Zombie Love - #DeadYourself

Because waiting for a new Walking Dead episode is always difficult, they put out a #DeadYourself app for iTunes and Facebook where you can upload pictures and see what you'd look like should you not survive the zombie apocalypse.

My wife and I were both unknowingly playing with the app at the same time.

It's moments like that when you know you're meant for each other.

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Disclosure: This is a non-sponsored review. All product was purchased by me and the purpose of this review is based solely on my own interests. No product or monetary compensation was given to me by said company. 

Walking Dead: I Ain't a Judas

You should know this by now but if you don't this post contains full episode spoilers,  please enjoy at your own risk. 

Well balls. I made a stand about not writing anything about the idiotic, vacuous, horrible decision making Andrea, and what does the show do? The make an Andrea centric episode. Shit.

Well let's get into it. 

The episode starts with more group discussion on whether or not the survivors should leave the prison or stay and fight. Merle, who is now an inside dog, fills the group in on just exactly who they're dealing with. His advise had been to leave the night before but they hadn't heeded it, so in his opinion they were up a creek as the Governor is just the kind of guy to have stationed men with guns at all exits from the prison. 

Rick leaves for brooding. He chills outside in a stairwell that's been fortified with wooden pallets. He's joined by Carl, his son, who is getting to be the badass he is in the comics. Carl tells his dad that with the newly returned Daryl, Rick should give up leadership and cool the hell down for a bit. Rick no likey. 

Over in Woodbury we catch up with the worst character in the show, Andrea, as she has been clued in to the Gov's mission to the prison, just not the circumstances around it. Andrea hasn't just drank the Governor's Kool-aid, she swims in it. He tells her that he just went to say hi and was fired upon first. Andrea shops the idea again of visiting the folks she thinks she still knows at the prison and it's shot down. Outside the Governor's office she approaches Milton about helping her sneak out and he eventually agrees, well agrees after tattling to the Governor. 

ROAD TRIP!

Andrea and Milty hit the woods and attack a walker. Stealing from Michonne's playbook, the two make a pet outta the poor guy. They tackle him and hacksaw his arms off and steal from another duo, (Marcus and Dom from the Gears of War series) and curb stomp the bastard to remove his bottom jaw. 

I told you I'd talk about Andrea once she does something interesting. You had my attention Andrea, now you have my interest. After their back alley surgery the two are surprised by Tyrese and his people. Milt offers to escort them to safety, Woodbury, (you know, the place with the zombie girls and floaty heads) and they accept.

 Why Tyrese?! Why do you want me to be sad. Just join Rick and let me love you!

 Andrea now has her Michonne-esque pet, TO THE RICKCAVE!

Meanwhile in scary, crazy, land of the one-eyed politician, the Governor unbandages his punctured orb to show everyone at home the creamy gooey center. Fuck that's gross. Finally he puts on his hand-stitched eye-patch, he is complete!

Andrea is spotted yards away from the prison by Carl, who alerts the survivors. Andrea thinks she's gonna get a parade in her honor, boy is she wrong. The gate is pulled back just enough to yank her inside before she gets stripped of her supplies and thrown to her knees like a criminal. One thing of note in this scene: Merle exits with the group and is armed; they disarm Andrea. Makes you think. 

Back in Woodbury, Tyrese's group is getting to meet good ol one-eye. During their talk, two of the idiots he travels with reveal they've been to the prison and they'd be ever so happy to take part in killing Rick and his group if given the chance. Tyrese seems skeptical of everything but does say he'd probably be able to draw out the layout of the prison, anything to be a valued member of Woodbury society. 

Dammit Tyrese! I've been a solid supporter of getting you on the show and you do me dirty! Well I mean I haven't tweeted or facebooked or blogged about you but I've said it to myself that the show needs you I think. But still, damn dude, you cold.

Andrea is let in to the holding area, and says she's on a mission of peace, asking them to gentley walk into Woodbury with her and be good citizens. Rick's group doesn't like her flavor of Kool-aid, and clue her in to what really happened. Not only did the Governor shoot first but he killed Axel, a prisoner, who was a valued member of the group, unlike Andrea. 

