Project Zombiod (Video Game, 2014)

Project Zomboid

 A survival RPG from Indie Stone, Project Zomboid is still in it's Alpha state and it's already an intriguing game. The first thing you've got to understand is that; YOU'RE GOING TO DIE. Once we have that out of the way you can set about trying to survive as long as possible, before you die, build a new character, hunt down and kill the shambling corpse of your old character and steal their gear. It can be a bit depressing at first until you realize you can build on the progress of the last character, and as you learn the game, it becomes much more survivable, at least for a while.

You have a steep learning curve for this game. For it's simple graphics and slow, stuttering and moaning antagonists, this game is really complicated. Unfortunately your characters are so anal retentive that they refuse to sleep anywhere but in a bed, and much to my relief I discovered later, in chairs. The game is simple, try to survive, and it's pretty easy until you go to far, get injured and can't find a safe place for a breather. The problems compound fast and when a hoard of zombies is chasing your down and you've got 6 angry red status indicators, get ready to start your next character.

 

If this happens, you are already dead.

 

Disaster starts off simply. You are looking for an Axe so that you can build walls and it starts to rain and you get cold. You decide to search for a Sweater rather than staying indoors. You break a window and cut your arm. Cold, bleeding and the sound attracted some zombies. You easily outrun them but you didn't get to search and you keep running into more. The tired icon appears, dusk settles in. Tired, cold, bleeding and falling asleep on your feet, your vision is so bad, zombies are vanishing in front of you. You make a mad dash for the next house, open a window, remember to close it and finally you have time to rip some bandages, eat some food and sleep. The last thing you hear before drifting off is the window breaking and wonder if you remembered to close the bedroom door?

 

There are four modes of play, Survival, Sandbox and Last Stand for single player plus an Online Multiplayer Mode. Last Stand is the most bizarre and cuts straight to the heart of the game. You wake up in a cabin with a few supplies and must endure a never-ending assault of zombies. You can't survive and it's bragging rights to see who can last the longest before their brains become dinner. You can adjust the environmental and zombie settings for each mode, making the game easier or much, much harder.

 

Home sweet fortress.

 

Crafting in Project Zomboid is logical and very satisfying. Your chances of survival increase dramatically when you learn to make the Rain Barrel and start walling off areas to keep the zombies out. Once you have a secure perimeter you can safely starting thinking about farming. You can only survive of ramen noodles for so long, simply because after about 2 months you would probably have eaten all the available food on the map.

 

With a source of water, a garden and a safe house you could just wall yourself in and call it a good life. However the Project Zomboid maps are huge and there is a temptation to explore it all. I decided I wanted to see the Movie Theater on the other side of the map. After several characters died exhausted in the dark, I gave up. Instead I'm trying to collect all the components to build a tent, so I can sleep anywhere I want. I have actually built several chairs in warehouses and other buildings, as emergency sleep locations.

 

You can get into deep trouble and survive. Injured, exhausted, swarmed and starving, I have lucked into houses, found something to eat, the time to bandage up and sleep. It is the greatest feeling to watch all those angry indicators vanish. You also have emotional problems with boredom and stress which can be alleviated by reading and certain foods. But one thing remains. If you see that word SCRATCHED, well for all your best efforts your time might be up. My second attempt to the theaters, my poor character got scratched and come morning he was turning.

 

I love the soundtrack to Project Zomboid. It really sets the tone for the game, depressing, bleak and doomed. The game keeps getting upgraded and there is already a community of mod'ers if you want to change your game further. There is already a Katana mod, a weapon not found in the original game. I can say, I only look forward to developments as this game progresses. It's got a few bugs but some of them vanish with each patch.

 

Indie Stone is not without a sense of humor.

 

 

Charke Reviews Anaconda (1997 Film)

Anaconda - 1997

 

 When you can't breathe, you can't scream.

(....also if your eyes are closed, you can't see.)

 

Director Luis Llosa creates one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Some people have said this movie is so bad, it's good. I think it's just bad. Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, Jon Voight, Frank Welker and Ice Cube drag themselves and their careers through the mud, literally at some points, in this Apocalypse Now meets Roger Rabbit train wreck. The actors spend a lot of time travelling down river on a boat, the CGI snakes move faster than physics could possibly allow and the acting is so corny that it hurts.


Basically a film crew goes looking for the worlds biggest snakes. They find them and are eaten by them. There are explosions and something of a contest to see who can die in the most ridiculous fashion. Some of them survive and we're ready for the sequel.

With such an all-star cast, you've got to wonder what went wrong. Unfortunately I am left blaming some combination of script, directing and the terrible special effects. IMDb calls Anaconda the 14th worst movie of all time. Unfortunately they label Armageddon as number 12, so I take that list with a grain of salt. I consider Armageddon to be absurd at times but overall an excellent flick.

