Best Games of 2012

A lot of people will tell you 2012 was a disappointing year for boxed games, and I’d agree with them on a few counts, at least compared to the last couple years. On the other hand, it was a great year for alternative, downloadable games, and there were plenty of new experiences to make the increasingly long wait for new consoles easy to forget.

Best of 2012

9. Mark of the Ninja (Multi)


Mark of the Ninja was one of several games this year to rely on stealth for the meat and potatoes of its gameplay, and while it wasn’t my favorite, it was certainly interesting in its approach. Most stealth games tend to anger their players at some point or another when they get caught and don’t know why, but that’s never a problem with Ninja, where thanks to clever interface and game design, it’s perfectly clear at any moment why you can or cannot be detected by enemies. Add in the beautiful 2D art and animation, extremely fluid controls, and useful variety of weapons and gadgets, and there’s a lot to like here.

8. Journey (PS3)


I wasn’t as in love with Journey as some other people, as I kind of felt like we already got some of what ThatGameCompany was going for with their previous game, Flower. Even if you aren’t grabbed by the game’s simple play of jumping around and sliding down hills and wordless, vague story though, it might be worth discovering on just a technical level. The graphics are gorgeous – I don’t think anyone’s ever made a desert look this attractive before. And the unique multiplayer creates an experience that’s possibly worth the purchase price by itself. It’s amazing how easy it is to prevent people on the Internet from being jerks just by taking away their ability to talk. It’s a game that for some is a transcendent pleasure, and for others a boring experiment that doesn’t work. I found myself closer to the former on the spectrum.

7. Sleeping Dogs (Multi)


I never played a game in the True Crime series, so I was uninterested when they announced a new one set in Hong Kong, even after it stopped being a True Crime game and got the title Sleeping Dogs. I kept hearing about it after it came out though, and finally gave it a shot, which turned out to be worth it. Sleeping Dogs is the best modern open world crime game since Grand Theft Auto IV, and you can make a strong case that’s it’s actually better. Like plenty of games since the GTA series became popular, it offers a few innovations on the formula that will only make the genre more accessible, but it’s also worth checking out just for the game itself, which is just the right length and level of maturity. Inspired by Hong Kong action movies, it tells a totally competent undercover cop story with some great voice acting, has a variety of things you can do to pass time, and most important, the core missions are actually a lot of fun, with decent car and foot chases, acceptable gunplay, and best of all, a robust melee combat system that takes obvious inspiration from both kung fu cinema and the great hand-to-hand battles in Batman: Arkham Asylum and its sequel. It has its shortcomings, but I’d recommend it to anyone who needed a fix while waiting for the next GTA.

6. Darksiders II (Multi)


I know a lot of people were really disappointed with Darksiders II. And I don’t really get it. It combines fast-paced, stylish character action in the vein of Devil May Cry with puzzle-focused dungeon exploration in the vein of The Legend of Zelda just like the original Darksiders, and also adds fluid traversal/platforming in the vein of Prince of Persia. I realize that that’s a lot of “in the vein”, but that’s what the series is. Where the game definitely falters is in the addition of an RPG-style randomized loot system, which makes some sense when you think about the lure of always finding better gear to keep up with the increasingly tough enemies, but which takes away the definite thrill of discovering things in this kind of game. It’s certainly odd to go through the trouble of solving a uniquely designed, one-time puzzle and get rewarded with a randomly generated item that may or may not be better than what you already have. It’s also sort of dull from a story perspective, sticking to mundane fantasy worlds where Darksiders mixed that up with a destroyed modern earth in interesting ways, and not being allowed to advance the plot by virtue of taking place at the same time as the first game. Still, it’s full of well-made dungeons and is just a lot of fun to play, so I have a hard time taking much issue with it. Not what it could have been, but still good.

5. Far Cry 3 (Multi)


Far Cry 2 was a brilliant game, but a lot of people didn’t see it that way, and I don’t blame Ubisoft for a lot of decisions they made with the sequel. In fact, I think some of them were for the better. Far Cry 3 combines the setting and basic premise of the first game (regular guy trapped on a tropical island) with the basic gameplay and structure of the second (you wander around an open environment in first person, fending off attackers from all sides), and adds a bunch of systems and poorly-thought through plot elements. You can now take over outposts to prevent enemies from ever appearing in the same area again, and you can gain experience points to unlock new abilities, and you can hunt and skin animals to craft items that let you hold more supplies and boost your stats. It makes it overall a friendlier world to be in, which is good for accessibility, but undeniably damages the unique feeling of lonely desperation you got out of the last game. Still, it’s a blast to screw around, whether you’re burning a patch of jungle to the ground, silently knifing every thug in the immediate area, or getting into a hectic car chase that will end in a painful explosion and lots of gunfire. Just make sure to turn off some of the more intrusive interface elements and ignore the poor attempts at story and character.