Michonne shares with Andrea away from the group that Merle was the hound released to kill her when the Governor "let" her leave. A fate Andrea would've shared had she been a better friend and not a terrible person. In the end it's male-kryptonite-Carol that tells Andrea that the best thing for everyone would be to let the Governor hit Andrea's v with his p and then calmly and nicely stab him to death. Andrea is released, given her weapons back and she returns to Woodbury. 

Admitting to the Govvy that she left and saw Rick 'n pals, Andrea admits by saying she didn't want to stay that she chose to return. She fulfills the first half of Carol's plan and lets the sex happen. Naked in the moonlight she pulls a blade and holds it over the sleeping Gov (odd he sleeps in the eyepatch but whatevs) but lets him live. Credits. 

What the fuck Andrea, you had him! He was right there! Eh, whatever, I hate you. Good to point out just about everyone has killed a human and tons of zombies but Andrea. She couldn't even let someone (Dale) kill themselves in the first season, or kill herself correctly for that matter, so I guess she does have a moral line. It's just between having sex with a bad guy, like a lot, and killing a breathing person apparently. 

Well that's it for the episode. Kind of on the weak side for the episodes of season 3, doesn't feel like much was accomplished aside from character building. So as of right now this was my least favorite of season 3 so far. 

Hit me up in the comments if I missed something or if you're an Andrea faithful and want to tell me what's so great about her.

The Walking Dead: Home

As always here is your spoiler alert: I will be giving full plot disclosure and thoughts on the episode. Read at your own risk.

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'Home' opens with Crazy 'ol Rick being crazy. 

He is working his turn as lookout up on a guard tower where he sees a mother vision of his dead wife in white regalia standing outside the prison fences among the walkers. At this point I'm not super sure what Rick's motivation was as he really does seem to understand that she's dead. I mean he knows he's not saving her from zombies, he knows its dangerous to go alone (!) but he runs out there for a talk.

It is great to see Sarah Wayne Callies' (Lori) devotion to this show even after being dead (it was actually her on the phone calling the cracking Rick in the 6th episode this season; Hounded) as she plays her imaginary self, (I was worried because last episode Lori's face was only shown in shadow).

During Rick's disappearance into the woods surrounding the prison we are treated to Glenn trying his best to make Maggie's sexual assault - at the hands of the Governor - about him; by planning with the women, children and the old-and-one-legged how to charge in to Woodbury and kill the Governor. He gets mad that no one but him sees this as a good plan and hauls off in a truck (when'd they get a truck?) to who knows where.

Rick in the mean time has found his wife and they carry on a conversation. Not really a lot happens.

Catching up with the Dixon brothers, Daryl and Merle . . .

We see them walking in the woods as Merle antagonizes his little brother. For everything Daryl says about going back to the prison, Merle has a reason to not go. During their argument Daryl (and the viewer)  hears a baby crying, screaming and yells all in espanol. Daryl runs off to help with an embittered Merle, who was left behind in a similar fashion on tense zombie fun, back in episode 2 of season 1.

The brothers Dixon come upon a bridge where two Hispanic men are on a flatbed truck surrounded by zombies, and a Hispanic lady is trapped in a sedan with a broken window and a slow crawling zombie in the back of the car. Daryl kicks the usual amount of ass with Merle using a gun once or twice in defense only of his brother. This scene has the best zombie kill so far with a zombie head being crushed with the trunk door of the sedan, brains and blood bursting like a balloon.

After the people are saved, Merle goes diving in the car looking for vittles or any type of prize he feels he earned by saving the stranded folks. Daryl pulls his beautiful crossbow on his own brother and takes control demanding Merle to exit the car and the survivors to exit the scene, baby and lives intact. After another brotherly tussle Merle rips up Daryl's shirt revealing scars up and down his back and a sick tattoo (upon first watch I thought this scene was about the tattoo and didn't see the scars) this prompts a quick tet a tet about their father and Merle. Merle left home at a young age abandoning his defenseless younger brother to take the full abuse from the Dixon patriarch. Daryl resolves to return to the prison with a great line to Merle "I may be the one walking away, but you're the one that's leavin'. Again." Great stuff.

