Black Summer: How not to do a Zombie show

 

Since becoming a father I have spent a great deal of time doing laps of my living room while rocking the baby for naps and the like.  During that time, since I can't play games quite as much as I'd like, I've been catching up with my watch list on Netflix and Amazon and I've seen some good shit.  Better Call Saul, Peaky Blinders (except season 6 that shit was anus), Everything Everywhere All At Once, Juni Ito: Maniac, all in all it's been a pretty good time.  But then I decided to fire up a zombie series called Black Summer and holy moly, this isn't just the worst thing I've watched while on baby duty, it's maybe one of the worst things I've seen just in general.

First broadcast via Netflix in 2019 and apparently some kind of spinoff of some other crap sounding show called Z Nation, Black Summer follows a bunch of characters as they try to survive their way through a zombie apocolypse in order to get to some kind of sports stadium where apparently it's safe.  I'm currently half way through the first season of the show and it's pissing me off to such a degree that I can't help but come here to complain about it.

The premise is you're average zombie survival affair.  Survivors and zombies and assholes for your standard issue "are you humans the real monsters after all?!" nonsense that comes with most zombie media but that's fine, I was pretty much expecting it to be that way going in.  What I wasn't expecting is for the writing of the show to be THIS fucking horrendous on all fronts.  You could legitimately use this show in a course for aspiring film students on what not to do when making a horror show.

Each episode consists of your standard zombie fare where characters go to a place, get fucked somehow and then try to survive but the problem with Black Summer is that the characters seem to be sometimes just willfully fucking themselves or just opting to be immensely fucking stupid at all times.  For example there's one part where they end up in a school which has been overrun by murderous teenagers.  That setup in itself is kind of stupid but there is a scene where a standoff happens, one guy has a gun train on a group of kids, they have a gun pointed back at them and a hostage.  The hostage in question is deaf so there's a bit of an exchange and they agree to let him go in exchange for their gun.  The leader of the teens passes his gun to a small boy and says "shoot him if he moves" while they make the change but the hostage in question is deaf, so he starts to walk where the small boy just blasts him in the back, killing him.  At this point the boys start to flee and they just let them fucking go.  The characters were going on in the previous episode about how they needed weapons and these kids clearly have weapons and just killed your friend and instead of gunning them down and taking their shit they just let them go.  This is then proceeded by the dumbest zombie chase of all time where characters just opt to leave doors wide open for the rage zombie to chase them through and make the shittest attempts I have ever seen in this type of media to block his path.  These are fast rage zombies by the way and their ability to tank bullets seems to be based on how  "tense" the scene needs to be rather than having any sort of consistent rules. 

Speaking of inconsistent rules, in the same episode there is another character who is running away from a zombie, again in the dumbest way imaginable who has a very clearly fucked up right hand.  It's covered in blood and after escaping the zombie he tries to start a car and has to clumsily reach over to the ignition with his left hand because his right is unusable.  These scene ends with him finding a mostly untouched supermarket after escaping the zombie where it then shows a title card and then he's walking around the store completely fucking healed.  I would have been willing to accept that he found some medical supplies either in a back room or in the asiles of the store and patched himself up off camera but there's no bandage or any evidence of that kind of thing at all.  It's like the entire sequence of him getting injured was written way after the fact OR, and given how stupid the show is I'm assuming this to be the case, they fucking forgot.  The lack of attention to any kind of detail or consistency just makes the entire production feel lazy. 

What's worse is that zombie features are such a well trodden road that the rules are basically written for you and barely any effort has to be put in for this kind of thing.  Hell, even games like Resident Evil were getting this shit right in 1996.  In RE1 the characters split up because they don't know what they are getting into and they are trained soldiers, in RE2 they get split up by unfortunate circumstance and in Black Summer they split up as if that idiot gas from Cabin in the Woods is just part of the air in that region of America.  When you're show can be compared to original Resident Evil and RE comes out on top as being the more intelligently put together piece of media, you have a BIG problem.

It's the exact issue I had with that stupid fucking movie called A Quiet Place.  Where all the "tension" of the show is generated by characters being stupid rather than any kind of clever scenario writing.  Despite pissing me off greatly I'm going to finish both seasons and if it magically gets better I'll come back and write a big apology to it but I imagine that it's only going to get worse from here.  It got cancelled after 2 seasons anyway so the chance of it getting any better is 0%

Line of Duty

 

This post is going to be pretty short because it's not about games but I've not enjoyed a show like this since The Wire so I just HAVE to say something about it

Line of Duty is a British police drama series that was first aired on the BBC in 2012.  The show was then brought to my attention by a friend of mine when he showed me the opening of the first episode on Netflix.  I then promptly forgot about it for a couple of years until recently when I decided to put it on in the background so there was some noise going on while I was working from home.  I promptly had to stop putting it on during my work from home hours because I was fucking GLUED to this shit whenever I threw it up on the TV.  