4. Hotline Miami (PC)


Hotline Miami. It’s sort of like if you made an entire game out of those brief scenes in Drive where Ryan Gosling killed goons with his bare hands. It’s an extremely fast action game. But it’s also a stealth game. And a puzzle game. Your goal on each level is to kill everyone you see before they can kill you. You can knock them over by bashing through a door they’re standing behind. You can shoot them or smash them with guns or various objects you find. If they’re lying on the ground but not dead yet, you can smash their heads into the floor, or snap their necks, or worse. Playing it can feel like a bad trip – the faux-80s dance soundtrack (there’s the Drive influence again) is always pounding, and the graphics are ugly pixelated garbage, and lights are flashing and the ground is kind of moving in a disorienting way. The story is nonsense, and it tricks you into thinking maybe there’s something deeper under all this violence, before it pulls out the rug and you finally learn it really is all about the violence. You will die hundreds of times, and you won’t care because you can start a level again instantly and it’s just so fun to play. Hotline Miami is unique and unforgettable.

3. Mass Effect 3 (Multi)


Mass Effect 3 caught a lot of heat for its (honestly underwhelming) ending, but everything before that lives up to the challenge of bringing an exceptional science fiction saga to a conclusion. It lacks the thrill of discovering a whole new galaxy from Mass Effect, and doesn’t have the huge, diverse core cast of Mass Effect 2. It does give you the sense of a whole galaxy struggling to survive, and brings back a lot of the series’ larger conflicts and resolves them in satisfying and often deeply affecting ways. It’s also the most fun the series has been to play, as long as you don’t mind doing a whole lot of shooting from behind cover. I wish the conclusion cared a little more about how I spent the previous 80 hours it took to get to that point in the series, but it’s still a game worth playing, and has payoffs a fan of the series would want to see.

2. Dishonored (Multi)


Dishonored deserves praise just for the fact that it exists. A big budget action stealth game with magic powers, a somewhat cartoony graphic style, and a setting that is hard to sum up more succinctly than “whale oil-punk”? I still wonder how it got made. But to only praise it for the miracle of its existence is to ignore that it’s actually a really good game. You are tasked with exacting vengeance on the people who have had you falsely accused of treason and thrown in prison (from which you promptly escape), and your options in doing so are vast and always interesting to discover. You have a variety of powers and equipment at your disposal, and it’s up to you whether you try to sneak by enemies without being seen or run around killing them like a madman. Your options are a bit limited if you want to avoid murder, and the story isn’t too interesting, and they don’t really make much use of the extremely famous voice cast. These are minor issues though when you take in the sheer depth and inventiveness of the game’s exception world design and the way it all fits together.

1. The Walking Dead (Multi)


The Walking Dead deserves so many superlatives, it’s hard to know where to start. To begin, it’s easily the best thing to come out of the increasingly popular zombie franchise. It’s also one of the best adventure games in years, and has one of the best stories in a video game ever. I know hitting emotional notes isn’t the only thing a story can do, but it’s one of the places where games in particular have had the biggest trouble, and the fact that I can honestly say this game made me cry by the end definitely speaks volumes about how well they end up developing the characters and their relationships. The story doesn’t branch as much as you might expect based on what the developers said about it, and if you aren’t into basically just clicking on things and listening to people talk, it might not be for you. But it’s certainly one of the best zombie stories ever told.

Delayed Entry

This is the best game that wasn't released in 2012 but I didn't play until then.

Saints Row: The Third (Multi)

Saints Row always seemed like another probably-mediocre clone of the Grand Theft Auto series but the third game in the series reaches almost genius levels of brilliance throughout. When you strip out all of the presentation elements, it’s an open world crime game, where almost every mission comes down to you driving somewhere and then shooting enemies from a third person perspective. Of course, stripping out the presentation elements robs you of what really makes the game work and be such an entertaining experience from start to finish. The writing, despite telling a very silly story, is remarkably intelligent, and it is handled by a voice cast that does a great job of keeping things always changing and always funny. Grand Theft Auto is always straddling the line between serious and satire, and it’s nice to have a game that is just a straight up comedy instead. Nice visual direction and a great use of licensed music also add to the sense of fun throughout. It’s not the most solid game ever created, but it’s easily good enough to be sustained by the other things that make this such a memorable way to blow a dozen hours or two.