We go back to Rick in the woods now just outside the fence. Hershel has crutched his way down to parlay with the crazy-ass sheriff, a good half football field away from the prison. Hershel pleads with Rick to return and Rick admits he is seeing his wife and he knows she's not real, but he's not ready to come inside yet. This makes him an asshole. Call it PTSD if you want but leaving women and children defenseless to be sad in the woods spells "asshole" to me.

For one reason or another the scene switches to Carol and Axel speaking about Axel's life before the zombies. Oh Axel. Seemingly from nowhere, in this sweet moment, Carol's blackwidowesque curse upon me kicks in as Axel takes a bullet to the head and dies instantly. The Governor has come to the prison and no one gets a pardon.

The Governor has an SMG of some kind and has brought 2 guys with him in a truck and another guy has already made it up to the top of a guard tower just outside the fences and he is firing down into the yard. Carol is using Axel's corpse as a shield since she was out in the open and has nowhere to hide. Carl fires back as Maggie makes it outside to return fire on tower guy and The Governor.

I don't normally root for the bad guy but The Governor in the scene is standing away from his truck, no cover, bullets whizzing past, and he's grinning, he loves it. He starts just firing into the air, not even at the other survivors as they shoot at him, making several things clear: one, that they cant touch him and two, hes got bullets to spare.

Rick and Hershel get pinned down by henchmen, and it seems to have died down. . . Just as everyone visibly takes that sigh of relief, a giant damn armored truck drives up the road to the prison and thru the gates mangling them beyond repair. The truck drops a ramp from the back and unloads a mini horde of zombies in the open grounds between Hershel and everyone else.

The Governor and his henches pack it in along with the armored truck driver and they drive off, like a silent, "Fuck you, you're so unimportant we're not even staying to see if you live." Rick and Hershel on opposite sides of the fence are trapped by zombies and Rick has run out of ammo. Though we do get to see some awesome sheriff pistolwhip action it looks like Rick is about to shuffle off his mortal coil at the hands of two hungry deadites when suddenly Daryl and Merle emerge from the woods and start fucking those zombie's shit up crossbow style.

Some of you eagle eyed readers may notice I don't have anything about Andrea in this post again this week. Well once she does something interesting, or worthy of note I will add her in, promise.

Next week we get to see how the group reacts to Merle at the prison. Hopefully, and this is because I love the comics, Tyrese comes back. The Gov dons his iconic eyepatch and Andrea might be interesting (seriously folks once she stops fucking the bad guys, like, all the time, and starts being the sharpshooter badass from the comics she's back in as worth writing about.) So far this is the best episode this season. The show continues to be a must watch.


Let me know in the comments if there was a scene you liked or if you want to see more about awesome zombie death! ASM out.

Super Hyped Irreparable Trash, An Aliens: Colonial Marines Reveiw

Heh, I made the title spell S.H.I.T.

It's funny because the game is terrible. 

I have a confession to make, I love all things Alien, even Alien 4. I've played many of the Alien games in the past even those of the Vs Predator variety and have been immediately in like with them.

Be aware gentle reader, I have full game spoilers in this review and I do share the ending. Not now. Near the end of the review. You have been warned.

At first this was the case with A:CM. I really wanted to play this game and I had seen tons of photo references I liked; the throwback design of the text in the game that looks like the text first seen in the opening scenes of the early movies aboard the Nostromo and Solaco.

Immediately after the aforementioned text showed on a blank black screen the game opens into a in game movie that stops, stutters and shakes so bad I turned my system off, loaded the game to my hard drive, and started it again. No change.

"Well ASM," I said to myself, "maybe the playable stuff is better."  As soon as I started moving I saw screen tearing and sighed. A little further in I started to see that everything in the background looked like it wasn't fully rendered. Things like projections on the wall, generators on the floor look smeared and undefined, words on them are muddy blobs.

