The DAN ZONE

Remember the horror of junior high? You involuntarily leave behind the safety of six hours of the same four walls, the same 25-30 fellow students, the same desk, the same teacher, not to mention the right to act like a child because you are a child—a secure and predictable environment with few surprises. You’re thrust into the nightmare of the teen years—nine different classrooms, nine different teachers, over a hundred different fellow students, and three minute marathons from one end of the building to another that include a pit stop at your locker for the proper books. On top of that, there are your budding hormones, acne, sprouting of hair down there just as you are forced to undress for gym in front of other members of the same sex…. junior high school is definitely the harshest transition-less period in life after dropping out of the warmth of the womb into a cold, cold world.

That’s why I so fondly recall many of the horrors of junior high. First there was the change of venue…and social situation. Growing up in one of the most sheltered, WHITE areas of Long Island, I understood that some of my favorite singers like Donna Summer and Michael Jackson were, you know, black, but I wasn’t aware I’d actually meet a black person! Okay, I exaggerate. We actually had one black girl transfer into my sixth grade class the year before, for a couple of months, and then disappear just as quickly after because, as my teacher explained to the whole class, her house burned down. Her house burned down??? I’m no conspiracy theorist, but even my pre-adolescent mind at the time was like, ‘The house of the new, only black family in town burned down???”

Anyway, the cool thing about my junior high was that it was smack dab in the middle of a notoriously ghetto town! My school district was set up so that kids would go to the elementary school and high school in their own town, but for those two middle years of junior high, kids from every school in the district were sent to the single junior high in the district. So here you have all these naïve white kids who never met a black kid before thrown into a school that actually had a slight black majority. The majority standing we took for granted was wiped away in an instant, our obsession with the Go-Go’s and A Flock of Seagulls was wicka-wicka-wicka scratched into the street beats of Grandmaster Flash, childish one-on-one fights were replaced by serious knife-wielding gang fights in the schoolyard, and a 13-year-old black girl dropped out of school after the first two weeks not because her house burned down, but so she could give birth to her baby, which she brought back to school two weeks later to show off to all her friends in the schoolyard…and you would think that would be what ignorant white pre-teens would have to worry about. Nope. You wanted to become friends with the black kids—so they could protect you from all the evil white kids in the school! Yeah, junior high was definitely a lesson in the truths about race relations.

The first real challenge with junior high was the fact that the school was over a mile from my house. The thought of not being able to run 8 short blocks home in times of trouble was terrifying. We had to get up extra early to go stand out in the cold on the corner ‘bus stop,’ which is where the bullying begins. You tried to stay hidden behind, well, the STOP sign, which never gave you full coverage, and simply hoped the bullies would target your BFF since you were both in diapers instead of you. You’d try avoiding any trouble by using the timing method—figure out about what time the school bus arrived every day, then wait until the last second and RUN all the way to the bus stop to catch it. If you didn’t, you’d have to go home and tell dad the awful news—that he had to drive a mile and a half out of his way on his commute to work.

Missing the school bus was also something you never wanted to do AFTER classes. If you missed the bus, you’d have to hang around for the ‘late’ bus, which didn’t show up until like five (and was reserved for the WORST kids in the school who were there late for detention!). As for the bus itself, well, here’s where the irony comes in. The COOL place to sit was the last three seats on either side of the aisle in the back of the bus. So…a little more than three decades before, crackers (oh sorry—we called us honkies back then) made African-Americans sit at the back of the bus, which ended up becoming the place white kids wanted to sit the most in my youth. I know, it’s obviously because that’s where you can do the most inappropriate things without the bus driver seeing. And man, did the bullies take advantage of that cover. Things could get pretty brutal back there for the geeks. The best was when an occasional geek would try to take a stand and run on the bus first and claim one of those coveted back seats defiantly—until one of the biggest bullies walked right up to him and dragged him, kicking and screaming (sometimes with bloodshed) from the seat. It was like a metaphorical Roman Empire conquest being enacted before our very eyes.

There were fun moments on the bus as well. My personal favorite memory is of the tipping attempt. See, right near the end of our bus route, the bus had to turn onto a major turnpike at a 45 degree angle. The bus driver was a pretty cute young dude who liked to speed and flirt with the tough mean girl bitches who sat in the back through his rear view mirror (I always pretended he was pouting this lips and batting those eyes at me). So the girls (and the male bullies as well), would instruct the driver each day to hit the turn at maximum speed, and then command all the other kids on the bus to run to one side of the bus to see if we could tip it. Of course, we all complied, because death was a better option than saying no to a bully. Usually, the bus driver would tease us, driving fast until right before hitting the turn. But one particular day, he must have been feeling feisty (one of the hottest mean girls actually bothered to come to school that day), and he hit the turn at what felt like 90 miles an hour. All we scared peons rushed for our lives (or deaths) to one side of the bus as instructed (with just one dirty look). The bus screeched around the turn. The two wheels on the other side of the bus lifted off the fricking ground. We all screamed in terror as the road right outside our windows came closer and closer to our faces…. Needless to say, not even the bullies were brave enough to ever try that game again.

The dependence on the bus actually caused a problem when it came time to go home sick, especially if you had a mother who didn’t drive, like me. Being a very anxiety inducing time for a pre-teen, my junior high years also found me very often getting some major stomach ‘viruses,’ to put it nicely (It didn’t help that I didn’t know back then that I was lactose intolerant and would have cereal and milk for breakfast every morning). I don’t know how I even graduated junior high, because I went home sick all the time. As for the stomach virus part, which made a bathroom a necessity, here was another catch—the stalls in the junior high boys’ room DID NOT HAVE DOORS. Yeah. No kid ever used a bowl in a school filled with cruel pre-teens. So if you ever had to take care of business, you’d go to the nurse’s office, where she had a single person bathroom. All you had to do was say you weren’t feeling well, and she would reply, “Do you need to use the bathroom?” Clearly, she KNEW what the issue was. You’d think the damn school would spring for some doors. Anyway, I was very often in the single person bathroom—I mean, nurse’s office—waiting for my mom to come pick me up. And you know what that entailed? My mom calling a cab company and waiting for them to come pick her up to then drive her to my school to get me as I sat on the nurse’s office single person bathroom bowl sweating it out. Ah, the good old days.

Gym was also an interesting experience. Naturally, dodge ball was the worst, with even the gym teacher taking pleasure in watching the bullies throw the ball like a fricking bullet at the geeks. I still don’t understand where they found the ability or coordination to throw a huge spherical object with one hand with such force. When you were lucky enough to avoid the cannonball and it instead slammed against the bleachers behind you, the sound of the contact could shatter your eardrum. But the bad boys were knocked down a notch when we played football. Talk about awkward moments—our gym teacher was obsessed with making us do it like the professionals, making sure that when we were doing that whole ‘hut, hut, hike’ thing, the back of the one kid’s hand was firmly placed up against the other kid’s perineum. He even demonstrated on one of the students. Boy, talk about a WTF moment in hindsight (literally). And of course, we had a crazy female gym teacher who found her teaching inspiration in the newly released mega hit “Physical” by Olivia Newton-John. For the ten weeks that song was at number one, she had the 45 RPM record blasting on repeat on a turntable in the gym ALL DAY, Olivia’s sweet and sexy voice echoing through every hall in the building. Do you know how hard it was for me to keep my gay ass in class for nine periods when all I wanted to do was run out in the halls in sweats and a head band and do the jumping jacks routine Olivia did in her HBO concert???

Not surprisingly, my fondest memories revolve around food—and experiences that made you want to puke from fright. All the dreadful things that occur in the lunchroom in teen movies are REAL. Junior high lunch was terrifying. First there was the greasy frozen pizza they served us with soggy French fries as the side dish EVERY DAY (One of my all-time favorite meals). But then there was the evil waiting at the end of the lunch line. See, just as you finished paying the lunch lady at the register, two of the biggest, meanest bullies in the school would be waiting for you to walk by while putting your change in your pocket. The change never made it there. You would immediately be asked the rhetorical question, “Got any change?” So you turned it over without argument (and without even a ‘thanks’) because you didn’t want to end up being held outside the school bus window on the way home when the gang was trying to make it tip over.

It being 1982 and all, I was very fond of the classic zippered, hooded sweatshirt, as was everyone that decade. The first thing you did when a food fight broke out in the cafeteria was pull the hood over your head, zip up, and pull those drawstrings so tight you looked like a jawa (which you never said out loud because that kind of geek talk is just asking for it). Of course, the food fights were one-sided, because only the bullies and mean girls threw food. The goal was simply to try and avoid it until the cafeteria monitor—a disgruntled teacher assigned the task during a free-period—decided to put a stop to it. There was one out of control food fight in particular that began when a jealous bully blew a fit because his mean girl girlfriend joined the other mean girls in catcalling when the incredibly hot sports coach walked into the cafeteria one afternoon. I was so proud of myself for surviving that one unscathed. Or so I thought. When I sat down at my desk in my next class after lunch, my friend who sat behind me very carefully tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Um, Dan. You have some food stuck to your back.” I quickly removed my hooded sweatshirt and found…an ENTIRE piece of greasy cafeteria pizza clinging to the back of my sweatshirt.

But that wasn’t the grossest experience of the lunch period. The real danger was in going outside at lunchtime. See, right outside the cafeteria was an area where you could go and hang out after you finished eating, because the disgruntled teacher covering cafeteria duty was so dedicated to actually monitoring what went on between students outside the building. You learned pretty fast that a pizza on the back was a better option than some fresh air. Right outside the cafeteria windows, all the bullies would play handball against a wall. Across from that wall was another wall lined with a fenced off stairwell leading to a maintenance room in the basement. As the bullies used the handball and bricks to practice for crushing skulls in dodge ball, they would often send the ball flying…down into the stairwell. When this happened, the bullies would send the closest unfortunate geek within reach to go get the ball. Said geek would be thrust through the gate and onto the stairs, the gate slamming closed behind him with a very final echo. As the terrified geek ran down the stairs to retrieve the ball, the words “SPIT PIT!” would ring through the schoolyard.  Everyone in shouting distance would come running to the stairwell, surrounding the gate, leaning over it, and…you guessed it. Making the stairwell a spit pit. By the time the poor geek raced back up the stairs with the hand ball, he would be ‘clam’ chowder.

Fortunately, I never fell victim to the spit pit. Which is what makes it one of the fondest memories in my return to junior horror high…

I never thought I’d see so many female body parts so in-my-face in my life, but thanks to Piranha 3-D, one of my new favorite movies, I’ve now had some extremely intimate moments with the female anatomy. How can I love a movie so filled with babes and boobs, you ask? Well, because all the fish get eaten in this film…and again, I’m not talking about the piranha.

There’s no talking about this film without ignoring the giant—well, not elephant—in the room. It’s the bearded clams!!! Not to mention the boobage. Piranha 3-D has more T, A and P than any other rated-R horror film I’ve ever seen. Which made it all the more uncomfortable having two kids under 10-years-old sitting behind us with their mother. WTF? Seriously, with a movie this explicit, not to mention gory, it should be mandatory for the movie theaters to WARN parents trying to bring their kids in. But back to the, um, ‘TAP’ in the film. Ironically, there’s no sex, it’s just nudity. But it’s almost every single chick in the flick. Now I’ve never been to spring break, and I heard it was raunchy, but I had no idea that there are essentially NO girls with any inhibitions about being naked in front of droves of drunk frat boys.