The Walking Dead, Volume 15: We Find Ourselves

Either the book has started to just throw new characters into the story without properly introducing them first (valid given the current situation in the plot), or I'm forgetting some of them in the time it takes for a new volume to come out. My guess is that it's the latter, and that's probably just the reality of reading a comic while it's still coming out, but only in the trade paperback collections. I think part of it though is that things are a bit muddled at this point. There are a whole lot of living characters right now, possibly more than there's ever really been at any point, at least only counting ones that have been given names and things to do. And none of them are really doing that much. There's a bit of a struggle in this volume between some people, but it's over quickly and doesn't have any real consequences. There's very little threat from zombies, either... they're out there, but there's nothing major. It's just sort of a transitional part of the story, taking place shortly after some major events and presumably setting up others. But it's a little underwhelming when it's the only stuff I've read in a few months and I won't read any more for another few. So, yeah. It's fine, there's nothing wrong about it, but at this point it's inessential.

The Walking Dead, Volume 14: No Way Out

Recent volumes of this book have really pushed the idea that when the world is overrun by zombies, other people are just as dangerous as they are. But No Way Out really brought back the threat of the zombies themselves in a big way. The good guys are surrounded on all sides yet again, and as can be predicted, some seriously messed up stuff happens as they fight to survive. It's at the point in the book that I really can't bring myself to care about anyone anymore, because Rick is literally the only character that I don't think Kirkman would be willing to kill, if only because he's the lens through which most of the story is shown. And he's done too much out of self interest at this point to let me think of him as a real hero at this point. He's just a good survivor. I read not because I hope the characters will see things through, but out of a certain morbid interest in what the next awful moment will be. This book had a few of them, and there was little I could do besides chuckle in disbelief as I saw them come to pass. This was an extremely violent book (they usually are), but for whatever reason it hit home just how good the book is at throwing tons of horrific imagery at you. I can see how someone without empathy and a passion for monster movies could love the hell out of it. As it is, I manage to enjoy it quite a bit.

The Walking Dead, Volumes 7-13

Partly thanks to actually having an income, I have read more of The Walking Dead than I have in the last couple months than I did in the last couple years. Having 42 issues to talk about rather than only six doesn't actually leave me with that much more to talk about, because I'd rather avoid going to much into the details of the plot as usual. Suffice it to say that zombies are still everywhere, and people die just as quickly as they are introduced. Part of what I like about this rotating cast is that that it allows the dynamic of the group to change greatly over time. I'm currently working my way through the British TV series MI-5, and while I appreciate how they're willing to change up the cast frequently, it's pretty obvious when a new character is dropped into an old one's basic niche without it actually changing the show's formula too much. But the new blood in The Walking Dead definitely changes the story, and it's interesting to watch relationships evolve with time. Also, these volumes really dug deep into the idea of humanity being the real danger in a world where society has been destroyed, even more than the earlier stories, and that stuff tends to be much more chilling and depressing than any regular horror story can. But while the series works well as a study of humanity in an extreme setting, I don't think I'll ever count it among my favorite comics because there just isn't enough of a plot for me to really get invested in. Live goes on for these people until they die, and the book seems like it will go on in much the same way until it ends. I'll stick with it for a while though, at least.

The Walking Dead - Season 1

The Walking Dead's first season showed a lot of promise for what you can do with a series about the end of the world via zombies, especially with network content restrictions, but unfortunately the actual execution was fairly uneven. I liveblogged the premiere, and I thought it was amazing, a perfect introduction to the comic's world for anyone who was interested. But what came after was inconsistent at best, with some pretty unfortunate characterization, especially among characters new for the show, as well as some pretty contrived plotting and overly soap opera-esque dramatic moments. The show still had a lot of good points, especially when it stuck to the story of the comic, but it just didn't live up to the promise of the pilot.

I want to make it clear that I don't think the show's failings are due to it simply deviating from the source material. It's pretty clear that they're using the books as a general guide rather than a bible, and that's fine, especially when the book's creator writes one of your episodes. They're obviously trying to keep the same general pace, and when you have 48 minutes of screen time rather than 25 pages to fill, that means more time spent on everything and more need for subplots and ideas that only last for one episode. The problem is simply that a lot of what they did just felt silly and forced in comparison. The show fluctuates wildly in tone, sometimes wanting to be a big horror-action fest, and sometimes wanting to be a muted human drama set against a global catastrophe, and these two things don't always gel. And I'm not sure if this is related to the other factors or not, but most of the new characters are simply bland and hard to like. Norman "You may recognize me from The Boondock Saints" Reedus plays Daryl, a skilled hunter and racist who's sort of delightfully off his rocker, but everyone else is either irritatingly stupid and aggressive or just undeveloped sketches. Thankfully they're mostly dead or gone by the end of the season, but it makes you wonder even more why they were there.