Then I saw. . . The aliens.

Good god, the aliens.

Honestly they are hard to talk about and not be sad. Yes, only one word of the three words in the title is Aliens, but they should have been the focus. Right away I'll tell you that the story is bullshit. It's a shame, but it's far and away shockingly bad. Badly acted, poorly written, and filled with characters that aren't built in anyway, and animated poorly to boot.

Lance Henriksen is voicing Bishop in it, I will give the game this one allowance and only this one, Lance Henriksen. I digress, the aliens in A:CM are laughable. The aliens continuously walk directly in front of your fire, and whilst walking out in the open will randomly just stand the fuck up on their back legs and do a sideways walking shuffle that is odd looking to say the least. These murderous beasts will kill npcs in one strike but when they face off against you are found lacking, one burst of fire will destroy them and their acid blood might as well be saliva. It effects you for mere seconds and makes it so that your always-replenishing-health doesn't replenish for those few seconds. In fact there is an achievement around blasting an alien close range with a shotgun specifically to get acid on you. Seriously these puppies are defanged.

Now basically your story is random set pieces that they throw the characters into but honestly this could be any licensed game with the bare bones story they provided. Level one is catching up with the story before you get to the Solaco and see the bottom half of Bishop with the white blood everywhere, just the mess left from the movie Aliens. You play a character named Winter, not that it matters. You are mostly teamed with a big guy named Oneal and run from place to place fighting aliens. There is a girl named Bella who in the first level tells you she had a face hugger on her when she woke up in a random room, the player knows what her eventual end will be but they have her throughout more the half the game. Again no development of the character, death means nothing but she dies.

Now you don't just fight aliens you fight enemies that are part of the Weyland-Yutani corporation and they don't like you fucking around with the aliens. There is a ton of fighting these guys too, and they have the smarts to hide behind cover when they are being shot at and actually are sometimes a challenge. Your overpowered weapons and room crossing shotgun blasts will make short work of any enemy so the last few levels just becomes quantity over quality. It is eventually revealed that somewhere in the base the WY folks are harboring a queen in their base and trying to monetize her. Of course she breaks loose and you have to fight her.

I am going to give a quick list of the 11 levels of the game as too what you do in each level.

1. Tutorial you see aliens and learn to shoot guns
2. Bullshit
3. Weyland-Yutani blow up the Sulaco
4. On planet, Hadley's Hope where much of Aliens movie takes place
5. Water level where you've been de-gunned and now have to sneak past new explodey aliens. Seriously. In a shoot-em-up game there is a for no reason stealth level. Honestly this level is quite nerve racking, and with an Alien game the whole thing should've been this level but with just a few guns and low ammo.
6. Bullshit
7. Bullshit
8. Bullshit
9. Poorly rendered bullshit
10. Duckshit, it's like bullshit, but looser
11. End boss fight in which you end the level with 0 kills

The end level boss fight is the worst offender of the game. In this boss fight you don't fight the boss. You are in a hangar where you have crashed a ship. The captain has been pinned in the pilots seat and everyone else has found a way to fuck off and leave you alone. You then find out that the queen is in there with you. You can shoot at her to get her attention but mostly she goes from empty box to empty box that litter the hangar looking to hurt you. During this time you are to activate switches that are on opposite sides of a track with a shoving wall aimed specifically at the hole your crashed ship left. Guess what you do. The queen literally stops searching for you and runs and stands in the center of the track as soon and you activate all 4 four switches. You have one final toggle that launches her towards the hole. At which point she saves herself from falling but the trapped, and now dying captain activates the ship and commits suicide/murders the queen to end the game, stealing your kill.

I beat this game without going out of the way to collect anything and ended with 30 of 50 achievements. I need to be very clear: I hated every last thing about this game. It is not worth the 60 dollars to buy. Use the purchase to get Borderlands 2 if you haven't already.

So that's it for Aliens: Colonial Marines.