And despite there being no focus on the bodies of the frat boys, Piranha rules!!! It’s everything the snorefest Jaws isn’t. Okay, that’s taking it a little far, because Jaws is a great film…until, you know, the endless monologues on the boat for the last hour of the movie. As far as fun, entertainment, thrills, and suspense, Piranha is much more up there with the classic Jaws 2, the absolute best film in that franchise, and actually pays much more of an homage to the second Jaws. This film truly does for fresh water lakes what Jaws did for salt water ocean. That’s right. This spring break isn’t taking place at the shore, it’s a party on a lake. And shallow water has never been so frighteningly filmed.

The director happens to be the man behind other favorite horror films of mine like the remake of The Hills Have Eyes and the freaky foreign film High Tension. Alexandre Aja shows an amazing ability to cross subgenres of horror films, because every film is good in its own right, but completely different than the others. This film in particular is witty fun, yet soaked with blood and gruesome gore. After seeing the special effects of this film in 3-D, you pretty much have a full sense of how horrible it would be to have your face gnawed off by the razor-sharp teeth of a pack of piranha. The effects are cringe-inducing.

The film is also amazingly American in its portrayal of loads of stupid, drunken college kids just looking to get laid and totally ignoring the authority of law enforcement. And of course, to satire the whole ‘Girls Gone Wild’ phenomenon, there’s Jerry O’Connell as a sleazy porn director who is a big dick—in more ways than one. Not since South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut has a film gone there to such an extent and gotten so many moviegoers to scream in sheer horror at the sight of all the goodness a man has to offer. And speaking of man goodness, the ever-adorable horror director Eli Roth has a small role here, as does black bear Ving Rhames, surprisingly chubby and older now. There’s even an appearance by “Carlos” from Desperate Housewives, and he’s never looked more delicious (unfortunately…). All the kids in the film are pretty much from a bunch of today’s teen television dramas.

Then there’s the six degrees of Spielberg situation. As if to pay tribute to the man who began the man-eating fish craze thirty-five years ago, this film features Elisabeth Shue as the local sheriff. She still looks stunning after all these years and commands the part seriously despite the campy chaos going on elsewhere. Elisabeth appeared as Marty McFly’s girlfriend in the sequels to the Spielberg creation Back to the Future (replacing the original nobody who played the part in the first film, forever killing the trilogy’s continuity), and is here reunited with none other than Christopher Lloyd, who was clearly directed in this film to act EXACTLY like ‘Doc’ Emmett Brown. Awesome. But the best nod to Spielberg and his original fish film is the cameo in the opening scene. I wish Scream 4 luck in finding a first victim for the prologue to top the one in Piranha 3-D.

More fun than Jaws, smartly not taking itself seriously, and with Ray-Ban inspired glasses that are ten times better than the technologically archaic red/blue glasses used for the 1983 classic Jaws 3-D, Piranha had best be just the beginning of a new generation of summer blockbuster fish franchises!!! Because this film bites—in a good way.

Aside from slashers, the 80s also spawned various horror films about the use of human flesh as meat to be served to unsuspecting patrons at restaurants, diners, and such. Motel Hell serves up a seriously demented take on the theme and could be so disturbing, but instead goes the over-the-top exploitation camp route, probably because it would have been way too heavy for 1980 censors if the premise had been taken seriously. So basically it was watered down to Waters…John Waters that is. Yeah, it’s definitely weird enough to be something John Waters could have put on celluloid.

Basically, a freaky redneck man and his hella butch overalls wearing sister have a motel, slaughterhouse and a ‘meat market,’ so you can guess what becomes of guests. Not even Norman Bates thought of a way to turn a profit on being a psycho killer!  This plot could be a simple set up for a whole lot of kills, but instead, the movie is more about the process of exactly how this psycho pair makes sure their meat is perfectly right for use. This shit is heinous. They bury their victims, STILL ALIVE, in their yard up to the head, then cut their throats, severing the vocal chords so the victims can only make these horrible gurgling sounds. After that, they cover their heads with sacks. So every time the psycho pair visits their little crop of people, you see a bunch of sacks wiggling furiously from the dirt while making miserable noises. The goal of the pair is to tenderize the meat through immobility—which requires feeding the ‘garden heads’ by sticking funnels in their mouths.

The psycho pair is portrayed in typical backwoods lunatic creepy comic fashion, not unlike Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive in that respect, where you find the maniacal behavior somehow funny, yet you know coming face-to-face with the freak in real life would be a whole different story. The scenes involving the tormenting of the garden heads are truly horrible, but the film has a bunch of characters and subplots that help distract from over thinking the possibilities of the situation—like, WTF happens when the buried victims poop or pee? Ew…fricking…ew.  There are two chicks who stop their car in the middle of nowhere because there are cows crossing the road—cardboard cows that are part of a trap, making this a moment that could have been high on suspense but is instead somewhat humorous. There is all out slapstick camp when a whip-wielding dominatrix and her male slave, dressed in clear plastic bra and miniskirt (Missing Persons anyone?), think they are about to get into a swinging B&D interlude with the nasty looking, rope carrying psycho pair. Then there’s this trippy neon strobe light experiment the psycho pair performs on the garden heads that could only be a product of 1980. Add to that a role for Wolfman Jack as a reverend, and you can see how far this movie strays from its disturbing main premise

Along with the revolting concept of the garden heads, the ending of this movie also has some pretty strong horror elements. First of all, the garden heads eventually escape, and are these traumatized, almost zombie-like monsters, making for some fantastic horror. And the final scene could have carried the whole movie in a sort of Texas Chainsaw way, when a local cop is chased through the slaughterhouse by a chainsaw swinging maniac wearing a fricking slaughtered pig’s head. What a fantastic creepfest that moment alone is—a visual that could easily stay with viewers forever. It makes a great starting point for a remake if you ask me….

When Dead Rising was released for the Xbox 360 last decade, it was the game that almost pushed me to buy the console sooner rather than later. But it wasn’t long before the user reviews began to hit the net…and I thought, screwdat! The game was painted as a huge frustration that no one wanted to finish (or couldn’t finish). Even so, being the zombie game lover that I am, I waited until the price dropped significantly on the game and purchased it so I’d have it once I bought a 360 (after that had a drastic price drop as well). Meanwhile, I leant the game to a friend, who gave it back to me rather quickly, saying he didn’t have the patience for it and gave up. Yeesh? Was it really as bad as they said?

In the meantime, the game was ported to the Wii as Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop. Reviews said that, aside from lesser graphics, less zombies on screen at one time, and some bosses and other game play features being removed, plus weird additions like annoying zombie poodles and birds that dropped bombs (huh?), the port fixed everything that was wrong with the 360 version. So I got me a copy of it and blasted through it on the Wii. It was fun and bone chilling: the kind of zombie mall experience the original 1978 Dawn of the Dead movie should have been (the game coming closer to the brilliance of the far superior remake. That’s right. I said it.). Whether you’re playing on the Wii or 360, this is the way you should feel if you were in a mall filled with zombies—and I’m not talking the blue faced kinds like in the Romero farce. Dead Rising shows you what Dawn of the Dead 1978 didn’t—that being trapped in a mall with zombies would be terrifying, not laughable pie throwing, carnival music absurdity.

So these past few weeks I decided to finally take on Dead Rising 360. And all the reviewers were RIGHT!!! I can see why people hated this game. Patience and a learning curve is one thing, but this game is structured so that you are basically required to replay the beginning parts over and over and over again before you can move on. Why? Because the game only offers ONE save slot and the game is conquered by accomplishing timed ‘cases.’ So if at any time you save because you’re low on health and don’t want to have to do a bunch of stuff over if you die, you could be saving yourself into a corner—a time frame that is too short to finish the time based case you’ve already begun. Fail this case and guess what? You have to begin the game over again. That’s the most glaring problem, but there are others.

Your character is Frank, a reporter determined to get his story. So as you run around the mall trying to solve the mystery of how the zombie outbreak began while beating down zombies with everything a mall has to offer—from purses to guns–you also have to take photos, fight occasional ‘psychopaths’ (aka: bosses), and rescue survivors then escort them back to the security room while fending off hundreds of zombies. You get constant calls from this dude watching the monitors in the security room suggesting you go take care of other situations in the mall, called ‘scoops.’ These scoops are not detrimental to finishing the game, but are so tempting (because they earn you level up points to give your character a fighting chance)  that you end up getting sidetracked by them, and forget you have a timed case that needs taking care of. Add to this the fact that essentially there is no safe place from the hoards of zombies to heal yourself or switch your real time inventory, and you are talking major TV screen/flying game controller marriage… Of course, to make it all better, you can actually enter any of the clothes stores in the mall to change—and the cut scenes reflect your new threads. I squeezed Frank into a child’s size shorts and Tee with a baseball cap—he looked like he was wearing a cut off shirt and Daisy Dukes (like every guy in the 80s), which revealed his hairy legs and chest and bulging muscles. Frank’s hot and the eye candy gave me motivation to press on with the game despite the frustration.

You can’t really manage to level up your health bar, fighting abilities or inventory spaces simply by plowing through the game from start to finish, because it gets too hard too fast, leaving you at too much of a disadvantage. This was an obvious (and ridiculous) decision by the developers, because you are provided with an option when you die to either load your save OR save your current ‘stats’ and quit. What happens when you do this is, you carry over all the level ups you’ve earned so far into a new game. In other words, the game is structured so that you have to keep replaying the earliest part of the game to gain all your level ups to make you strong enough to continue into the hard part of the game. Dumbest…game play…ever (at least, until I review the next game that pisses me off).

So this is where the ‘patience’ comes in. Be prepared to intentionally replay a minimal part of the game continuously so that you can then move ahead and complete it once you’ve become more of a bad ass (and probably a hairy ass if Frank’s legs and chest are any indication…). It’s not as annoying as it sounds to repeat the beginning stages of the game, thanks to the fact that I pretty much read every fricking message board thread, walkthru, and hint I could find on the internet. I’ve never been required to do so much research before starting a VIDEO GAME in my life. So, with approximately five printouts of helpful hints and guides in hand, I began my quest to conquer Dead Rising 360, and here I share my techniques with you.

In short, these are the goals:

1)    Level up your skills, items and health by playing early stages of the game over and over again by collecting easy to accomplish PP (explained below).

2)    Get the mini-chainsaw as soon as possible and build it to maximum strength for the simplest way to defeat all enemies.