The show does do some good things though, and it would be wrong not to bring those up. The show looks awesome. Frank Darabont is a Hollywood man, and it seems like he brought some of his friends with him, as every episode is well shot and lit, and they really capture the pure essence of the imagery a show like this needs. The zombies are fantastic, with great makeup effects, and the show pulls absolutely no punches killing them, with loads of gore all over the place. The main cast is very good also. Andrew Lincoln plays protagonist Rick, and he's good at conveying both sides of him, the part who's a strong leader and the part that doesn't actually know what he's doing. Jon Bernthal is good as Shane, playing a much more interesting if no less scummy version of the character. Sarah Wayne Callies brings unfortunate memories of Prison Break, but she's fine as Lori. Glenn is as fun as he should be, Andrea does well with some tough material, and Darabont regular Jeffrey DeMunn captures what's great about Dale. It's a show with a very strong foundation, it just needs consistently better writing in season two. That seems like a feasible goal, which leaves my expectations high going into next year.

Also, here are my recaps for the last four episodes of the season:
Tell It to the Frogs
Vatos
Wildfire
TS-19

Movie Update 4: Halloween Netflix Marathon

Since it's Halloween, and Sunday, and I have nothing to do all day, I decided to spend it watching some horror comedies on Netflix Instant and write about it live. I don't think any of the first three films are supposed to be very scary, but hopefully they'll have some fun with horror themes. The last one isn't really a comedy, but something of a cult classic that should hopefully provide some campy laughs. Finally I'll wrap things up with the premiere episode of AMC's adaptation of The Walking Dead. I'll start some time soon.

First film:

Beetlejuice, directed by Tim Burton

I'm not the biggest Burton fan, but maybe I'm just not seeing the right movies. I remember being frightened by what little I saw of this as a kid. We'll see how true that remains.

Start time: 12:15 -  I did watch a bit of the cartoon as a kid. Hated it. Let's hope this works out better. I like this music along with the overhead shot of town. It became more obviously a model as it went on, until the gag at the end with the spider. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis as the happy couple. I'm sure this will last forever.

12:20 - What kind of person pitches a house to people when the owners don't want to move? Wow, that vacation went bad pretty quick. Always watch for dogs in the road, folks. And now we're in poorly-composited nightmare land. How long does it take them to realize they're dead? Not too long, apparently. They don't seem too bothered though.

12:28 - The kid's mom from Home Alone and the pedophile principal from Ferris Bueller's Day Off as the couple moving in to the newly empty house. Daughter played by Winona Ryder. Weird, this slick guy whose role I don't really understand is played by Jerry's landlord from Seinfeld. First real gross moment as Davis tries to haunt the new owners, but they can't see her. Some pretty funny sight gags. They can't be seen, but they can still manipulate the environment and be sensed.

12:35 - I'm eating right now so commentary might be sparse. So if they can't leave the house, what happens if the living make the house bigger? They're probably wondering the same thing. Hey, Winona can see them. This could be interesting. I enjoy the way Beetlejuice is trying to contact them.

12:46 - I've always enjoyed the idea that the afterlife has the same bureaucratic procedure and red tape as the DMV or something. Some really enjoyable set design in this otherworld-place.

12:54 - Robert Goulet. God rest his soul.

1:00 - Man, they're taking their time really getting Beetlejuice into the mix. And right on queue, they summon him halfway into the movie. Wow, this is a fun performance. I didn't know Michael Keaton had it in him. Well, I kinda did. Those are some big shrimp. This is a great possession scene. Aaaaand the shrimp pay off. But uh oh, it didn't have the proper effect. The family is excited by having ghosts in the house, not terrified. What a weird universe this movie takes place in.

1:15 - But now it's Beetlejuice's turn. A freaky looking, violent snake is a bit more effective. Zombie football team is kinda funny. And now Lydia is suicidal for some reason.

1:25 - Isn't it kinda cheating at charades to summon the actual objects you're referring to? Ah well.

1:29 - I don't get it. There can't be proof among the living of an afterlife, but these characters have all already seen it. What is the limit on exposure before it's actually a problem?

1:40 - Is it just me, or is it rude to try to stop Beetlejuice after agreeing to a deal that he holds up his end of? Eh. Pretty fun movie, even if the plot was kind of all over the place.

Second film:

Bubba Ho-tep, directed by Don Coscarelli

I love me some Bruce Campbell, and the concept of an old Elvis Presley and a black guy claiming to be JFK taking on a mummy sounds like it could be a hell of a lot of fun.

Start time: 1:55 - We start with an enjoyable defining of terms and old news story about mummies being discovered. It then cuts to the rest home Elvis is staying in in Texas.  Heh. If Campbell's opening narration is any indication, this is going to be a vulgar movie. Far from thinking of mummies, his biggest concerns are his sickly roommate and the growth on his penis.

2:04 -  We spend a few minutes with a woman before she's bitten by a scarab beetle. She kills it, but then a mummy appears before her. Elvis sees her disappear from the hallway, but doesn't much care.