I only reviewed this movie so I could set the standard and score for what I feel is one of the worst. I accept the fact that many people will go see this just to see how bad it is and I suppose there is a certain enjoyment to be had from that. With every movie, there is always a least a few fans who fall in love with the movie for whatever reason but I haven't met anyone who thinks this isn't a bad movie.

www.Charke.ca

Charke Reviews Doctor Who - Listen (2014 TV Serries)

Doctor Who: Listen

S08E04 13 Sept 2014

The Doctor Who television show is famous for playing with words, starting with the title. His name is not 'Doctor Who', it's unknown but everyone calls him 'Doctor'. This leads to a wonderful play-on-words that occur when you are not watching the show. Easily every time someone asks "who" you might think about the show and if you a whovian, you'll be wearing a smile. Listen is a brilliant episode and one of my all time favorites. It shows many different aspects of Doctor Who, adds to the character of the new Doctor and touches on some of his most important history.

Knock Knock?

Who's there?

Doctor.

Doctor Who?

Exactly.

[Whovian Spoilers Ahead!] Listen follows this trend. Like the silence, don't blink and run; listen will be a new catchword once you finish this episode. They manage to sneak this little gem in at least three times with profound meaning.

Directed by Douglas Mackinnon and written by the amazing Steven Moffat, Listen opens with a unique shot which exemplifies this new Doctor, Peter Capaldi, as being both different, new and original, but still the same old Madman with a Box. There is a frantic energy he brings to the role like he is a man running out of time, although that's certainly unlikely the case for this Timelord. Starting during Matt Smith's reign the show has become distinctly more Elizabethan and Steampunk. Capaldi's use of chalk boards in the TARDIS is both critical to the episode and takes this theme to the next level.

Listen is actually two stories that blend, perhaps crash, together by the conclusion. On one hand we have Clara, played by Jenna Coleman, just trying to have a date with Danny, played by Samuel Anderson. On the other we have the Doctor, obsessed with a hypothesis which drives this episode about as far as one can travel. He practically abducts Clara to come along but shows his caring side when she asks for help with her date.

Previous Doctors have seemed almost omniscient in their ability to understand things but each has had a blind spot. Capaldi's blind spot is people. He's not trying to be normal, to fit in and understand them. When Clara lies to him, it's hard to be sure if he knows, or he's just lying. In the past he has often later admitted that he knew everything, but even that could be a lie.

"Rule one: the Doctor lies." -Matt Smith, Let's Kill Hitler.

Yeah, and then this happened. Yes, in this episode.

While Clara's life gives a human story to this episode, I find myself far more fascinated with the creature that the Doctor is hunting through the episode. He believes there may be a creature whose primary evolutionary trait is hiding and he goes looking for it. And Moffat refuses to tell the audience if there is a creature there or not! Go. Watch it again. Look more carefully.

Look at the chalk scene at the beginning. Did Capaldi write 'Listen' on the chalk board, just off camera and throw the chalk on the ground and forget, or did something else? The way the shot is done, it could go either way. Who was under the sheet? Who opened the door. What did Doctor Who see? Maybe nothing at all? I doubt it.

"And I know things, secrets that must never be told and knowledge that must never be spoken. " - Matt Smith, The Rings of Akhatan.

Doctor Who is a man of secrets that must never be told. He learns one in this episode, possibly, and the audience doesn't get to know what it is! We are often told of these great secrets and here we get to see the crafting of one. Like the Weeping Angels, I have to suspect this will come back as a more in depth sequel but I hope it doesn't at the same time. This is such a brilliant episode, perhaps it could be just left alone on display, perfect, a piece of art finished.

Listen

What’s that in the mirror, or the corner of your eye?

What’s that footstep following, but never passing by?

Perhaps they’re not just waiting.

Perhaps when we’re all dead,

out they’ll come a-slithering from underneath the bed.

(What's that in the mirror? Well, it's Sister of Mine from the Family of Blood because you put her there Doctor! Unless perhaps you've finally forgiven her.)

" ...what if we are never really alone?" - Peter Capaldi, Listen

 www.Charke.ca

Charke Reviews Annabelle (2014 Film)

 

Director John Leonetti and writer Gary Dauberman have put together a very surprising doll-movie. With Child's Play jumping the shark to land on 2013's Curse of Chucky one expects to see a sassy, knife wielding murderous little doll running around in this movie as well but predictable just isn't scary and Annabelle is scary. A lot of horror movie clichés are being broken these days. I thank and blame YouTube for pointing them out on a relentless basis but it leads to some new movies like this one. While Annabelle tries to break the mold with new and original scares, unfortunately it is mostly achieved by borrowing other clichéd scares not typically associated with haunted dolls. Still, for the new horror fan, it's got plenty of thrills and for the old and jaded viewer, it's changed things up plenty to keep you guessing.

