Zombie Content or Context?

Great pseudo/pop science YouTube series from RosterTeeth Productions, the group responsible for the machinima series Red versus Blue, ‘testing’ the basis for familiarity with weapons in Zombie apocalypse shooter games like my favourite Left4Dead (L4D). I like the way the production integrates iconography and thematics from the L4D game series in the video. Check it out.

Also, the third person this week to recommend the band The National (all for different reasons) finally convinced me to go take listen to Conversation 16, highlighting the track as “slightly-smiths-esque indy sad song, which for no apparent reason turns into a Zombie fantasy…”

getting creative with zombie content

The zombie-as-content breeds creativity. In spite of (or perhaps because of) its generic nature the zombie-as-content is a sandbox of rules and freedoms. Yes it has to eat brains, but beyond that the rules are pretty flexible and playing with the generic conventions is half the fun. Released on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 last week in Australia, Dead Rising 2, is a single-player and multi-player co-op zombie horror survival game – nothing new there for sure – but duct tape plays a big role in this game, allowing the player to create new zombie killing weapons by combining everyday items with more deadlier everyday items – find two chainsaws in the game and locate the kayak paddle and you can make the paddlesaw. Promotion for the game has also been based around creativity – Destructoid has the Tape it or Die competition to create new duct tape weapons to win a t-shirt, while the ABC TV game review show Good Game has its make a Youtube video competition to win a life size zombie sculpture of Brian from the game itself.

IMAGWZ1T!

Check out Destructoid’s review of XBox live indie zombie game – I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1

Highlights: the game is only meant to be played for the duration of the backing track (13 minutes) and “may well be the best dollar you spend on a videogame this year”.