2:12 - This film actually seems like it has something interesting to say about aging and death. His now dead roommate's daughter didn't care to come visit him, and no one cares to listen to his claims of being the real Elvis. Funny flashback scene showing him switching places with an impersonator. Even his entourage couldn't tell. Another flashback shows how he broke his hip and had to stop impersonating himself.

2:22 - Another scarab attacks Elvis. He kills it in a pretty over-the-top way and then wanders into the room of his friend JFK, who's passed out on the ground. It seems like the mummy attacked him, but John thinks it was Lyndon Johnson coming to finish him off.

2:35 - Elvis and John agree to track down whatever is causing trouble in the home. They find some hieroglyphic bathroom graffiti, and they're on to something. Meanwhile they're some crap going on that the staff seems pretty oblivious to.

2:42 - Our heroes are piecing together the mystery over coffee and candy bars. The mummy continues to wreak havoc. Finally it comes face to face with the King. Elvis gets a vision of the monster's past and then it walks right by him. Another resident dies, but at least the mummy didn't eat his soul and crap out the residue.

2:53 - Elvis tracks the mummy with his walker to a river, and finds a bus license plate, remembering such a vehicle going over the nearby bridge in his vision.

3:00 - The good guys learn more about the mummy's origin, and then make a plan to go after it. Elvis continues to wonder about what future he has left. He resolves to take care of the situation We're then treated to one of the best determined-team-walking-down-a-hall shots I've ever seen.

3:08 - And the showdown begins. Elvis loses sight of the monster and it sneaks up behind him. He notices in time and the scuffle really starts. Elvis puts down the walker and busts out some moves. The mummy wanders off and disappears again. It ambushes Jack, but Elvis comes to the rescue on a wheelchair and lights him up. It's too late for Jack, though. Elvis' incantation doesn't work, so it's time for plan B. It involves more fire. He's wounded but victorious.

3:22 - Weird movie. I enjoyed Campbell's performance, but the whole thing was kind of oddly understated and muted for a horror/comedy mash-up about an old Elvis Presley fighting an Egyptian mummy. It definitely felt like the small, independent production it was. Not bad, though.

Third film:

Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Frank Oz

I don't really know much about this one. It was directed by Yoda, it's a musical, and Rick Moranis and Steve Martin are in it. Here's hoping it's fun.

Start time: 3:40 -  The movie opens with some campy narration and a trio of women in matching outfits singing about not much in particular, introducing Rick Moranis as Seymour, an assistant in a plant shop. A radio broadcast sets it in the early 60s. One of Chuck's aunts from Pushing Daisies plays Audrey who also works at the shop.

3:50 - The second song, about living in a rough part of town, ends. After a day with no business, the owner of the shop wants to shut it down, but Rick shows him a new hybrid plant he's been working on. He goes into another song about how he got the plant during a recent unexpected eclipse, and it starts bringing in a ton of customers. I love this movie's tone. It's delightful.

3:57 - Another song as Seymour is left at the shop to try to fix the plant, which has gotten weak. He somehow decides it would be a good idea to give it some of his blood. Overnight it grows dramatically. He goes on a radio show to talk about it. Not only does it drink blood, it likes lady's bottoms. Hey, John Candy as the radio host.

4:05 - Wow, this movie's kinda dark. Audrey's singing a song about how she wishes she deserved Seymour and how her boyfriend abuses her. Wait a second, this is the second song than I've seen Family Guy reference before. I guess they like it.

4:10 - Transitional song and the plant is huge now. God, this couple is too adorable for words. I laughed out loud at the cut to Steve Martin on a motorcycle. Apparently he's a badass dentist. I'll accept it. Holy crap that inside-the-mouth shot was fantastic. He huffs nitrous oxide too. This film is delightful.

4:19 - The plant starts talking. And singing. And demanding fresh blood. This is about the point where I'd run away. Nice puppetry, though. Seymour agrees to kill Audrey's dentist boyfriend so the plant can have his blood. Win-win, right? What the hell, Bill Murray as a masochist who visits the dentist for fun? Awesome.

4:29 - Well that was pretty fantastic. But now Martin wants to take his frustrations out on Seymour's mouth. If this movie wasn't so funny it might be terrifying. Seymour doesn't have to shoot him, because he dies of an overdose on gas.

4:35 - Seymour chops him up and feeds him to the plant. I'd say the movie had taken a dark turn if it wasn't jumping between goofy and horrific every five minutes.

4:43 - Seymour makes his move on Audrey, but things aren't happy for long, as his boss confronts him about seeing him chop up the body. He helps feed him to the plant, and now he's really getting in deep. And now we have a spoken word song. Pretty cool stuff. I don't believe growing an unusual plant would get a man this famous though.