If there is a review you would like to see, let me know I the comments below.

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Disclosure: This is a non-sponsored review. All product was purchased by me and the purpose of this review is based solely on my own interests. No product or monetary compensation was given to me by said company. 

I Swear It's Not Anything Like Twilight! A Warm Bodies Review

Here's your friendly spoiler warning!  Slight spoilers ahead. No endings just some early plot points.

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I wanted to start with a positive statement about the movie just to spur you on a little further for the review: Warm Bodies is nothing at all like Twilight. 

Now I was worried when I sat down to watch and the theatre went dark - signaling to the guy two rows ahead of me to turn his phone the fuck off or to at least set it to vibrate and stop playing angry birds. He was a bit slow on the uptake and 18 minutes into the movie he finally caught on that he didn't just pay 8 dollars to rent a comfy chair, but there was indeed shit happening on the screen in front of him. I found myself feeling worried again when the new age hipster music prevalent in the Twilight movies (yes I have seen them, no I am not a woman or gay, but I am married, so I might as well be) began to play and I did sort of jokingly try to walk out when I saw the logo for the studio that foisted the Twilight saga upon us, Summit.

Warm Bodies is first and foremost a zombie movie. I know as a people we have had zombies as the lead dog of pop culture for a while now, so a "different" approach to the same thing is refreshing now and again. Warm Bodies suffers from poor advertising, so much so that it has been described to me as a different movie, each time someone has told me about it. I've heard "Twilight with zombies", a "RomZomCom" (WTF izzat?) and a "zombie love story", and none of these is really true with exception to maybe RomZomCom because that isn't a thing.

The movie opens with a zombie narrating his zombie life explaining the important facts we'll need for the story.

• Firstly there is no recollection of your earlier life once you're a zombie, although the main character, played by Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy, X-Men:First Class) does remember that his name starts with an "R" but that's all. 
• Second, they do have relationships and conversations, which are mostly inarticulate grunts with one or two words, showcased with R's friendship with another zombie, M played by Rob Corddry (Old School, Hot Tub Time Machine.) 
• Third, there exists a subspecies to the zombie, an endgame if you will, that the zombies refer to as, "Bonies," which is a state that a zombie will get into where it gets so apathetic/bored or can't get the food to have the energy (it's not really FLESHED out in the movie, pun intended) to go on so they just start to peel their flesh away until nothing but a bones and like a primer layer. As you can imagine this makes them quite irritable and they will go after and eat anything with a pulse. 
• Lastly, R is a huge hoarder, he's picked out an airplane at the airport his group of zombies hangs out in, and he's filled it with bits and baubles, including a record collection.

The human interaction starts when a group of teens are released from their compound to search for medical supplies. The scavengers are led by the daughter of the compound leader, Julie played by Teresa Palmer (I am Number Four) and her boyfriend Perry played by Dave Franco (James Franco's Mom's womb.) The humans are set upon by R's entourage and here we learn that zombies like human's brains because as they eat them they get that human's memories, also they do it for self preservation in that if the destroy the human brain the human can't become a zombie too. We see this first hand as R kills Perry and eats the shit out of his brains. After a flashback of the dead early into the movie Perry's, R sees Julie newly defenseless and rather than feeding on her he decides to save her. He smears some goo from a gunshot he received on her face and leads her to his plane at the epicenter of the of the zombie horde.

R's heart begins to beat again and he starts to speak in full sentences the more he hangs out with Julie and he lies to her about needing to lay low in the plane for a few days, to spend time with her. Julie gets some insight into zombie non-life, and sees first hand that maybe zombies aren't so bad. There are a few throw away scenes of R learning to sort of drive and Bonies sniffing around.

Some of the better lines are given to some of the background characters with Corddry getting to drop the movie's only f-bomb. As time goes on you can see the development of each character, both as people and zombie. Granted it's built on lies and eating the brain of her boyfriend, but watching the relationship build between R and Julie is actually quite heart-warming.

