought to you by Tampa Bay Lightning’s Steven Stamkos.

That kid was born the day after I was. In-sane.

Local Advertisement – TDM Auto Sales.

A National Geographic photographer traveled to Antarctica to photograph some Leopard Seals. On the expedition he ran into what his Canadian guide could best summarize as “Bloody hell, that’s the biggest seal I’ve ever seen! Time to get to the water, ehy?”

Not as bad as his, I bet you.

The wallpaper-sized image is linked through the image.
National Geographic – Photo by Luke Chua

About as often as a UFO is seen over somewhere in Mexico there is a video game commercial being broadcast that really makes me want to give up playing video games. The reason being: I see these commercials and I’m not a fool, I know enough about advertising to see what kind of demographic something is being marketed to. So when I see some flashy background pulled right from a Fox News segment and some guy with an unnaturally gravely voice starts telling me what’s so good about the game being plastered onto my television screen…it’s kinda of embarrassing.
But, then there are those those few commercials for video games that are just so good they could pass for movie trailers. Commercials like the widely popular Halo – ODST trailer or the intense Resident Evil 5 trailer. Last night I saw a trailer for Assassins Creed that really impressed me.
The commercial shows the faces, notably the eyes, of people frozen in shock. Then it cuts to one familiar face that then blends into game footage, revealing those people with the looks of horror frozen across their faces were the victims of Enzio, the protagonist in Assassins Creed 2.
Epicly cool trailer.

I live in an area that seems to produce some of the funniest and creepiest local advertisements that I’ve ever seen. Chances are good that the local ads from your area are not so hot either. So in a new section I’m calling “Local Ads” I will share with you some of these magnificent advertisements.

At the start of the summer, the guys on the Totally Rad Show (seriously, that’s the name of one of my favorite podcasts) made a wager amongst themselves about the top 10 grossing summer movies; not to be confused with top *favorite* summer movies.
So, I did just that, and here was my list, beginning with what I would believe to be the highest grossing film.
(Numbers in brackets indicate the actual position on the list, no brackets means it didn’t make top 10.)

1.) Transformers 2 [1]
2.) Star Trek [5]
3.) Wolverine [8]
4.) Terminator
5.) Up [3]
6.) Harry Potter [2]
7.) Public Enemies
8.) Bruno
9.) Ice Age [7]
10.) District 9

Now, looking at IMDB’s “Top grossing movies for 2009″ list I can see I missed all but one. The Hangover and Monsters Vs. Aliens really surprised me by making it up there. I liked the Hangover, but when I wrote out this list I never thought it would skyrocket like it did, and Monsters vs. Aliens as well.
End result – 10% correct.

This past Monday I purchased Left 4 Dead (Valve’s zombie survival/horror game) in preparation for the upcoming sequel that is due out in a few weeks. I’ve been playing it a lot. It’s fun, addicting, and frantic. I really recommend you and your friends to get a copy and give it a shot in the head.
Anyway, I stayed up way too late last night playing Left 4 Dead and had a blast. This morning I’m awoken by a smash. Now, understand that I was just waking up, as was my brain. Since I was sleeping when the crash occurred my brain had no visual reason of what had caused that loud crash, so it immediately threw into my mind’s eye the last thing I had seen before I fell asleep: Zombies beating the crap out of my safe-house’s door. So with “zombies” fresh on my mind, a jolt of adrenaline is shot through me when a few seconds after the loud crash there is an even louder *BRRR-CRACK* from right outside my door.
This is it, I’m going to die.
I leap out of my bed and run to the door amidst more crashing and snapping, maybe there is still time for me to grab my keys and put my “Zombie Apocalypse Plan A” to the test. As swiftly open my door a portion of the wall infront of my room breaks into pieces and a human being stumbles through. I’m so glad I didn’t have to pee.
I slam the door shut and brace against it, suddenly hating the fact that my door has no lock. I hear coughing and hacking from behind my door, but the expected blows against my door never come. I slowly back up and peer out my window to see…
…construction trucks.
Half my house is having construction done to it, and my sister’s room (next to mine) is being enlarged, they had to knock a portion of the wall down in order to do so…
Morale of the story: don’t stay up too late playing video games.

That’s the hole in the wall that the Z came out of, of course, it wasn’t that neat and square at first.

I just got in from my store’s annual “Seasons of Samples” or “Sample the Seasons” or “Here’s free food, buy your other shit while you’re still here” event. Everyone I asked said it went well…I believe otherwise.
While the store was busy for the 3 hour event, it’s heavily outweighed by the amount of manpower/organization as well as the cost of supplies that goes into such an event.
I’m not good at math, but I figured that 9 out of 10 people that attended were just there for the samples and will probably not come back until next year. So, doing some quick trigonometry I was able to figure that close to 90% of the customers in the store were unloyal customers, perhaps even *gasp* freeloaders!
“Freeloaders, at a sample-fest?.”
Yes.
Even though I was given the task to lug around a garbage bag the entire day like an obnoxious stepchild at an amusement park, I still posses enough management intelligence to realize that freeloading unloyal customers are not the sort you want to attain. Reasons being: 1.They tend to not shop at your store often enough to accurately predict sales. 2.They tend to smell. 3. They tend to smell.
In conclusion they will probably deter your ideal Americanized family-of-four stereotype that are typically pictured in the advertisements (or as our friends from England say: “AdverTISments”) of whatever local grocery store your town falls host to.
But what do i know?
“Alot”
Thanks.
“Your welcome.”
Wow, this is weird.
“Yea, kinda”
You need to go.
“Ok, cya.”

As I watched the battalions of elderly devour gram after gram of cookies, Dixie cup after Dixie cup of mashed potatoes, ounce after ounce of pieces of strangely tangy meat, it dawned on me…people really only put forth an effort when they know they will be rewarded. The people who put forth the effort to swing by on their way home, didn’t stop by just to see if our $1 Tostinos Pizzas tastes better then the ones Pubics has, they came because they knew they would get samples. The management didn’t put this whole thing together out of the pure kindness of their hearts, they did it to try to put a dent in Pubics stable customer base.
You are probably thinking “Well duh, Tommy, who is going to work for free?” and while that is definitely true, that is not the sword I’m using to make my point.
My point is: why? Why can’t human beings just do nice things? Sure we give a homeless guy a few bucks, but is that really out of pure kindness, or so that others (including your “god”) perceive you as a “better person”? Grab the bill for the group; kindness? or an attempt to impress? Buy your visiting nephew an action figure; kindheartedness, or a feeble attempt at excusing yourself for not seeing him in so long? Doing “good deeds”; being a genuine good person, or trying to gain a first class ticket to heaven?
Whatever it is, i truly doubt that it was 100% true to heart.

Wow, this turned out to be way deeper than I thought it would be.
“That’s what she said.”
Problem solved.