4:49 - Seymour's not really thinking too clearly here. If he really only cares about Audrey, he could just cut bait, let the plant starve, and put it behind him. But I guess he needs money to take her out of Skid Row. And the plant needs feedin', which means more murder. He offers to just get it some meat from the butcher's shop. I don't think that will be acceptable, though.

4:55 - The planet lures Audrey over and has her in its clutches. Seymour saves her, but Jim Belushi interrupts their singing. He has a business proposition, but Seymour refuses and goes to confront the monstrous plant. The plant sings about how great he is, and pulls the building down around him, burying Seymour.

5:05 - He's not dead though, and he electrocutes the creature from outer space (did I mention it's from outer space?) until it explodes. Things end happily for the protagonists, but not without a hint of trouble ahead. Ah, Christopher Guest played the first guy to notice the plant in the window. I should see some of his movies. That was a lot of fun - easily my favorite movie of the day. Just the right mix of goofy and mildly disturbing.

Fourth film:

Them!, directed by Gordon Douglas

It's a movie about people getting attacked by giant ants from 1954. This is going to be fun, right? It's probably going to be fun.

Start time: 5:20 - Interesting choice with a color title for a black and white movie. Let's see what a genuine attempt to be scary looks like 56 years later. Some police find a kid wandering around the desert by herself. She seems a little bothered by something. She manages to fall asleep before they come across an abandoned car and trailer. There was some sort of disturbance inside the trailer earlier. I wonder if it was somehow related to giant ants. They figure the girl came from this place, but still don't know who she is.

5:32 - They find an empty store that's also been ransacked. Just what the heck is going on here? I bet they're wondering. They find the body of the store's owner. "Dragged and thrown". Amazing how they can tell that. There was sugar at both scenes. I wonder what kind of culprit they must be looking for at this point. I mean, no way giant ants looking for sugar has crossed their minds, right? They hear a strange whistling noise for the second time. Left alone, the second cop only gets off a couple shots before he's killed off screen.

5:37 - The first cop speculates that an escaped lunatic could have done it, but the chief ain't buying it. No money taken, just sugar. The crack shot store owner's gun broken after he managed four shots. Just what in tarnation is going on here? An FBI agent is brought in to help.

5:42 - They fly in an expert to look at a footprint they found, and he brought his babe of a daughter for some reason. I bet she can scream pretty loud. The old guy uses formic acid (which the shop owner was loaded with) to restore the little girl's voice, and all she can do is scream about "them".

5:48 - The whistling starts again as they look for prints during a sand storm. A gigantic ant looms over the daughter. Yep, she can shriek pretty good. Pretty good practical effects for the 50s. They shoot of its antennae to hinder it and then fill it full of lead. The old doctor reveals his hypothesis, that area ants were mutated by the fallout from a nuclear weapons test in the area nine years earlier. I don't think that's how radiation works but whatever. They go looking for a nest.

5:54 - Hey there's some classic radio communication humor. The Daughter Pat spots the nest and takes some pictures. An ant poses for the camera around some human remains. The doctor reveals his plan to assault the nest with heat to keep the ants inside and then kill them with cyanide. They use bazookas to hit it with phosphorous for the heat. They then bravely and probably idiotically enter to make sure the ants are dead. Pat goes in too to do some science-type stuff.

6:04 - As they go through the tunnels, they realize not all the ants are dead as some burst through a wall. They hit them with bullets and fire, a deadly combination. This movie's actually pretty cool so far. A bit silly but not terribly dated considering. They find an egg chamber, and oddly, it seems the ants don't go through a larval phase before adulthood. Pat commands the men to burn everything, and burn everything they do. Unfortunately, the doctor doesn't think that was the only nest, and has some pretty doom and gloom ideas about what this new ant mutation could mean.

6:10 - The doctor shows a home movie illustrating his theories to some Very Important Men. He finishes by laying out his doomsday timeline of one year if the queens aren't found and destroyed.

6:16 - The good guys find an institutionalized man who claims to have seen some giant ants in Texas. *18 minute food break* Psh. Right after I call them good guys, they keep a sane man locked up to keep his story quiet. Eh, greater good I guess.

6:39 - Man, these ants are everywhere. As is the Wilhelm Scream. They manage to attack a boat at sea, for no real reason that I can surmise. I don't really understand why the original cop is still on the case. Special detail, I guess. Not exactly his jurisdiction.

6:47 - I don't really understand what's going on. They're investigating the disappearance of a couple kids after their father was killed by ants in LA. Kind of small potatoes right now, fellas. The trail manages to lead them to a possible location for some of the monsters. In fact, they may have stumbled upon the mother lode. Subplot justified!