 

Thought that was a little generic? It was. This movie is all about surprise and it's just impossible to review much about it without MAJOR SPOILERS. Please be warned.

 

This is the second movie I've reviewed set in a pre-cell phone era. Terrors have trouble with being on YouTube and their victims summoning help quickly and easily but I can forgive them. It creates isolation. The movie opens in a bloody and violent fashion which mirrors Chucky's origin a little too obviously, but everyone knew the doll was haunted coming in, and they move on quickly.

 

My fear of the story dwelling on the 'helpless pregnant wife' vanishes with a puff smoke when the story jumps ahead and we see Mia, played by Annabelle Wallis (yes, the star's name is Annabelle) dominating her painfully subservient doctor husband, played by Ward Horton. The meat of the story is Mia  protecting her daughter from the supernatural. It smacks heavily of both Ghostbusters and Poltergeist. They run through the classic 'you're crazy - no I'm not' but quickly blow away all that noise with some horrific events clearing Mia's name.

 

The story drags Mia through satanic cult worship, deals with demons and lands smack dab on the worn duo of disorientation and illusion. Leaving the audience unsure as to what is real, the director could excuse any failing as illusion but only pulls that trick once. It is very refreshing that, while they are reusing a lot of material, they have enough to avoid using anything too often, and a lot of it just once. The movie winds down by nearly killing someone and then pulling a switch on who dies at the end, even reminding the viewer that there were clues that this would happen all along.

 

In a completely original event, we have a serious fire, in a horror movie, that doesn't manage to kill anyone or even burn the house down. Leonetti and Dauberman are borrowing stuff, but when they do it like this, and put their own spin on it, it becomes a gem. They try hard to be this creative with the rest of the movie and there are some other gems hidden in this one.

 

Set up for a sequel, I'm desperately curious to see what they would do. Would they try borrowing all sorts of new material? Would they look at this movie, see what new things worked and keep using them? I would only hope they don't copy the same tricks over again, because that defined the 80's and 90's horror genre sequels.

 

 

www.Charke.ca

 

 

 

Walk Among the Tombstones (2014 Film)

 

 

Director Scott Frank brings us a very dry and gritty private investigator tale staring Liam Neeson, who always walks tall even if the rest of the movie is bad, and this one isn't bad at all. In Walk Among the Tombstones, Liam Neeson is truly in his element, backed up by a fantastic cast and story. Set in 1999, the movie has the feel of the classic 70's private investigator films. Nothing about the story is over-the-top or makes you feel like it could not have actually happened. The moral compass takes a serious beating as Neeson's character, Mathew Scudder, is torn between doing the right thing and doing the murderously satisfying thing.

[Spoilers!] No one in this movie is without sin, except perhaps TJ played by Astro (Brian Bradley) and there is a wonderful scene where he tries. The story opens with Scudder in a shootout before he is employed by a drug dealer to investigate a murder and naturally almost everyone he talks to or questions is a part of the criminal underworld. Director Scott Frank manages to narrate a pair of villains however, that are so awful you can't help but feel sorry for everyone whose lives they touch. Despite an R rating, the most horrific of the violence is tastefully left off-camera keeping this from being a gorefest horror instead of a crime drama.

The violence, the fights, in this movie are realistic and unpredictable, and there are plenty of them. However, the hero doesn't kick down the door and mow down everyone in the room. You certainly get the feeling he knows what he is doing but he isn't always the victor in every situation. Scudder doesn't walk around armed all the time but there aren't rooms filled with machine gun toting goons prepared to die pretending they have a chance to kill the hero. Perhaps the most brilliant confrontation is the one with no violence at all.

Isolating a hero and justifying all the law breaking heroes do is difficult, even back in 1999 when a phone call can summon the police relatively quickly. Scott Frank does not shy away from the police in his movie and like everything else, Scudder ends up in a love-hate relationship with them. As the movie draws to a close we see what may be the most level-headed prisoner exchange ever. When everything goes pear shaped, as it almost must, it is in a far less clichéd manor than is typical. It was incredibly refreshing not to be able to guess the result. The movie closes with a series of bate-and-switch tactics which tries to leave the audience guessing how the final ending will pan out, but leaves too many telegraphing clues to what is still a solid finish and a brilliant aftermath.

As a final nod, the brilliance of this movie is in the details. Scudder bluffs that he knows the boss of a suspect Scudder is questioning. Neeson doesn't run, or look away or apologize. He just smiles and speaks with that slow tone he is famous for. "Ah, you're too smart for me." The interview is over, and ruined, but Scudder just soldiers on.

 

Mark Charke

www.Charke.ca