3)    Open the shortcut in the bathrooms of Paradise Plaza and Wonderland Plaza

FOR STARTERS

Note that this guide of sorts is written with the assumption that you are playing the game, so you will understand everything I’m referencing and nothing will really come as a spoiler. Before you begin the game, print out a walkthru. It is an absolute necessity. I suggest this walkthru:

Dead Rising Walkthru

The creator of that thorough walkthru does a great job of separating the ‘cases’ from the ‘scoops.’ Since scoops aren’t essential to completing the game, what I did was create a Word document with the ‘cases’ portion of the walkthru and a separate document with the ‘scoops’ portion, and then printed them out. Scoops are also where you will find the majority of techniques for defeating psychopaths, because most of the time, a scoop IS a psychopath challenge. Anyway, keep your two cheat sheets close at hand (and separate), and when you need to jump from reading one to the other, simply pause the game. For the most part, the two separate guides are chronological to the way you will handle cases and scoops while playing, but since the game has a free-roaming aspect, the scoops can become a bit jumbled—you may trigger one before the other or have them open simultaneously and they will overlap with cases. Again, if scoops are getting thrown at you too fast and you see the timer bars quickly diminishing on screen, ignore them completely and just focus on your case. I don’t think it’s truly possible to experience every aspect of this game on the first play through, because time and your lack of leveling up will not permit it. You can also prolong the initiating of a scoop’s timer countdown by simply NOT answering the phone until you have a moment to consider taking on the scoop!

HOW AN EXTRA SAVE SAVES THE DAY

Here’s a handy ‘cheat’ I used to work around the single slot save system, but this only works if you have more than one storage device on your 360. Since my 360 has a small storage space built into the console and I ADDED a hard drive to the console later, whenever I saved during this game, the system would ask me WHERE I wanted to save because it detected the two different save locations!!! So instead of ONE save slot, I actually had TWO!!! This is a total life saver in this game. While in the middle of a timed case, if I desperately wanted to save, I’d alternate between save devices so I’d always have a backup plan if one save slot was cutting it too close to finish the case. This was also great for saving right before a fight in a psychopath scoop—if the scoop took too long and depleted my case time, I could just load the alternate save to focus only on the case and just ignore the scoop completely.

DEAD RISING…AND RISING…AND RISING. LET’S BEGIN PLAYING and REPLAYING.

So let’s begin by building our stats by replaying the early part of the game a bunch of times. I know it sounds boring, tedious, and time consuming, but once you’ve leveled up enough, the rest of the game moves along quickly. Also, you become so familiar with redoing the initial tasks that you don’t have to think about it. And the replay is cut down drastically by the fact that you can skip movies. Also, this is your opportunity to truly get comfortable with the controls, inventory system, combat system and terrible firearms system. In fact, the way I played the game, I predominantly avoided using guns at all because the aiming sucks so much (and you can’t MOVE while shooting, which means you’ll more often than not end up with a zombie attached to your neck). This also means you can avoid the scoop “Shadow of the North Plaza”, in which you battle Cletus, the owner of the Hunting Shack. People do this because once you defeat him, you have unlimited access to guns. However, the best way to defeat him? GUNS! Melee weapons will most likely get you killed in this battle, and guns are few and far between UNTIL you gain unlimited access to the Hunting Shack! So it’s kind of a catch 22. Now believe me, it might be tempting to try to accomplish this, but the shooting system is SO bad that it’s just not worth using guns…and once a gun runs out of ammo…it’s useless. You have to go get another gun. No ammo collecting in this game like in games like Resident Evil. If you are afraid to try to get through the game without guns, fear not. Once we get hooked up with the maxed out mini chainsaw, you’ll never look at a gun again.

Anyway, when the game begins, you can immediately begin building your “PP” (the blue level up bar on screen) as soon as you take control of Frank on the helicopter. See the walkthru for a complete guide to getting the most out of your photos here.

Once you’re in the mall entrance with all the others and some of the dudes are trying to barricade the front door, DO NOT run to the pile in the back right corner of the room yet to get them more supplies as they are asking. First run up to all the survivors standing around and take nice close-ups of their misery for some cherished PP. Take repeated photos if you have enough film. Also, capture some great shots of the numerous zombies right outside the front entrance doors for more PP. When you’re ready, go to that pile of crap in back to trigger the cut scene and your first daring escape from hoards of zombies.

Once the game lands you in the security room (where there’s a SAVE) grab two apple healths from the floor. Your health bar and items slots are a joke at this point, with only four blocks each, so these are the two MAIN things we want to build up in this early part of the game. Unfortunately, your level ups are random, so you never know if you’re going to get a health block, item slot or fighting skill. This is why you have to replay these early parts numerous times. Here are the key things you need to do to level up fast without having to do anything too dangerous or challenging over and over again.

I HAVE TO GO PP!!!

When you first leave the security room through the duct, there are TWO survivors right on the roof!!! Get the man by the elevator to the right, then get him to follow you around to the other side on the left, where you’ll find his wife. Score some nice PP for getting them both to join you—and note the door right here. This is another way into the warehouse that doesn’t require you using the elevator—and can score you a great early weapon in the sledgehammer if you jump across the shelf tops to get it. But don’t do that yet. Take the survivors back to the security room for escort completion bonus PP. See? This is why you want to replay this part of the game over and over. EASY PP. Of most importance is learning to use the escort guide markers. To do this, hold the right trigger when escorting and you will see a blue marker on screen. Aim it to a point ahead of you and press Y to mark the place you want the survivor or survivors to travel to. They are much more likely to stay on path this way as compared to just pressing the Y button to say “follow me!” Of course, you have to make sure to be ahead of them when possible to clear the path of zombies, and once they reach the marker, you have to set a new one, which takes some quick controller usage during more hectic times of the game, which is why it’s good to practice leaving markers now with these two and no zombies around.

Once you go back out into the mall after dropping off the first two survivors, make sure to remember where this door to the warehouse is (note it on your map), because this is your only entrance to the safety of the security room (after you pass the dozens of zombies that eventually fill the warehouse and elevator EVERY time you go through it). Anyway, just to the right of your character after entering the mall is the camera shop where you can reload your camera at any time. A little further on are steps. Look at your map for an S. That is the bathroom, which is down the halls behind the stairs. That’s a good emergency save when you need it. However, up those steps to the left you’ll find the Colombian Roastmasters. A few necessities make this a great place to stop frequently. On the counter are pizzas if you need a desperate health boost. But you’re better off running right past them to the orange juice at the end of the counter. It gives you more health, not to mention you can take TWO orange juice containers and stick them in the nearby blender to create a stronger health juice. Wahoo! Try to always have one of these on you. Finally, just to the right of where you got the OJ, you can jump OUT the window overlooking the mall to land on an orange awning—where you’ll find a Katana every time you reenter this section. This is another great early weapon to use until we get to the ultimate weapon…which I’ll tell you about in a little while. You can do a little exploring, but before long you’ll get the “Cut From the Same Clothe” scoop. You have time to do this one, at least the first part of it. It takes place right in Colombian Roastmasters, gives you practice taking photos, scores you PP, and lets you practice killing zombies without being swarmed by them. See the walkthru for details.

Soon you’ll be getting the first case, “Backup for Brad” in the Food Court, but while you’re waiting for that  to happen, you’ll have time to do some other things that score you great PP very easily. For starters, any time you enter a place that serves food, see if there are any frying pans around. If so, take them, place them on a stove and let them heat up until they turn red. Sure, they make a ‘hot’ weapon, but they also score you PP!!! Awesome. You can also stick meat or pizza in microwaves for free PP. You’ll sometimes have some serious zombie problems, especially in Al Fresca Plaza, which is always overrun by them, but just remember, if you die, just save your stats and start over to go after more easy PP. Here are other PP bonuses to watch out for in this part of the game (and actually, at any point in the game, it’s just easier to do early on when there are less zombies and cases):

Back in the Entrance Plaza, if you enter Jason Wayne’s Sporting Goods and melee each clothes rack, you’ll eventually score PP points after a few hits on each. Melee all of the racks for bonus PP. Also, in Wonderland Plaza, as long as you aren’t about to face off against the chainsaw wielding clown (Eek! More below on that scoop.) you can go up on the platform for the Space Ride at any time, wait for a car to come to a stop, jump in, and then let it take you for a ride once around the plaza for some free PP.

Meanwhile, in the horrifying Al Fresca Plaza, if you go into “Flexin”, the gym, the zombies won’t follow you. Here, you can save in a corner and heal yourself with no distraction, but even better, you can score major free PP. First, grab a dumbbell and beat the hell out of the sandbags hanging in the back of the room. Each one will deflate after about 5 or 6 hits. You get PP for each one, plus bonus PP for destroying them all!! Next, go to the front of the room and run on each treadmill. I’m not kidding. Get on the treadmill and just push up on the left stick until you get a good flow going. Once rewarded with an onscreen PP bonus, move on to the next treadmill and do the same. If you run on all the treadmills until you get PP for each one, you get even more bonus PP for doing them all. Now, another thing that might happen in Al Fresca this early on is that you’ll get  the “Barricade Pair A and B” scoop about some guys in a store right across the way. I tried, foolishly, to go save them, but the odds are stacked against you. First of all, the door is blocked, so you have to try to move everything out of the way while you’re being surrounded by zombies. Once you do get inside, if you don’t manage to drop something in front of the door to re-block it, zombies just start coming in before you can even talk to the two guys trapped inside. On top of that, you have to FIGHT one of the guys, who has gone a little crazy and begins beating you senseless!!! If you manage to take him down (I did it in a few tries with a metal shelf that had been barricading the door) you can grab some healing items in there, talk to the other guy, and get him to join you for PP points. Unfortunately, you have pretty much no chance of getting him out of Al Frecsa alive because of the amount of zombies. Save yourself , save the world! Let him die I tell you! At least you get PP for getting him to join you.

So, yeah, Al Fresca is tough to get through, but if you want to risk it, you can take that route to get to your “Brad” case. Otherwise, you can run through Leisure Park, where you can easily avoid all the zombies by running around them. As soon as you enter the Food Court, the first battle begins. I’d suggest you save somewhere nearby before going into the Food Court. Brad gives you a gun, and then you have to help him shoot down the gun toting loon up on a platform above. This is where you have to learn how to use this mess of a firearms system, and you might die on your first few tries. Avoiding the gun fire, bombs he throws (yep, bombs), and staying close to healing items scattered throughout the food court are your main priorities. Oh, and making sure Brad doesn’t die. Your next priority is to shoot the bastard trying to kill you! If you run out of ammo as you struggle with the aiming system, make your way over to Brad as quickly as possible and he’ll actually give you another gun!

Once the fight is over, it kind of sux, because you’re immediately escorting Brad, but you’re not told that. If he gets too far ahead of you (he’s leading you), he gets into major zombie fights and will eventually die so you must keep up with him, which doesn’t give you much time to do another freebie PP right in the Food Court, but you can do it later if not now. For this free PP, go into Cris’s Fine Foods. Look for a wall display of plates. Practice your aim with your gun while you still have one, and shoot out each of the upper plates. For the bottom row of plates, you can jump on the table and melee them to conserve ammo. You get PP for each plate, plus bonus PP for all of them. Of course, if Brad dies in the meantime, the case goes cold and you can’t officially complete the game even though you can keep running around the mall. Who cares? Save your new stats (hopefully you’ve leveled up) and start over. Really, you should NOT play much beyond the fight with Brad without starting over, because then you are getting too far into the game, and having to do it all over again would suck. So what you CAN do is either run around killing zombies to build PP and then save your stats when you get bored, or you can just let the zombies eat you and then save your stats.