6:56 - After keeping quiet to avoid a panic, the military breaks the silence to inform the citizens what's happening and cause a panic. The mission is to destroy the ants once and for all and save those two kids I guess. They're probably dead. The search begins anyway. They're a lot better equipped this time. Unfortunately, it's a potential hostage situation. Because there's really good reasons why an entire colony of giant ants wouldn't have eaten a couple little kids yet.

7:02 - The cop hears something, and is courageously/stupidly going through a connecting shaft in the tunnel system on his own. He finds the kids, but the whistling is back. There are ants, and he can't fry them without risking the children. The cavalry storms in to back him up as he saves them. He's crushed to death before help arrives, but they manage to fend off an attack. Man, they're really hitting that Wilhelm button hard. A cave-in traps the FBI agent in alone with the ants. He fends them off long enough for the troops to break through, and they find the queens. Picard would not have approved of this barbecue. And there's your abrupt old-movie ending. Really not bad. Decent old fashioned science fiction horror. I could squeeze in another movie before Boardwalk Empire if I really wanted to, but I think that's enough for now. I'll be back to talk about the first episode of that new zombie show.

Final feature:

The Walking Dead - "Days Gone By", directed by Frank Darabont

If there's one network I'd trust to faithfully and succcessfully adapt such a good and unflinching comic book besides HBO, it's AMC. Really looking forward to seeing what they did.

10:32 - That was a really effective opening segment. Tease a bit of zombie action, introduce the Rick/Shane relationship, show his accident, introduce him to the world of the dead, and then have him meet the first survivors. Just a pitch-perfect half hour.

10:44 - A bit more zombie apocalypse drama before a light moment right before the break. I'm impressed not only by the amount of gravitas they're giving to a story about dead people rising to eat flesh, but by the fact that it's working. AMC teased yet another show that looks potentially interesting - The Killing. Apparently it's based on a Danish miniseries.

11:00 - This is seriously good looking for a cable TV show. No way this was filmed on the same budget as Ruibcon. Must be some studio backing it. Or maybe not, what do I know. Darabont's gotta have some pull being at the helm. Some of the stuff he added for this episode is as effective as just about any moment from the comic itself.

11:12 - It looks like we've caught up with the events of the cold open. Finally the first scene with the full cast, minus Rick. I'm not sure how I feel about Sarah from Prison Break playing Lori. There's nothing wrong with her, just a lot of memories of a show that wasn't very good. There's a reason they used the shot of Rick riding a horse with Atlanta in ths distance in all the teasers - it's pretty outstanding.

11:25 - While trying to check the World Series score, FOX advertised The Chicago Code, a new cop show. Eh. Created by Shawn Ryan. Yeah, I'll probably watch it. They picked a great way to end the first episode, conveying the hopelessness of the situation while still hinting that maybe all isn't lost. Off to a great start. Checking out the trade paperback again, they only covered about the first two issues of the comic in that hour and a half. I'm sure they'll pick up the pace a bit going forward, but they're clearly aiming to keep this on air for a long time. At this rate, it will be seventeen more episodes before they're even caught up with where I am, less than halfway through the current existing run. Well, I hope you had as fun a Halloween as I did. Good night!

The Walking Dead, Volume 6: This Sorrowful Life

So. Yeah. This book is pretty messed up. Main characters have been disfigured. Many people have been killed, both by zombies and their fellow survivors. Just lots of bad things have happened. The worst part just might be the faint glimmer of hope, the straggling belief that things might change, the optimism that new life can be started while it's ending all around them. Lots of stories try to sell the idea that no character is safe, but I believe it with The Walking Dead more than almost anything else. It's impossible to feel good for the characters living in this world. You just keep reading to find out how it's going to go bad. Pure nihilism in comic book form. But despite some continued over-explanatory dialogue, it's mostly well written, and the art is very effective at showing you something you'd never want to see. It's an achievement to make something so joyless so easily readable. And hey, the TV show is really coming along too. They've showed images of the main character and the zombies, both look good. I don't know how far they're going to take it, but I have a lot of faith in AMC.

The Walking Dead, Volume 5: The Best Defense

I know I said they were filming a pilot for a series already, but apparently that was just preliminary stuff, and now they're actually going to do it. Robert Kirkman likes Frank Darabont's script, and I'm intrigued to see if it gets picked up for a series. Still got a lot of catching up to do with the book though. This was possibly the best volume yet, and again, it had little to do with zombies. The whole crisis is definitely getting to some people, as what seemed to be solid friendships break down and a few seem close to really cracking. The biggest thing though was the introduction of what is really the story's first significant villain, and he sure is a bastard. Say what you will about the undead and their flesh-eating ways, they aren't sadistic and creepy like this guy is. It's almost too over the top even for a post zombie apocalypse tale, but in a way I do believe that that environment could create a person like that. It's pretty brutal stuff, and I'm definitely going to keep my reading spread out like I have, because it's a fascinating setting but not one that's easy to visit. I knew it was only a matter of time before the zombies became only part of the problem, but I've never seen man's own inhumanity just thrown at me so effectively.