The show starts out with a bloke called Steve heading up an anti-terrorist operation.  The whole thing goes tits up and an innocent man is killed by an armed officer in front of his wife and by the blessing of plot armor the baby he was carrying magically didn't get hit by a bullet or die when it fell to the ground.  Steve cottons on to the fact that the whole operation was rushed and poorly thought out and wants to speak up against his superiors to get justice for the family that just lost a father, but his team instead all put together a story to cover their asses and basically Bully Steve into following along.  Not wanting to to this, Steve quits (or gets kicked out of, I can't remember right now) the anti-terrorist force and joins AC-12, the anti-corruption wing of the police dedicated to bringing down bent coppers.  From there it's hard to say anything without major stories but it's 5 seasons of drama, betrayal, action, plot-twists and subterfuge everywhere.

Rarely ever do I binge a series.  In fact rarely ever do I even bother to watch a series all the way through, I'm just not that much of a TV guy but I just could not pull myself away from Line of Duty until the very last moment, it's just that good.  It does this thing each season where there's a sort of lull in the action, bunch of standard cop-show shit going on and then right at the end of that episode it'll throw something absolutely insane right out of left field that you absolutely weren't expecting.  That gets you to immediately hit the "next episode" button and from there its so break-neck and intense that it's hard to put it down until the season finishes.  

So if you're still locking yourself down away from Corona and you need something to kill 30 hours with, I highly recommend this show.  At time of writing there are 5 seasons and you can bet your ass I'm praying for a 6th

An Outsiders View on Bandersnatch

I just can't seem to escape people talking about this thing.  I've not seen it so I wasn't going to make any comment on it but the way people are ranting and raving like it's the second coming of Jesus Christ I feel like, as someone who enjoys the genre this interactive show is clearly based on, want to throw in my two cents.

As a warning, if you haven't experienced it yet and want to do so completely for yourself then warning for maybe some spoilers. 

So if you somehow haven't heard of Black Mirror, it's a show on Netflix that is written by one of my favorite people ever, Charlie Brooker and is a sort of science fiction anthology show that likes to show a sort of potential dark future of technology.  My personal experience with it is limited to clips and snippets of different episodes but what little I have seen of it seems really good and it is on my list of things to watch fully once I find some time to do so.  Black Mirror Bandersnatch is special because it's sort of a choose your own adventure type deal.  Instead of the episode just playing and you just watching, there are certain points in the show where you must pick an option and the events of the episode will change based on the choices that you make.

Now I've not seen what official publications are saying about it but my Twitter and Facebook are going crazy frothing at the mouth about how cool it is because of its interactivity.  This is all well and good and given the shows pedigree I'm sure it's very good but going crazy over it because it's some kind of "new thing" makes you look just a little bit stupid.

You see, games have been doing this for forever.  For example one of my favorite titles on the Super Nintendo, Kamaitachi no Yoru is essentially the same concept as Bandersnatch but its mainly just text and still images.  It's a pretty famous series in Japan and has a whole bunch of sequels on PS2 and other systems

But Kamaitachi 2 is mainly just text with very limited movement and all the characters are just blue silhouettes, you might say, it's NOTHING like Bandersnatch.  Well I have two points to counter you there, imaginary reader.  First, not only is the interactive aspect exactly the same but Bandersnatch's story flow is actually rather limited and looking at nothing but a flow chart of events, it seems a bit shit

There are A LOT of choices on that chart that mean exactly fuck all of nothing, which isn't really good when you're making an interactive experience like this.  Kamaitachi on the other hand, will not only change events but will even change what kind of story your playing.  The base path for that game is a murder mystery but certain choices might turn it into a zombie survival story, an occult horror story, a raunchy comedy or even a sci fi alien invasion. Sure you can't make EVERY choice wildly change events but Bandersnatchs flow chart seems incredibly limited and easy to work out how to reach each ending.

"But that's not fair! This silly Japanese game is just text! this is TELEVISION!"  Well here come point number two because once again, games have been doing this way before Netflix decided to rip it off

Now I'm not a huge fan of Heavy Rain, I think the writing is a bit shit, another blog post for another day, but this is, once again, essentially the same thing.  Not only do you have to make choices that affect the plot but, because it's being delivered as a game, there's even added interactivity in how the scenes themselves go down.  Take the famous scene where the protagonist must cut off his own finger, if it was Bandersnatch you'd have two choices to cut or not cut and the character would do whatever you pick.  In Heavy Rain you not only decide if he does it or not, but you decide HOW he does it.  Saw? Hot poker? Hammer it off? Are you gonna get drunk before hand to try and dull the pain? It's all up to YOU

Now again, I know I'm being mean but I'm not hating on it really.  I don't have a Netflix account and Bandersnatch has legitimately got me trying to force time in my schedule to sign up and experience it, it looks awesome, but praising it as this "new original thing omg so cool!" is just a bit stupid.  Praise it for it's acting, praise it for its writing, praise it for the originality of the plot if it has it, of course, but do keep in mind that games have been doing this for decades before this came along.