IF YOU ONLY GET ONE SCOOP…MAKE IT THE BIG ONE WITH THE CHERRY CHAINSAW ON TOP

After Brad, your next big fight is with the chainsaw wielding clown in Wonderland Plaza (right next to the Food Court) for the “Out of Control” scoop. This scoop is a MUST and the key to you conquering this game without much fuss. I actually played this part several times as well because of the PP and because I really needed to figure out how to kill him. Actually, the solution is SO easy. So, when you are ready to take him on, you can move ahead with the game and be done with all the restarting nonsense.

FIRST, when you get a call about the “Out of Control” scoop, as long as you’re not in the middle of a case, head to Wonderland Plaza. But there are some crucial things to do before you go into Wonderland Plaza and up onto the Space Ride platform. You really MUST have firearms with you for this one, as well as some health, because melee is just not strong enough yet, and it’s too dangerous to get too close to him. First, definitely get some wine from the Food Court next door to Wonderland Plaza (you can also do the Cris’s Fine Foods plate task here if you have a gun, or you can at least throw items at most of the plates to destroy them—you might even level up before this battle). Also, if you have two SAVE slots like I did, locate the bathroom on the first floor of Wonderland Plaza and SAVE. Then go back upstairs.

If you’re looking at the steps of the Space Ride on the west side of the map, head to your character’s left. At the top of the stairs nearby, you will see at least FOUR cop zombies. If you beat them to death with a melee weapon, they drop HANDGUNS!!! I’d suggest getting at least two guns, although, once you learn the clown’s patterns, you really only need one gun with 30 bullets. Go back onto the Space Ride platform and operate the controls on the left. After the cut scene, you are in a battle with the clown. First thing to do? Fricking run!!! Get AWAY from him, off the Space Ride platform. Let him chase you up and down the second floor of the mall. Avoid his attacks and wait for the perfect opportunity to aim and fire (while avoiding zombies no less). The best time to strike is when he is blowing up his balloon and doing a little dance. If you get him right, you’ll pop the balloon, he’ll start coughing, and you’ll be able to deplete a fair amount of his life bar—if you don’t pop the balloon, you have to then stay away from it or shoot it when he lets it go, because it has some crap in it that hurts you when it pops. You can also get the clown when he’s winded after throwing knives at you, but be prepared to run after he regains his composure. Other than that, absolutely avoid his chainsaw spins and other evil moves. If you shoot at him when he’s not in one of the vulnerable moments I just described, he will block your bullets—meaning you are WASTING THEM. Be patient and take as long as necessary to shoot him at the right times.

Here are the two GREAT things about the clown—the two key ingredients to making this game a breeze from here on out. First, no matter where you kill the clown, when the cut scene is over, he will be dead on the platform of the Space Ride. Next to him will be the ultimate weapon in this game. The mini chainsaw. Actually, there should be two of them. Even better. EVERY time you leave Wonderland Plaza and reenter, a mini chainsaw will have respawned. Which means unlimited mini chainsaws, provided you can make it to them—and usually you can’t unless you still have a working chainsaw, because after this, the platform is always FILLED with zombies. But fear not. We have a way to make these things virtually invulnerable to breaking. As is, they will break after a bit of zombie slashing, so we want to build them up fast. But more on that below. First, we need to lock in the second crucial part of beating this game.

When you beat the clown and get his chainsaws (you can drop the guns at this point to make room for them), immediately go back to the Space Ride controls and operate them again. This is your first step in opening up the shortcut!  See the walkthru in the “Out of Control” section in scoops for more details. In short, you save a guy who takes you to the bathroom downstairs to show you the short cut to Paradise Plaza, which is kind of through the mirror in the bathroom!  This shortcut will be your friend for the rest of the game. It allows you to escort survivors closer to the security room MUCH easier and it is the ONLY safe route to get from one side of the mall to the other. As we know by now, Al Fresca Plaza is a place you pretty much never want to pass through because it is crammed with zombies so you’re just asking for defeat by heading through it. The other important thing is a problem you will have from here on out in Leisure Park, and believe me, you will NEVER want to cut through there again. There are respawning convicts in a jeep, with a machine gun attached to the back of their jeep. Unless you fancy yourself a true gamer, SKIP THIS CONFRONTATION. You will sacrifice some chick they are harassing, but who cares? Because you pretty much will NOT be able to defeat these guys. Guns take too long to aim and leave you open to tons of zombies that roam Leisure Park. Plus, by the time you get a sight on these guys, they will have already shot you numerous times AND run you over a few times. You will be dead, and you will have to start the game over again (or reload your last save). You don’t have time to even stop and eat food, because again, if they don’t get you (which they will) while you’re stopped for a snack, the zombies will. It is a NIGHTMARE. Just trust me. SKIP IT. Especially since these dudes magically return later even if you DO kill them. Pointless. Don’t be a hero. Be a survivor. Just use the Wonderland/Paradise short cut permanently.

Okay. Whether you can get shortcut dude to the security room or not, at least he’s opened up the shortcut for you. The other great thing is the shortcut being right next to SAVE points in each bathroom. Love it. You should actually leave shortcut dude in the safety of the bathroom while you go right back out into Wonderland Plaza and begin the chainsaw building process (I’d SAVE first).

WHO WROTE THE BOOK ON DEFEATING DEAD RISING?

Other than the mini chainsaw, the shortcut, PP, and health, your other best friends are books in this game. Annoying thing about books is that they take up slots in your inventory, however, they also make life SO easy. Books scattered throughout the mall have added effects on stuff in your inventory when you hold on to them. Most importantly, using three slots for books to beef up the mini chainsaw is the key to winning this game, even if you don’t get any other books. By now, you should have a larger number of slots in your inventory (hopefully at least six), so the three books should be doable. It’s nice to have a second mini chainsaw on hand, but if you have all three books, one mini chainsaw at a time will do—you just want to make sure that when it eventually begins blinking in your inventory, you get back to Wonderland Plaza soon to pick up a fresh one. You might only have to do this about 4 or 5 times throughout the remainder of the game if you have the three books (as compared to like, every FEW MINUTES without them). Having these three books in your inventory adds little purple symbols next to your chainsaw that give it a super longevity. You can use it to mow down gangs of zombies and psychopaths for numerous cases and scoops with no worries about it breaking. And it cuts everything like butter. Psychopaths can be taken down in 5 or 6 hits. Sure, they might have guns, but the amount of times they can shoot you when you run up to them and saw away is minimal. You most likely will NOT die or lose even more than two bars of health before they are dead. This is the key to defeating this game.

So let’s get back to getting these books. Conveniently, one of them is in a bookstore right near where you defeated the clown on the second floor of Wonderland Plaza. Find Sir-Book-A-Lot on your map and get to it. There will most likely be two men in the store because you probably already got a call for the “Japanese Tourists” scoop. IGNORE them until you locate the book “Criminology” amongst the shelves. Grab it and you have immediately built up your mini saw a bit. Just make sure to ward off any zombies who may follow you into the book store. Now, provided you have a slot to do so, pick up the Japanese language book so that you can talk to the two men in the store. It takes a lot of talking to convince them to join you, but it’s worth the PP—just keep an eye on the front door for zombie ambushes. Once they join you and you are…um…on the same page, you can drop the Japanese language book to free up space in your inventory. If you want, you can equip these two with weapons…for instance, you can go back to the zombie cops at the top of the stairs, saw them in half, grab a gun for each guy and hand it to them will fending off the zombies. Don’t worry if you don’t have enough slots to pick up the guns without dropping something else. Simply exchange the item for the gun (provided the area is free of zombies), hand the gun to the survivor, then pick the item back up. If you have time, get these two to the bathroom downstairs to join shortcut dude, and whisk them all to Paradise Plaza to escort them to the security room. It’s tricky getting them through the plaza and warehouse, and you may lose one or two on the way, but at least you tried. If you don’t want to save them, then screw it. Let them all die. But you also have to get the other two books for the chainsaw power-up. Those books are in Contemporary Reading right in Paradise Plaza, across from the door to the warehouse. You can either lead your survivors in there, or just get the survivors up to safety then come back down for the other two books, depending on how confident you are in your escorting skills. Either way, once you are in Contemporary Reading, grab “Entertainment” and “Engineering.” Your mini chainsaw is now maxed out with three purple symbols and should last you for a LONG time. SWEET. Like I said, as long as you have six slots, you should be good. Have at least one chainsaw, the three books, and at least one health with you at all times. You will very rarely need a gun from this point on, and I’ll point out below when you do. Eventually, when you really DO need  guns much later in the game, the shop owner is gone from the Hunting Shack so you can raid the place.

If you have the slots free, there are some other books that are beneficial to have on you. I’m only going to cover the ones you can easily pick up without having to beat any psychopaths.

HEALTH BOOSTS: Also in Sir-Book-A-Lot in Wonderland Plaza is “Health 1”, which increases the healing effect of food items by 50% percent!!! The same goes for “Health 2” in Sinister Read in the Entrance Plaza.

INCREASE PP BONUSES: If you want to level up faster and have the item space to hold another book, some books will help with this. In Sinister Read is “World News”, which gives you more PP when you escort survivors. “Horror Novel 1” in Sinister Read gives you 25% more PP for killing zombies, as does “Horror Novel 2” in Bachman’s in Paradise Plaza. Finally, “Camera 1” in Contemporary Reading in Paradise Plaza gives you 25% more PP for photos. Personally, until I had significantly increased my inventory slots, I only carried the mini chainsaw boosts, then the health boost, and finally, held onto a PP boost book for a little while. Obviously, the zombie boost is most logical since you can easily kill plenty of them for PP points with your maxed out mini chainsaw. Since escorting is a bitch, the chances of using the book’s powers enough to make the slot sacrifice worth it are minimal. And photos—well, after a while, taking photos is really the last thing on your mind. There ARE a bunch of randomly placed items in the mall you can photograph for easy PP, but finding the time to do that is not easy.

WHAT THE WALKTHRU MAY WALK AROUND…

From this point on, with your maxed out mini chainsaws, you can pretty much zip through the cases in this game with a walkthru. However, here are some major tips for later in the game that aren’t mentioned in the walkthru I used. This is pretty much chronological and will save you some heartache during other Psychopath Scoops.

1. At some point in the game, you will walk right into trouble in Paradise Plaza involving a huge group of cult dudes in yellow raincoats. With your maxed mini saw, this is a BREEZE and will score you huge PP. After the movie, your goal is to simply kill them all! It takes like ten seconds with the chainsaws. SO easy. You then save some chick from a box and can escort her back to the security room. Great news. After this, every time you return to Paradise Plaza, there will be dozens of Raincoats standing motionless and praying amongst the zombies. Saw them all every time you pass through here for major PP. Just beware, if you don’t do it fast enough, one of them may blow up, and you’ll get damaged if you’re too close to him. Yeah, they’re like a suicide cult.