There are quite a few twists along the way and much more to the story that I don't want to give away due to respect of the movie, and really a desire for others to see and enjoy it. This movie is certainly worth the money and the time, I completely recommend it.

If you get to see it or have seen it already, let me know how you feel about it!

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Disclosure: This is a non-sponsored review. All product was purchased by me and the purpose of this review is based solely on my own interests. No product or monetary compensation was given to me by said company. 

The Walking Dead: The Suicide King

Full episode spoilers exist below!! Please do not go any further if you enjoy your ignorance of all things Walking Dead.

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Walking Dead is finally back! We've been waiting since the last episode on the 2nd of December and it was quite the cliffhangerer they left us on. Last we saw Rick and his group (Daryl, Oscar, and Michonne) broke into Woodbury to rescue two of his group (Glenn and Maggie)  that had been kidnapped by Daryl's older and rascistyer brother Merle who's working for the governor of Woodbury, The Governor. Over the course of 8 episodes we were shown Woodbury and The Governor and what was nice and idyllic was actually super fucked up and crazy, The Governor, the worst of all killing anyone outside his town and keeping their heads, floating in aquariums, and keeping his zombified daughter gross and straight jacketed as a sort of pet.

During the rescue attempt Oscar was killed, Glenn and Maggie were freed, Michonne stabbed The Governor's eye in, and Daryl was captured during the chaos Rick's group had caused to find their missing squadmates. Last we saw Daryl, he was brought into a fighting ring alongside his brother Merle, in front of the entire population of Woodbury for a fight to the death.

See The Governor had tasked Merle with hunting down and killing Michonne, as she was a bit of a loose end, but Michonne has a katana and Michonne is good with it. She killed several of Merle's men and showed enough of her skill that though wounded Merle felt she was too much of a threat and let her go, returned to The Governor and claimed her dead. This made Michonne putting out The Governor's eye that much more of a surprise, and that brings us to the beginning of this episode, just over 2 months later, yet on the show mere seconds.

The fight itself is short lived, Rick, after making sure Glenn and Maggie are Ok, breaks back in to Woodbury to rescue Daryl and succeeds in shooting up the place as well. Daryl escapes with Rick and brings along Merle and his awesome crossbow. When everyone makes it out of Woodbury to the waiting and damaged Glenn he promptly freaks out that Rick brought along his captor and tormentor Merle. Rick quickly establishes a "No Merle" rule. Daryl retorts with a "No Merle, No Me" decree, and fucking bounces. Good thing they went through all that shit to save him right?

Rick returns with his group to the prison, where there is a new group of survivors, waiting along with half of Rick's group to hear from Rick. Rick though, Rick has other plans, he's going to go bat shit crazy and see his dead wife during a stressful first impression with the new group. He pulls his gun and starts waiving his gun screaming "You shouldn't be here," and "Get out!" Of course he's aiming this at the spectre but the new group gets the hint regardless and gets outta dodge.

Definetly a good start for the second half of season 3 (most watched episode ever with over 12 million views) there was a lot of action, I did leave out some of the episode as everything with  Andrea's character makes me sick, but it is a must watch, because they all are, and there you have it. Let me know what you thought of the episode or if you think Andrea should've just died already.

Good News Everyone!

Hey everybody, sorry I went all "radio silence" there for a bit but I'm am alive and kicking and have a few things coming down the pipe that I am really excited about and I needed some time to square some things.

• Until now my blog has been largely about video games and its time to diversify. I will start covering comic book but only the ones I like, which for now means Marvel Now books, Walking Dead and Saga. Most of the marvel books are starting or have finished their first arc. So I'll be able to go over stories in some cases and single issues in others. 
• I recently purchased a copy of Dead Space 3 and I will be getting a review out ASAP. 
• I will be getting Aliens: Colonial Marines on the 12th and a review of that will follow shortly after that. 
• Big news recently Witcher 3 was announced along with a slew of WiiU games that I want to talk about too. 
• Lastly starting February 10th Walking Dead is back on the air on AMC and I will be discussing that as well.