Dead Rising Week: Dead Rising 2

Welcome back ladies and gents! Yesterday I was busy making a Halloween project. Here's hoping the juicy skeleton looks amazing. Back to the topic at hand, zombies on the rise! Grr. Yes this beloved subgenre of horror has gone through spurts since 1968 George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. The 80s, 90s and the 2000s give a bit of zombie craze until 2004 it gets back up again to ravage the world. The Walking Dead is on its 6^th Season, Z Nation its second and Fear the Walking Dead to Season 2 as well. So let's get off our butt and get back into smiting the undead. This is Dead Rising 2.

Airball!!

Following after the exploits of Willamette Colorado, the zombie virus is a plague running rampant throughout the states. Five years after the first outbreak is the town of Fortune City, Nevada. A reality sport game Terror Is Reality. A game show where the contestants kill off zombies for money and glory. This time around our protagonist Chuck Greene (Peter Flemming of Replicant, Good Boy!, Love Sick: Secrets of a Sex Addict, Becoming Redwood and Almost Human) a former Motocross champion that is in need of money. His daughter Katey was bitten by her zombified mom when she was 5 and the only thing to keep the virus at bay is Zombrex(daily injection to suppress the zombie viral strain). The show's gaggle of zombies prepped for the contest get loose and Chuck scoops up Katey head to an emergency shelter. The lone security Raymond Sullivan (Phillip Maurice Hayes of Unforgiven, Powder, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sabrina, the Animated Series, Gadget and the Gadgetinis, Dinosaur Train and Wolves) is hesitant to allow Katey to stay but Chuck assures him he can keep her stockpiled on Zombrex.

Nope, I'm no Frank West but I'm good.

It looks worse and worse for Chuck as it looks like he went backstage and let loose the zombies of war to lunch and munch the competition. Chuck now has to venture out into Fortune City via air duct (Come out to the coast, you'll have a great time. Have a few laughs.) and make his way to more Zombrex until the Army is due to arrive in three days. Yup another 72 hours in our open ended, survival horror game with some new mechanics.

A Co-Op and Multiplayer option giving four players to compete in Terror Is Reality. The story progresses to offer the achievements and trophies. The health bar is a large collection of squares rather than the two small ones. The AI of survivors are less dopey. Meaning they can nut up and fight, the zombies like to have man meat Chuck and makes the escort mission less painful and maddening. Chuck can get distracted in mini games via casinos to gamble for more money. The vehicle mechanics are so much better but mostly bikes to maybe fit Chuck's former lifestyle as a motocross champ. 

Our combo weapons have gotten a bit screwier with things like: Dynameat (A stick of dynamite crammed in a ham), the Paddlesaw (two chainsaws duct taped to a kayak paddle ) the Hail Mary (a grenade taped to a football) and finally the Spiked Bat (ballbat with nails hammered in it) and you will need it as your boss battles are just as loopy psychopaths have either gone crackers due to zombies or the panic in the air inciting fear giving them jollies. Love the additional weapon Boomstick (a pump action shotgun duct taped with a pitchfork) and the ridiculous activist Stacey (Robyn Ross of Mega Man, Juno, Dead Rising 2, Fairly Legal, Suck it Up Buttercup and Cedar Cove) who was at the show protesting for zombie rights and equality.

It is dark humor, warped mini-games, squashing a zombie with a motobike so yes this is gorefest of goofiness. 

Zombie combo platter!!!

Free-to-Play Reappearance: Pinball Arcade

Hey folks welcome back for Day 3 of Free-to-Play and let's just jump right in. So a phenomenon that has happened around Steam is the love of pinball games. Farsight Studios created exact replicas of some of the all-time greatest pinball tables from Williams, Bally, Stern Pinball and Gottlieb all together in this one game. From every sound effect, bumper and flipper has so much detail and vibrant colors. This is Pinball Arcade.

Well those paddles are well placed.

A single-player, multiplayer game that is not only PC, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U and Playstation 4 mimicking famous pinball machines as far back as 1966. Stern Company associated with Sega brought Starship Troopers with movie quotes, sound effects, flashing lights and a 3D pinball with a sheen like a freshly made ball bearing. Ranging from over 5 seasons these titles are very familiar and have some history to them.

A few off-hand will age me but I care not. Taxi released by WMS Industries in 1988. The goal of the game is to pick up five passengers: Pinbot, Gorbie (a parody of General Secretary of Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev), Santa, Dracula and Lola (or Marilyn Monroe from the original release). Collecting all five passengers gives the jackpot. Amusingly enough there was some likeness rights over Marilyn Monroe, the character Marilyn had to be changed to Lola which looks identical to Marilyn made brunette.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day was the first game to feature the auto-plunger (a trigger device vs a spring plunger) with Arnold Schwarzenegger gave voice to the game, showing the original dot matrix display or DMD (showing informations on machines, clocks, railway and plane depatures with a limited resolution) and frame and box-board artwork of the T-800 in Arnold form, damaged Arnold form and exoskeleton. A per-release had a finite release with Robert Patrick's T-1000 image to maybe 500 machines.

1979 Disney's The Black Hole with spring plunger.

From the early 60s woodrails (wood to frame the playfield glass) to showing of the EM Electron-mechanical (a pinball machines design with relays, motors and switches to run it) which was phased out of design in the late 1970s. After the 1970s pinball machines were referred as Solid State (a machine design that relies on computers and printed circuit boards to run it) are easily recognized by the scoring display powered by electricity vs the score reels that spin to display the scores.

So game play is easy enough with mouse left to right click for paddles, A and D to tilt. Pressing left or right mouse button to launch a ball. Aside from gorgeous graphics, sound effects supplied from the original standing units with 65 different arcade pinball and the DLC offers additional tables each month. Downside is you will have to pay for these new tables. Still love the intro music is an instrumental version of Pinball Wizard via The Who.

Mars needs women and blasters apparently.