2. DO “MARK OF THE SNIPER” scoop!!! When you get this scoop, seriously try to find a way to squeeze it in because it scores you a sniper rifle to easily handle the scoop “A Strange Group” shortly after. In Mark of the Sniper, you have to avoid the gun fire of a father and his two sons on the upper lever of the Entrance Plaza. Try to have a health or two on you (but at this point, your life bar should be pretty large). Chainsaw in hand, just run right up to each on of them and slash away—4 or 5 hits will kill him. Yes, you will get fired on, from close range even, but the damage is going to be minimal. You can take out all three in like 30 seconds. Just try to heal if need be before chasing the next sniper down. Once they are all dead, you absolutely want to grab ONE of their sniper rifles.

3. “A STRANGE GROUP” scoop. This is the ultimate way to rack up HUGE PP, because when all is said and done, even if you don’t escort all the survivors you rescue back to the security room, you will have gotten PP bonuses for getting them to join you, along with slashing dozens of Raincoats for more PP. But there IS a catch to making this an easy battle, and it is the reason you need the sniper rifle. Also, make SURE you save in the Paradise Plaza bathroom right before going into the theater. When you follow the guide arrow to the movie theater, take your time once you’ve entered the theater (you’ll kill a bunch of Raincoats outside the theater, but this isn’t the challenging part). Down the hall of the theater there is an alcove on the right where a bunch of other Raincoats are standing. Thing is, and I learned this the hard way, if you brazenly run right in and start sawing away at them as you do out in Paradise Plaza, things don’t quite work out as you’d expect. Somehow, one of them manages to grab you and knock you out!!! When this happens, you wake up in a box in another room, wearing ONLY underwear and having had ALL your inventory stripped from you as well. You have to quickly grab one of the very few items in the area, because the other side of the room is FILLED with Raincoats!!! And you have to take them ALL on. Only when you kill them do you get a passcode to open the door out of the room. Unfortunately, you still don’t get all your items back—at least not immediately. I let myself die once I’d escaped and restarted from my save point in the Paradise Plaza bathroom right before entering the theater because I didn’t want to miss out on all the survivor PP, so I don’t know what becomes of you if you fail this scoop.

Here’s how you kill these guys so you can get into the room they are protecting to kill their leader and save the survivors. Very SLOWLY walk down the hall, hugging the LEFT wall, until you see the alcove coming up on the right. Walk just far enough to see maybe one or at most two of the praying Raincoats. Pull out your sniper rifle and try to aim for their green masks. Don’t waste precious bullets here. Usually two bullets take them down. It also wakes them up and they begin walking towards you. Blow them away quickly if this happens, because if not, they could pull a suicide bombing on you. Once you’ve taken down the first two, again, move slightly closer along the left wall until you see a couple more and repeat the procedure. Just keep doing this until ALL the Raincoats in the alcove have been defeated. As long as you do it swiftly and quietly, you’ll only have to take out two at a time because the others remain still in their praying positions.

Enter the theater for a cut scene with their leader. He’s supposed to be a bit of a challenge with his big sword. But do I even need to say it? 5-6 shots with the mini chainsaw. EASY. After that, Raincoats will stream into the theater down only ONE aisle. Take them out with your chainsaw as they approach you for the mere purpose of being slaughtered! It’s ridiculously simple. Once they are all gone, run to each of the chairs to untie the survivors and get some more PP. Now you can try to escort them all back to the security room for mega PP. The halls of the theater will now contain some zombies. Grab the dead leader’s sword off the floor and give it to one of the survivors. Then run out into the hall, where you will see several cop zombies. Saw them to pieces along with the other zombies to clear a path, grab the weapons as they drop them, then run back to the room and hand each survivor a weapon. You can usually equip everyone with a weapon and then have a better chance of getting more of them back to the security room in one piece.

4. BOMBCASE. This obligatory case can be a bitch—unless you have your mini chainsaw and a few strong healing items. Yes, you have to go into the parking tunnels that are absolutely FILLED with wall to wall zombies, and locate five trucks with bombs in them that you have to collect (they don’t take up inventory spots). Initially, there is a truck you can get in to drive quickly to each bomb truck. Unfortunately, the truck takes damage the more zombies you run over with it (but you do score plenty of PP by doing this), and eventually the truck dies, leaving you ON FOOT in the midst of all these zombies!!! And no, the trucks with the bombs are not useable. My truck only lasted me for TWO bombs!!! The bigger concern is that you are being chased by Carlito in his own truck! This isn’t so bad when you have a truck as well, but once you are on foot, it’s brutal. Carlito will run you over, back over you, and even throw bombs out his window at you…all while you are being swarmed by zombies!!! That’s why it amazes me that I had to learn the simple key to completing this case on my own without hints from the walkthru. Here’s how. First time you come foot to van with Carlito (usually it’s when he runs you over by coming up behind you) he’ll most likely crash into a wall as he tries to turn the truck around to run you over again. Circle the truck, being careful not to get backed over and that he doesn’t get you with one of his bombs (run away from any of those too). All you have to do is run up to the driver’s side of the truck and slash at Carlito in the window with your mini chainsaw. Yep. 5-6 times and he’s DEAD. After a cut scene, you can then do the rest of the case, still on foot, without worrying about being run over!!! Zombies are a piece of cake with your chainsaw in hand, so it’s not as bad as it sounds. Also, if you want, there are zombies pushing shopping carts if you want to hijack one of those and just mow the zombies out of your way with that. Either way, this case will be over before you know it. I did it in one try despite learning how to accomplish it WHILE I was doing it.

5. THE FINAL HOURS. The weirdest part of the game, here is your opportunity to just roam the mall, simply waiting for the helicopter to come rescue you with no missions to complete. Sure, it’s a great time to slash zombies for PP points, but not quite. The place has been infiltrated by special force soldiers whose job it is to make sure the secret of the zombie mall never gets out! They plan to kill every zombie and human in the place, which means you have to try to stay alive while killing time. You get sweet PP for each soldier you kill. Sure, they all have guns…but you have your chainsaw!!! I simply stayed in the ultimate spot to have all the bare necessities at my disposal. Wonderland Plaza has the bathroom with the SAVE plus an extra mini chainsaw on the Space Ride platform if I should need it, while right next door, the Food Court has all the food items I could need. I ran around taking on the special forces, scoring some PP, then saving on my secondary slot in the bathroom in Wonderland Plaza. Yeah, you’ll take some hits from these guys, but again, just suck it up, run right up to them, and slash them in two hits. They usually travel in packs of two, and there aren’t tons of them, so it’s not all that hard. Once you’ve cleared them all out, go right next door to the Food Court. There will be zombies and more soldiers in here, but you can easily sneak up to the bars on the left and grab healing items to rejuvenate. Then take down every soldier and zombie you see here and return to the freshly respawned Wonderland Plaza to start the whole cycle over again. Rinse and repeat until it’s time to move on to the next part of the game (keep an eye on your clock). When all is said and done with this part, you will have leveled up quite a few times, will have a fresh mini chainsaw in hand, and a couple of healing items as well, plus a fresh SAVE.

6. OVERTIME MODE. As long as you spoke to Isabela and made it to the helipad above the security room in time, you’ll get the ‘first ending’ of the game and unload Overtime Mode, which is the way you get the ‘true ending.’ Overtime mode is ANNOYING, and pretty much just filler so the game can be considered longer. For starters, you have to find a bunch of ingredients for Isabela to use in an experiment and bring them back to her. Follow the walkthru above to know the best order to get the items—and set the Guide Arrow!!! You have plenty of time to get each ingredient, it’s just an obnoxious cat and mouse game that turns into a repetitive fight/heal/fight/heal task. Save frequently in bathrooms. The items don’t take item slots, which is great, but you don’t want to have to keep starting over with this task.

After you bring all the items back to Isabela, the REALLY annoying part begins. Well, first, she needs you to go out into Leisure Park to get a generator from the clock tower. Not too hard—except for the Helicopter flying overhead shooting at you and dropping bombs. Just do this as quickly as possible. Once you’ve brought the generator back to her, she will now need you to go collect TEN queen bees. This means hunting down those zombies with the flailing arms. But here’s the catch. The queen bees DO take up inventory slots, and you won’t have many open. You really need your saw and all its books for zombies and soldiers, health, and at least one soldier’s machine gun at all times to take out the annoying toy helicopters that alert soldiers of your presence. You will make numerous trips to the hideout to hand Isabela the queen bees. I had to do it about 7 times. The good news is, you never really have to leave the North Plaza (where Isabela’s hideout is) to find the zombies, because every time you reenter it from the hideout, there will be new queen bee zombies in the vicinity, often as close as the hallway right outside or the alcove down the end of the hall where the gun shop is. Do expect to get into fights with some soldiers though and those pesky toy helicopters. And if desperate, you may have to go on food hunts to keep yourself alive.

After you’ve handed over all ten queen bees, you end up at the last part of the game, and thankfully, a SAVE. SAVE before moving forward. Now, remember that part in Hitchcock’s The Birds where they had to walk past all the birds really slowly so as not to get attacked? You now have to do that through a tunnel filled with zombies. Isabela has concocted a perfume that repels zombies (no joke) and as long as you hold her hand, the zombies kind of part for you, creating a path. Unfortunately, glitches tend to happen, and you sometimes separate hands. This isn’t really that big a deal. Whip out your saw and slice away. In reality you could take out ALL the zombies, but you risk losing health, and you can’t waste it at this point. Chances are you’ll also saw at Isabela a bit, but she won’t take that much damage and just has to deal with it. Plus, in the crowd of zombies there’s usually one that drops a queen bee!!! If you grab it quickly, you can just throw it ahead of you and immediately kill all the zombies in the vicinity to clear a path for yourself! Follow the walkthru above until you reach the ONE LAST CHANCE to SAVE before the final TWO battles!!! Follow the walkthru to complete the section. When you get outside, you’ll be faced with more zombies and a couple of soldiers!!!! Drop Isabela and kill as many as possible, especially the soldiers. You will find apples behind a cement block where the soldiers were, so heal up.

7. FINAL BOSS. Use the waklthru to learn how to defeat the army tank for the first battle. When accomplished, you are immediately thrust into the final battle. This boss is just a man, and he’s on top of the army tank, as are you—with NO weapons and NO healing items. Zombies are swarming either side of the tank, so whenever you fall off of it (and you will) smash that A button to jump your way back up on it as quickly as possible. As for the boss himself, you are supposed to use your melee skills to defeat him, but he’s easily defeated thanks to a glitch. SWEET! When the battle begins, he is on the top swiveling part of the cannon. You are on the lower level. STAY on the lower level, and quickly move to the edge of the tank (don’t fall off). Wait for the boss to come running at you. Press A to jump and quickly hit X in midair to perform a flying kick, and you will boot the boss right in the face! The wimp will run right back up where he started from!!! In essence, you just have to keep repeating this process to kill him, but timing is everything and you’re sure to screw up. You can do some hand-to-hand with him (aka: button mashing!). He’ll sometimes get in cheap shots, you’ll sometimes fall off the tank. Just do what you must to get yourself back into the flying kick groove as soon as possible. I even got in some cheap shots of my own a few times when he was on the top level and I was on the lower level. I think I busted the guy in the nuts with my fist!!! Either way, I was just persistent, cool and in control, and I defeated the guy without losing more than three of my life blocks—which had been leveled up to nine blocks by the end of the game.