The Walking Dead, Volume 4: The Heart's Desire

I just realized that if you put the different volumes of the Walking Dead trade paperbacks side by side, the zombies along the bottom of the covers form a continuous mural, with small gaps. It sort of blew my mind. Eventually the story's going to be too long to see all of them together unless you have a big hallway somewhere, though. This volume turned out to be a pretty significant turn in the story, and the hordes of undead hardly even played into it. They were a a catalyst for some upheaval among the survivors, but the spark that lit the fire really had nothing to do with them. It's nice to see that not all of the conflict will come from the constant threat of being eaten by mindless corpses, and in fact it seems that they may not even be what the story is really about. It's about how people deal with having their world destroyed utterly, and how they come together or turn against each other under unending stress. The story's not as emotionally affecting as it could be, because it's not the easiest thing to keep every single character and their feelings straight, and the rate of attrition among them is so high that it's pretty easy to just not get attached. It's definitely an intriguing story, though.

The Walking Dead, Volume 3: Safety Behind Bars

The third volume continues the story in very much the same manner, as Rick and his band of weary survivors keep up the struggle to live in a world overrun by zombies. The cast continues to grow and shrink at the same time, with some getting killed as fast as others are discovered. This one takes place mostly in a nearly abandoned prison, which at first seems to be a safe haven but turns out to be more dangerous than they thought, and not only because of the undead. It continues to be an interesting, depressing story, not one that I'm in love with but one that I can't stop pursuing. It's kind of hard to write these, because without getting into story specifics there isn't that much different from book to book - zombies are everywhere, couples come together and fall apart, and people die. The winter is thawing, and the fact that the world is clearly continuing despite the relentless danger of living in the land of the dead is one of the comic's most successfully unsettling aspects. There's just no end to it. AMC is going to film a pilot for a series based on it, which I'm sort of ambivalent towards. A legitimate, long term series based on a zombie apocalypse is pretty cool, but I'm not sure if they can do it justice on that channel. It will be neat to see them try, though.

The Walking Dead, Volume 2: Miles Behind Us

The second part picks up right after where the first left off, and continues the interesting, somber tale of a pack of humans trying to survive the winter in a world taken over by zombies. I've heard the story only really gets going a little later, but I still quite enjoyed this book. The main artist for the book is different starting with this volume, but I didn't really miss a beat because the overall look is still the same, thanks to the consistent gray tones. Adlard's style is a little messy where Moore's was a little cartoony, and some of the characters are a bit harder to distinguish until you get used to it, a problem that's increased by the pretty big cast.

Kirkman isn't afraid to kill off characters, but they meet new people at a high enough rate that it always feels like there's a surplus of pending zombie victims. I don't mind the amount of people, it's just that some aren't used to their full story potential. Though given enough time, which there will probably be since there's already nearly sixty issues with no signs of stopping, there's probably going to be plenty of character development to go around. I'm not totally sold on Kirkman's writing, because fairly often the dialogue is a bit obvious and rote ("Thanks for saving us!" "No problem, anything to help out a fellow man."), but I like the main characters enough and the story seems to be headed in a really interesting direction. Most zombie fiction doesn't cover the long term effects of a plague, but I appreciate when something does.

The Walking Dead, Volume 1: Days Gone Bye

The Walking Dead does a very good job in its first volume of setting itself up as a slightly different take on the standard "zombies destroy civilization" storyline. Most movies and stories focus on showing the outbreak as it happens, and end as the lonely group of survivors that they've been following buy it not too long after. The Walking Dead doesn't show the initial event at all, with the main character being comatose in the hospital as it happens, and portends to be a much longer term look at what could happen to survivors as constantly living in fear wears on them. I obviously can't see that too much in just the first six issues, but what's here is effective.

There's a lot of set up as the main character Rick comes to terms with how the world's changed as he tries to track down his wife and son and joins a camp of survivors living outside Atlanta. They do various things, some smart and others not so much to survive, and we learn some about the specifics of Kirkman's zombies - they differentiate between themselves and humans by smell, and mostly act like traditional Romero ones. There's some family drama that happens to go along with the normal threat from the undead, and it seems like he really has a plan already about what he wants to do with the story. The art by Tony Moore is really good, both stylized and detailed in a way that makes it simple fun to look at, although the slightly cartoony faces might not totally match the tone of the comic, and he does get replaced by the next volume. Well done, interesting book with potential.