And that’s it. That’s how I conquered Dead Rising. Can’t WAIT to start Dead Rising 2 when it’s released next month.

Back in the day when Friday the 13^th and Halloween reigned supreme, right as the 70s were becoming the 80s, there were a string of low budget horror/exploitation films being made that were just begging for a market that didn’t involve passing theatrical rating systems. It’s almost as if a catalog of movies was being filmed in preparation for the early 80s home video explosion.

The most crucial part of marketing these films would be the theatrical poster (aka: the VHS box artwork). The gruesome scenes of sex and slaughter alone made young, impressionable teens and pre-teens’ stomachs turn with terror, afraid to imagine what brutal horrors awaited the adolescent sinners on celluloid. 1980’s Mother’s Day was definitely one of those cover visuals that kept me away from the film until I was much older. From the title, you could assume that this movie was cashing in on the emerging slasher/holiday themed films, but in truth, this movie has more in common with Deliverance and I Spit On Your Grave. It’s definitely the torture porn of its day.

But back to that artwork, which is what promises a gory good horror experience. This ain’t no Mamma Mia. Mother in her chair with half her face looking like a skull immediately brings to mind Mother Bates. The present she holds with a decapitated head indeed points at some demented celebration of the Mother’s Day holiday. Behind Mother we see her two sons. The inbred looking one on the left is holding the bloody axe, so we assume he’s a deranged killer, while the one on the right we can only assume is more horribly disfigured and deformed under his potato sack mask, much like Jason in Friday the 13^th Part 2 (which this film pre-dates by a year). His knife screams Michael Myers. So this simply has to be a straight up holiday horror film, right? Nope. It is the work of a genius artist and marketing team, because this simply isn’t a scary film, not a holiday slasher, and barely even a disturbing exploitation flick.

The film’s opening is classic. Some self-help guru is giving a seminar, and an old lady bonds with the couple she’s sitting with in the front row. After the seminar, she offers the young man and woman a ride. But this nice young couple has plans for her. As soon as they get on a desolate road in the woods, they plan to attack and kill her. The ominous synthesizer accent stabs are sheer 1980 perfection. Before the couple can attack the old woman, the car stalls, so the lady gets out to check under the hood. The twist, of course, is that this is Mother, and it is she and her sons who have plans for the couple. We cut to a blatant dummy profile in the back seat that is supposed to be the man, then we cut to the girl in the front seat, who screams as blood is splattered on her, and then we cut back to the man dummy, whose head is THEN chopped off….you know, after blood has already flown! Hard to believe an editing job this bad was not corrected upon the film’s original release. Once Mother and her sons drag the girl out of the car and the boys have some fun with her, she crawls to Mother for mercy. Mother proceeds to choke her with a rope—while saying “I love you” and planting a kiss on the young woman’s lips!!!! Geriatric lesbianism??? Blech!!!

We are then introduced to the three main chicks of the movie. Let’s face it. By 1980, any trio of girls in a horror movie was simply a poor man’s Laurie, Annie and Linda. These three are slightly older though, and planning to do a whole girl getaway thing, but first we’re treated to a pool party that captures a moment in time when men were men, sporting beards, filling the packages of speedos, their backs covered in hair while their heads were bald. They just don’t make men like they used to.

Once the girls are on the road, all signs point to a bad weekend. They are heading off to a lake to camp. Bad sign. They stop at a gas station convenience store and two kids are playing banjos out front. Bad sign. A crazy redneck store clerk warns them to stay away from their destination. Bad sign. They drive past a “proceed at your own risk” sign. Literally a bad sign!!! And yet, they still go skinny dipping almost immediately!!!

Before the horror begins, we get the weirdest 1970s flashback to when these girls were in high school (the 70s being, you know, a year before the film was released, and probably when the film was made). The flashback holds plenty of promise. First off, they paid for the rights to use Tommy James’ “I Think We’re Alone Now,” which is a big surprise. Anyway, the girls are recalling playing a prank on one hell of a cute guy—one of the girl’s luring him onto a baseball field at school at night to have sex. She runs off for a minute, he gets naked and begins doing naked pushups, and then the girls turn on all the playing field flood lights! And it’s more than just a full moon that’s out! As the guy scrambles for his clothes and runs off, everything is flapping in the cool night breeze!

Just as the girls are having a poignant moment, Mother’s boys attack. The girls’ are dragged kicking and screaming in their sleeping bags to Mother’s house. Magically, when the girls are released from their sleeping bags, they are no longer in their nightwear, but are instead fully dressed in their day clothes!!! Anyway, they are brought upstairs and tied to machines in a fully equipped gym!!! Didn’t Leatherface have one of those?

Weird thing is, this family seems almost normal, aside from the whole kidnapping girls and doing sexual things to them. This is definitely not the Texas Chainsaw family. In fact, when one of the girls calls one brother a ‘backwards, perverted piece of shit,’ he replies, “Don’t ever say backwards again! We civilized! Look around!” And you totally believe it. They have TV, they have Trix on the breakfast table! And they don’t even look particularly frightening, which is a big disappointment for someone like me who loves Wrong Turn. One brother has red hair, fucked up backwoods teeth and a deformed eye, but when the other brother takes off his creepy potato sack, he’s…um…actually really cute and totally normal! WTF? On the bright side, he’s the one whose butt we get to see when he takes advantage of the first girl. This is the one and only disturbing exploitation scene in the film. They bring the girl outside, make her dress like a little girl with toys in her hand, then he pins her down on the ground and begins slapping her repeatedly while screwing her—as Mother sits by and watches!!! More old person sexual weirdness. Meanwhile the other brother takes “Kodak” photos per Mother’s request. I wonder if this was the kind of advertisement Kodak wanted for their precious ‘moments’? The scene, thankfully, can’t compare to the heinous rape in I Spit On Your Grave, and modern desensitization and overexposure to torture porn further weakens its impact.

From this point on, the movie is essentially just Deliverance with women seeking revenge instead of men. The other two chicks escape their gymnasium prison and exact revenge. This is also when the film is most suspenseful. There are a couple of horror elements thrown in as the girls escape the house (the obligatory body parts found around the house, for instance), there’s a great cat and mouse game in the woods (the girls have amazing sense of direction in the strange woods in the middle of the night), there’s a classic TV set kill (you can’t pull that off with a modern LCD flatscreen), and even an electric knife kill. See? This family really isn’t backwards at all. But the ultimate moment comes when the chicks get revenge on Mother—using a set of blow up tits that were lying around. I’m not even kidding.

This is one of those movies that holds all its potential in the very final image you see before the credits role. There is a bit of family back story referenced between Mother and sons a few times throughout the film, but you don’t really even give it much thought as you’re watching. But then comes the final ‘scare,’ and you can’t help wonder why they didn’t make the family backstory the focal point of the entire film??? Oh if only they’d make Millennium Mother’s Day. Because the best part of Mother’s Day 1980 is the Psycho-homage artwork.

Way back in 1984, the same year A Nightmare On Elm Street haunted our dreams, there was another film released with a curiously similar premise. Hot off his groundbreaking role in Jaws 3-D, Dennis Quaid starred in Dreamscape opposite Kate Capshaw, same year she did Indiana Jones…can you spot the six degrees of Steven Spielberg situation going on there? For added fun, there’s even resident Exorcist exorcist Max Von Sydow! Dreamscape freaked me out when I was a kid, and I’ve been contemplating adding it to my horror collection for a while. It’s definitely entertaining—and definitely one of those hokey PG-13 sci-fi horror flicks you’d watch dozens of times on cable during long summer days back in the mid-80s. Well dag, why am I even hesitating in adding it to my collection? The nostalgia alone is reason enough to own it! Unfortunately, both the DVD and Widescreen releases are edited versions! Oh the f*cking humanity!!!

I just caught the movie on cable this weekend. It definitely is  no Elm Street. It’s more a psychological sci-fi thriller with a couple of standout horror elements. The situation is pretty simple. There’s this experimental dream clinic where people with the ability to enter the dreams of others are being studied. Essentially, they’re lab rats (which Dennis Quaid so conveniently points out). There’s plenty of exposition and character development, including the obligatory 80s sex scene (Quaid making Capshaw’s fantasies come true in her dreams!). Quaid is also pretty sure one of his fellow caged rats is up to no good and possibly killing people in their dreams. Which is perfect for the bad guy looking for a way to assassinate the president (the president being Eddie Albert of Green Acres fame!!!).

The freaky cheese begins with Quaid trying to help a scared young boy get past his night terrors. He enters the boy’s dream for one hell of a trip—and a confrontation with the boy’s boogeyman, who is not wearing a dirty red and green striped sweater and a fedora. This boogeyman is actually…a snake man!!! Eek! A snake!!! Pretty sick scene, especially when you are a young teen in the 80s and claymation/stop motion animation whatever-it’s-called technology is actually cutting edge. Yeah, the snake man kind of looks like he slithered his way out of 1933’s King Kong when he moves. I can only imagine how CGI-tastic he would look in a remake. I think what makes him work in this film is that he’s not overexposed and all up in your face, as is the problem with horror movie monsters these days.

There are numerous parallels to the Nightmare movies—some ideas even ahead of the Freddy franchise. First of all, there’s the dream clinic angle. There’s the fact that if you die in your dreams, you die. There’s the ability to manipulate your dreams, like in Elm Street 3. Then when Quaid confronts his dream-nemesis at the end of the movie, it’s like a Freddy free-for-all. Let’s see. The bad guy at one point uses finger knives. Yep. He rips out a heart, and quips, “Have a heart!” Very Freddy, post Elmstreet 2. The killer dreams he has ninja abilities, just like the kids could imagine super powers in Elm Street 3. The final nightmare eventually leads Quaid into a fiery underworld reminiscent not only of Freddy’s boiler room, but also his fiery lair in New Nightmare. The Dreamscape lair is protected by devil dogs/hell hounds as in Elm Street 2. And there’s even a character taking on the appearance of another character’s father as in Elm Street 3!

One segment is uber creepy and NOT like anything you’ve ever seen on Elm Street, but may have experienced if you’ve ever played Resident Evil Zero. Zombies on a train! This scene puts the snake man to shame! Too bad it’s such a short scene, because it definitely gives the entire film horror cred. The other standout moment is the very “Amazing Stories” twist at the end. Not a major twist, but still mysterious enough to get the Twilight Zone theme dancing in your brain.

I must say, after the debacle that was A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010, I think the producers should have focused their attention on remaking 1984’s other nightmare movie, Dreamscape. This one is a classic premise ripe for a horror overhaul.

The 2006 horror film Silent Hill immediately became a favorite of mine when I first saw it. As a long time fan of the video game series, I felt it totally captured the atmosphere of the games but also stood on its own as a tense and suspenseful horror film. Naturally, many ‘purists’ of the video game series say it’s trash and ruined the storyline of the game. Kind of funny, because while I love playing the games for the immersive horror experience, the only problem I’ve ever had with them is that the plots are a convoluted MESS! The movie actually untangles all the confusion and streamlines it, removing the thick fog of speculation: does the evil of Silent Hill really exist or was the main character dreaming? Was it all a physical manifestation of the dark side of the main character’s psyche? Was a crazy cult to blame for releasing the horror? Was the main character involved with a drug ring and simply tripping??? Or was it that pesky UFO that is a possible ending in each game in the series (yet an ending I’ve yet to ever get while playing)?

Actor Sean Bean played the husband of a blonde wife looking for her daughter in Silent Hill, so one night while flicking through the cable channels, I caught a glimpse of a film with Sean Bean as the husband of a blonde wife looking for her daughter. I was perplexed. It looked sort of like Silent Hill, yet things were…different. Was this an alternate reality Silent Hill, just like in the game??? No. In actual reality, it was 2005’s The Dark. Yes. Within a year’s time, actor Sean Bean pretty much played the same role in two very similar movies. But make no mistake. The Dark could practically be a Lifetime movie of the week compared to Silent Hill.

Let’s consider the similarities. Both movies open with cliff scenes, waves crashing on rocks below, a blonde mother chasing after her daughter following a road trip. The mom spends the majority of each movie calling the daughter’s name to the point of nagging. I’d stay lost too if my mother had been on my case that much. The daughter is all Village of the Damned/Children of the Corn-like even before the horror begins, so you can’t really understand WHY the mother loves her so much and doesn’t just let her fall into the hellish abyss for eternity, where the devil child clearly belongs. Both films involve some sort of wacky religious leader creating a cult mentality that involves sacrifice. There’s a frequent need for use of a flashlight to reveal gnarly visuals of decrepit rooms, eerie empty chairs, bathtubs of sludge…you know, when good rooms go bad. And then, there’s Sean Bean trying to bring his family back together but actually being pretty clueless as to the truth of what’s going on. And finally, both films involve mom ending up in some sort of alternate reality.

While Silent Hill takes place in, you know, Silent Hill, The Dark is set on a sheep farm on a mountainside overlooking the sea below. In fact, at times, The Dark feels like it’s borrowing visual and conceptual elements from The Ring. Considering The Dark was released a year before Silent Hill and is based on a book, I don’t think its parallels with the game adaptation are intentional, just REALLY coincidental. Like, freakishly coincidental. So freakishly coincidental that when Sean Bean was offered the script for Silent Hill, he probably exclaimed out loud, “WHOAH. This is freakishly coincidental!”

There’s very little in the way of gore, scares, or horror in The Dark, so it won’t stick with you, it isn’t worth a rewatch, and is definitely not worthy of a blind buy for your horror collection. There are some ‘ooh, creepy!’ moments involving a blonde girl appearing and disappearing (compared to the nightmarish creatures of Silent Hill), a couple of evil sheep shots that won’t even make you gag on your lamb chop dinner, but instead make you wish you were watching the all-out sheep gorefest Black Sheep, and even a classic library microfiche scene so mom can get to the truth while allowing viewers to get a better understanding of what’s going on. This is like an old school Amityville Horror exposition technique (aka: cliché).

My favorite part of the film is the ending. And I don’t mean when the credits role signifying the film is finally over. I’m talking about the twist on the mom stuck in an alternate reality twist. There’s one more final revelation that almost makes the whole movie worth watching. And the funny thing is, the DVD contains an ‘alternate ending’ to the alternate reality ending (confusing!). Luckily, the better of the two endings was used for the final cut, because the unused ending would have taken the film from a passable time killer to a ‘time to kill these filmmakers for wasting my time!’

Next time you’re flicking through the cable stations and you think you’ve entered Silent Hill, turn on your flashlight and take a closer look. Because you may have stumbled into The Dark instead. And there’s just not much to see there.

This would be embarrassing if it didn’t make for such a good story. So this past weekend, my survival horror video game partner, we’ll call her ‘J,’ was over in celebration of her b-day and so there was the obligatory ‘take you out to dinner for your birthday’ situation. I was even willing to sit through the torture of a sushi restaurant since she loves it and I can order like cooked chicken or something normal and parasite free, but we downgraded, and luckily me, she and my partner Danny ended up at a seafood dive that actually cooks its fish. I, of course, ordered a burger and fries. They, of course, ordered fricking lobster and clams or something slimy like that. I spent the whole time trying to protect my Burger King-esque meal from flying lobster flesh. Blech.

I also had to keep my eyes diverted from the limb tearing and flesh sucking feast. Gross. I mean, if you have to eat an animal, let someone else do the slaughtering so that it comes out in a cute little patty on a bun for you. Well, as a result of keeping my eyes closed to all the disemboweling going on around me, I stuck a ketchup covered French fry in my mouth, bit down hard…and saw stars! Okay, maybe they were more like starfish. Somehow, I managed to shove my own ketchup covered finger into my own mouth with my fry and sank my own teeth into my own tender flesh. This has to be the most heinous act ever. I could not BELIEVE the pain. Amazingly, I did not break the skin, but the throbbing was so bad it led to yet another distraction from enjoying my burger and fries. And then my mind got to wandering, thinking of the horrible possibility of piercing the flesh with teeth.

I looked at J and said, “You know, I am in SO much pain from biting my finger—“

“That you can’t imagine how bad it would hurt if you were eaten by zombies,” she finished matter-of-factly.

“Yes!” I cried.

“I knew you were going to say that,” she replied. “That’s my worst nightmare.”

This was a straight up serious conversation for us, so imagine our surprise when my partner Danny starts laughing and rolling his eyes at our discussion.

Some day he’ll learn. He enjoys occasionally stumbling over to me while I’m sitting on the living room couch with his arms raised in front of him and groaning “Brains. BRAINS!” I keep telling him I’m not like those wooses in the movies who can’t bring themselves to blow away their loved ones even though they’ve become ravenous zombies. I keep warning him, “If you cry zombie too often, someday it’s going to be YOUR brains, and they’re going to be splattered all over your nice 46” flat screen television over there.”

Fricking zombie skeptics.

Half a decade ago, a survival horror game called Obscure was released for the PS2 and Xbox. A simple takeoff on the original Resident Evil formula and 4-years ahead of the re-vamped Resident Evil series in that it was two player survival horror, Obscure was also a ‘teen horror’ about a bunch of high school kids. It was fun because of the two player aspect, but also completely forgettable. Didn’t leave any kind of lasting impression like when the first zombie dogs smashed through the window in Resident Evil or the first hideous creature skulked out of the fog in Silent Hill.

It wasn’t until recently that I discovered there had actually been a sequel released maybe 2 years ago for the Wii and the dusty PS2, which is the system for which I purchased it. I still can’t get into the whole Wiimote experience when it comes to survival horror, not to mention that my video game partner would probably fling one of the Wiimotes through my television screen in frustration if the controls got too difficult. So this weekend, I did indeed dust off my PS2 and we played the overlooked sequel Obscure: The Aftermath.

We really could not recollect anything about the first game (luckily, it’s recapped in the sequel’s manual), but the gist of the sequel is that the survivors of the first game are now in college. You start the game off in the dorms, which means sex, drugs and raves! Getting a ‘look’ prompt wherever you walk and finding funny bulletin board posts about sex and partying in the dorms is funny at first, but soon gets REALLY annoying since it adds nothing to the game—except to hit you over the head repeatedly with the simplicity of the plot being about the two moral decisions college kids should make so they do NOT turn into hideous deformed monsters. But you instinctively click on ever look prompt for fear of missing some more important aspect of the game—and there just really aren’t any important aspects other than to go off and look for some scares and monster bashing fun.

The two player experience is definitely what gives this game its charm, but also makes it a hassle many times. While it should be better to have a real person controlling your partner than AI (which is the case if you play a single player game), the camera refuses to comply, especially if you both walk off to separate sections of a room to explore. Instead of keeping you both locked on the screen until you come closer together and opt to go in the same direction, the game chooses one character’s perspective, leaving the other character as nothing more than an identifying arrow graphic on the side of the screen that signifies that ‘your character is over here somewhere.’ Now imagine having your character lost off screen in the middle of a big monster fight or boss battle, which is exactly what happens in this game. Your friend takes the spotlight in the center of the screen kicking scaly, slimy monster ass while you are just mashing buttons hoping that your character, completely in TV lala land somewhere, is actually accomplishing something.

That’s bad enough, but there are also times when the game REFUSES to switch perspective to the character that NEEDS to be able to see. Take for instance a part in which both characters have to carefully time their movement because giant fan blades are passing over the path ahead. When the first character runs across to safety, the game STAYS with that character and no matter what button you press, the game does not let you revert back to the partner still stuck on the other side of the blades. I had to blindly push my stick until my character appeared on the screen, right as a blade was sweeping by, which means bye bye health bar. At another point, a character with a jumping ability had to swing on a pipe on a wall to get across an electrified floor, but as he makes progress, the camera NEVER shows you where he is, instead staying on the character that is just waiting behind, who has no way of changing his camera angle to bring you back on screen. I had to use the ‘let go’ command when it appeared, jiggle my stick around hoping to get a “take” prompt for the items that were supposedly on the other side of the electrified floor that I couldn’t see and didn’t want to accidentally step on, then ‘feel’ my way back to a ‘jump’ prompt to again grab the pipe. I ended up missing out on an item as a result because my health bar was too precious to waste on a blind scavenger hunt. At times, we actually opted to have one player drop out of the game (which you can do at any time) just so we could get past a section with the AI doing what needed to be done on its own, and then bringing player two back into the game once we were in the clear. Kinda defeats the purpose of a co-op experience.

There are some other major issues. At certain times, you must change to another character because each has different abilities that are needed at specific points in the game. The downside is, unless you’re using a walkthru, you can find yourself standing in front of the single door that takes you forward in the game, only to discover it requires the lock picking pro you left in a safe spot a while back, so you have to backtrack to get him. The game also often fails to give you any indication of how to solve a puzzle the way the cryptic ‘files’ you find in Resident Evil actually hold the key to solving the puzzle if you’re patient enough to decipher them, which means you have to consult a walkthru for the answer frequently in Obscure: The Aftermath.

The biggest problem for someone as save-horny as me (the game could crash at any time!!!) is that every save in the game can be used only once (oh the humanity!), so you are forced to go forward in the game to save again. So if you save then collect a bunch of items or fight a bunch of monsters, you can’t quickly save your progress again. You have to forge ahead and hope the next save isn’t too far away and that you don’t get taken down by more monsters before you get there. The variety of creatures in this game is fairly limited and cliché, and the amount of ammunition and health is also limited, making the game frustrating at times. You can use melee weapons to conserve ammo for boss battles, but you get super damaged every time you do take on a room full of monsters with melee weapons, which means you immediately have to use up the small amount of health you have on you.

If you can overlook some of these glaring problems, the game does have some positive game mechanics as well. First of all, you can fire a weapon WHILE you’re moving—a hugely important feature that not even the hugely action-oriented Resident Evil 4 or 5 bothered to implement. Your inventory of non-weapon items is also just a quick key away. If you’re good with using multiple controller buttons simultaneously, you can actually HEAL yourself while in the middle of a boss battle without having to bring up the official items menu that essentially pauses the game. In fact, you don’t have a choice, since you can’t USE health items while in the items menu. Weird.. The official items menu is only good for switching weapons with your partner or changing weapons, which is a very user-friendly feature. Plus, you have four quick keys on the controller specifically for favorite weapons you want to grab on the fly. Of course, between non-weapon quick key graphics on screen, weapon quick key-graphics on screen, and action prompts on screen like ‘take,’ ‘look,’ and ‘open,’ the screen can get pretty dang full and crowded.

There are also some exciting co-op moments that make it feel like you’re really in a movie and working together. For instance, you at one point climb up to the second level of a library, and as you reach down to pull your partner up, monsters burst into the room below! If you pull her up fast enough, you can avoid a fight, but if you don’t, you have to jump down and help her. Also, during a boat rowing sequence across a lake, one of you has to paddle while the other fights off flying monsters to make sure you both stay alive.

The game also doesn’t offer difficulty settings, but you can get through it without much of a problem, even if there are a couple of stumbling blocks along the way. We reached the end credits of the game in one day—but almost didn’t ‘finish’ the game. Why? Again, if you don’t have a walkthru on hand, you would never know this, but you fight a fairly easy boss and all of a sudden the game’s credits begin to roll and you’re like, “WOW! We rock!!!” However, you can’t skip past the credits to return to the main menu, and for good reason. Once they end, you have almost another two hours of game playing left! Can you imagine how many gamers simply turned the game off after completing the ‘faux’ final boss??? Well, I guess not many since this game is so not popular and probably didn’t get much play by anyone.

But anyway, when you finally do reach the official final boss, it doesn’t matter how much you conserved ammo or health earlier in the game. Why? Because after the faux ending, you continue the game having lost ALL your items. You spend a bit of time running in terror with no way to defend yourself before picking up a few lame weapons and just enough health items to get you through to the end of the game. Then, RIGHT before the final boss, you find a satchel filled with health and weapons to use to fight him! Which means you go into the final boss with no advantage or disadvantage, regardless of how well or poorly you played earlier parts of the game. Who ever heard of a preset inventory to fight a final boss? And how much does that suck for not so-good gamers who find they can’t defeat the final boss with only the items they are given?

Of course, the sex and drugs plot makes the game entertaining in a cheesy way, but it is simply a means to delivering a ridiculously lame plot. This game will most definitely be as forgettable as the first in that regard, but what won’t be forgettable are some of the infuriating game mechanics I’ve already spoken of—not to mention the most annoying of all…the lock pick situation. Yeah, I’ve got to nitpick about the lock pick. The lock picking parts are @#~!%$* infuriating!!! Okay, let me calm down and rephrase. The lock picking parts seriously slow down the momentum because they can take quite a while to accomplish. You simply have a screen graphic of a lock and a pick, and you have to insert the pick into the various gaps in the lock and move them up and down to try to get all the gaps to line up so you have a direct line to the unlock mechanism. It’s tedious and causes serious blurring of your eyes. One of the most obnoxious ‘let’s piss off the game players’ moments the developers programmed into the game has you working on picking a lock RIGHT before a boss battle. Now, there’s a save right before the lock, BUT, once you’ve picked the lock, instead of having an ‘open’ prompt for the door, you are automatically thrown into the room with the boss!!! In other words, if you don’t save BEFORE picking the lock, you simply forfeit your opportunity to save before the boss battle…which would mean being sent back to an earlier save if you die during the battle!!! BUT, saving before picking the lock that leads to the boss battle means…die in the boss battle and you have to, of course, reload your save…right BEFORE the lock pick. Which means picking the lock ALL OVER again. ARGH!!!! And it’s not like you can actually memorize the pattern of the lock pick. You really have to re-figure it out every time. So annoying.

Finally, the game totally sets things up for a second sequel, but let’s consider. The first game was on Xbox and PS2 and wasn’t a hugely successful game. The sequel was on the Wii and the essentially defunct PS2, and was more ‘obscure’ than the original. So are they really going to develop a THIRD game, and for which consoles? Since the series has always been a ‘budget title’ series, I guess they could slap something together for the Wii now that the series has carried over to that platform. And I would play it, despite the weaknesses. Sure, it’s not the intense two player experience Resident Evil 5 is, but it definitely captures the key element that this generation’s survival horror games lack…and that would be the HORROR.

My little catchy parody of the Adam Ant “Ant music for sex people” line jumps into my head every time I watch the 2006 film Mulberry Street, in which one of the characters refers to the infected as “rat people.” Many who argue that 28 Days Later is an ‘infection’ movie and not a zombie movie would claim the same thing about Mulberry Street. But if it walks like a zombie and eats like a zombie, it’s a zombie in my genre book. Because I love zombie movies, I love Mulberry Street. The only real downside for me is that it has the same name as my favorite local pizza parlor. So if I’m not careful about compartmentalizing the movie and the pizza parlor VERY far apart in my head, I could end up picturing a zombie with whiskers eating the cheese off my pizza. Which was this weekend’s challenge, since me and my friends were gnawing on Mulberry Street Pizza Parlor slices as we watched this rat zombie film.

‘Rat zombies???’ you scoff? Well don’t. It makes for a heinous premise that’s just as believable as dead people rising from the grave to munch on brains. Citizens of New York City are being infected by rats and morphing into human/rat hybrids, growing hair on their ears, their eyes getting beady, mouths becoming sharp-toothed snouts, and their nails growing sharp enough to rip out your guts. The number one complaint from many in reviews I’ve read is that the filmmakers resort to shaky cam, dark lighting and chaotic choppy editing to hide the lack of budget and ability to pull off makeup effects, but the film seared plenty of horrific images into my brain despite all of that. And seriously, this isn’t a technique that’s foreign to even the most mainstream movie watchers, and transcends the modern PG-13 horror movies that rely on this ADHD style. My partner was watching one of the latest James Bond movies on cable the other day and I happened to catch a rooftop pursuit scene that was supposed to be a huge adrenaline rush and rollercoaster ride for viewers, but was nothing more than a 15 minute blur. I had NO IDEA what was going on and couldn’t even catch a glimpse of Daniel Craig’s rippling muscles. And this is a costly Hollywood film! So I don’t quite get the nitpicking about budgets here…

Like many successful horror movies, Mulberry Street doesn’t try to be an epic, apocalyptic film, instead focusing on a small group of people enduring the major catastrophic events. Like Cloverfield, it takes place in New York City and makes the outbreak the backdrop for just a small group of those affected (not infected) in the metropolis. Like Quarantine, it takes place predominantly in one apartment building. In fact, it is stylistically very much like Quarantine with its gritty feel and green hues.

The film is simple in its plot, with no obvious explanation as to why people are turning into rat zombies (although, it seems pretty obvious with what we know about rodents spreading disease). What I most appreciate about the film is how you essentially like and root for all the characters in the film, and don’t want any of them to die. Despite, again, criticism from ‘professional’ reviewers online, who say that the characters are underdeveloped due to the focus on the infection, I found this is one of few films that actually DOES develop the characters. Sure, we might not know where they grew up, went to school, and when they lost their virginity, but we know enough about them to really care about them. And questioning of their ‘motivation’ also comes up in reviews. Um…the city is overrun by man-eating rat people. The motivation of the characters is pretty much the same motivation I would have if I were in their predicament. Too avoid an inevitable legacy as a pile of rat poo! But I guess critics need it spelled out.

This is what we DO know about our main characters. There are two charming and eccentric older men in the building who have seen and done it all and are essentially just trying to survive in a lower income area of the city in their later lives. There’s a blonde single mom struggling to make ends meet and raising her teenage son, with whom she seems to have an unhealthy attachment because she’s lonely. She’s also got her eye on the sexy ex-boxer who lives in her building and is waiting for his daughter to arrive home from her time in the armed services. She is a damaged individual who has war scars that have made her insecure about her looks. And then there’s a gay black man who is absolutely in love with the boxer. They have a very interesting relationship in which they are extremely close, even if it is platonic, and they seem to share their love for the boxer’s daughter, almost as if they are a gay couple who raised her together. The black man shows a clear jealousy of the boxer’s interest in and concern for the blonde single mom and her son. This is some of the most complex character development I’ve ever seen in a zombie film, and it’s wonderfully realized.

The standout character in the film IS the boxer. He is the hero, played ever so modestly and beautifully by actor Nick Damici, who also co-wrote the script. Actually, one of the strongest aspects of this film is that it isn’t like a bunch of guys got together to make a low budget horror film and just threw their friends into the cast regardless of their acting abilities. ALL of the performances in this film are genuine and real. But the boxer’s character has it all—and dang, is he saxy. It’s not like he’s movie star hot, but there’s just something about him that makes you want to know him—every inch of him! Part of the appeal is that he is really the everyman—the nice, rugged-around-the-edges-but-soft-inside guy you see jogging in the morning who you might exchange a few pleasantries with at the local deli if you run into him. He’s not trying to impress anyone, not trying to assert himself in any way towards anyone. He’s just someone living his life who doesn’t consider himself important enough to be selectively kind or caring. He dedicates himself to the people in his life, and isn’t afraid of his feelings for those people. It’s such a rare breed of man to come across in life, but if you have, then you’ll know exactly where the actor’s inspiration comes from for that portrayal and just how dead-on it is.

Mulberry Street is effectively short, at about an hour and 20 minutes (I love short horror films). No time is wasted. The initial setup of the people living in a lower-class area of the city holds your interest while the infection situation is slowly weaved in—it’s very real to life in a large urban area. It could start happening right next door or right out on the sidewalk and so many people dealing with the daily grind could be oblivious until it’s too late. There is also an implied government ‘conspiracy’ angle to the movie, but it’s never fully developed or forced, so it doesn’t distract from the fact that this is a horror film and is supposed to keep us on the edge of our seats. Which it definitely accomplishes once our small group of ‘survivors’ gets into the thick of the horror in one isolated and claustrophobic location with few possibilities of making it out alive, just like the original Night of the Living Dead.

The creators are most definitely either fans of the genre or just a really great study, because all the most important ingredients of an effective zombie feature are brought together in this ultimately satisfying take on the zombie genre. There ain’t nothing cheesy about this ratfest. And with all the crappy low budget indie horror films that are hitting the market these days, it’s counterproductive for horror fans to bash a movie of this quality. Some low budget horror gets credited for being good because the creators “don’t take themselves seriously,” but couldn’t that be considered an excuse that is no different than using a shaky cam and dark lighting to thinly disguise the indie aspect of the film? The creators of Mulberry Street do take themselves seriously, and deservedly so. Because despite a low budget, they do know what they’re doing and have created a serious horror treasure completely void of cheap gags or cheap scares.