And before any smart ass wants to comment, I know Choose your Own Adventure books did it first but if you google "Bandersnatch" all the news is about how they are being sued for ripping them off so I didn't feel like I needed to talk about it.

Anyway I'm off to sign up for netflix, I'll make a post about what I think of the show itself at a later date

The Walking Dead

Once again I've gone through a bit of a dry period with the blog.  Usually when this happens it's because I get incredibly busy and then by the time I have any free time I'm too exhausted/lazy to write stuff.  This time however, the reason is a lot less legitimate, I've just had all my post-work time gobbled up by The Walking Dead.  I was given a series 1-6 box set and it's basically consumed my life up to now.

It's a series I've ignored for a long time mainly because, and this is a bad habit of mine, the fan base being made up of a herd of wankers.  It's one of those shows that everyone was absolutely creaming their pants over to which I just rolled my eyes and was like "It's a fucking zombie show, it can't be THAT good...".  But, I have to throw my hands up on this one, I was wrong, it IS that good.  What's funny is that I feel like it's all going full circle because people have been saying that it's been slowly getting worse but I'm enjoying it more and more with every season I watch.

Story wise it's a pretty typical zombie affair.  There's an outbreak and then a group of survivors have to get together to help each other not die.  They look for a place to stay and then some other group will come along and fuck things up because of course the big twist is that the real enemies are not the zombies but other people. We've all seen it in things like Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days, Dead Rising and basically any zombie thing ever.  But what makes The Walking Dead so compelling is the drama between the characters and the characters themselves.  Despite the cast being so large the show does a good job about making you care about most of them and when one of them does get chomped on or takes a bullet to the head it is genuinely gut wrenching.  Also when the bad guys do get their just deserts it's always some kind of awesome sequence of events that fills you with that warm sense of satisfaction that a real asshole died that day.

Of course, I have some complaints about things the group does or the insane logics that certain characters decide to follow sometimes.  There's also mad inconstancy with general zombie strength and ability.  Like one moment the zombies will be clawing at a dude for minutes and said dude will take no damage and other moments a zombie will rip open some guys stomach like it's a fucking bag of potato chips.  Also it's a good job the characters are as good as they are because the premise for each couple of seasons is more formulaic than fucking One Piece.  My other final big complaint is that some fucking GENIUS decided to make a box set that ends at season 6.  Season 6 is the absolute DUMBEST place to end anything because the final episode ends with the entire squad getting caught, a new villain turning up, murdering a major character POV so we don't know who it is and then just cutting to credits.  Also Season 2 is dogshit, but there's plenty of videos on YouTube about that.

There's also a bunch of games based on this series that I'm now interested to try.  Well I say "games" but really there's only the Telltale (RIP) one that seems like it's worth a shit.  There's some other FPS one that I don't remember the name of that I remember everyone said was garbage and there's another called Overkills' The Walking Dead but that just looks like a really boring version of Left4Dead so I won't be buying that in a hurry.

If you've not seen it, go watch it, it's REALLY fucking good.  If the posts stop coming again it's because I caved and signed up for Netflix to see seasons 7+, so sorry in advance if that happens.  Also don't worry about spoilers, I had everything spoiled and it only seemed to make it more interesting, jump in!



 

Ajin

I've been sort of off anime for a long LONG time.  I watched a hell of a lot of shows back in my high school and early university days.  I dropped off not only because I just didn't have time but because I just couldn't seem to find anything decent that wasn't full of squeaky anime girls.  Not that I'm anti squeaky anime girl, Dungeon Travelers 2 on the Vita was pretty much ONLY that, but when it's the only thing available I lose interest.

I don't know what came over me but I suddenly decided to look for something to watch and the first genre I turned to was horror.  I started by reading the manga for Parasyte which was enjoyable and from there started looking into a show called Kakegururi which was about squeaky anime girls gambling so I was getting off track. To get myself back on track I looked up a show called Ajin and found myself getting hooked pretty fast.

The show is about a high school boy (because it always fucking is) who gets run over by a truck and is outed as a much feared Ajin.  Ah Ajin is basically a fancy anime way of saying "immortal" but in the case of this show it's not that you can't die, but when you do die you just get back up again.  This leads to some pretty cool action sequences but also some really grotesque horror stuff.  There's one point early on where the protagonist is captured and tortured for "science" and it's not what's happening to him that's disturbing as much as the idea that you have to suffer that over and over again.  There's also stuff with fighting ghosts but I feel they're there for more anime fight purpose and the real enjoyment comes with watching how each Ajin in the story deals with their outcast status.

I've not really been hooked on a show like this since early 24 or The Wire.  I'm not one for binge watching shows but each episode ends with some insane bullshit that just makes you want to see what happens next and I can't resist that "next episode" button.  If you're looking for a show that isn't just weeby cutesy crap that check out Ajin.  There's a second season I've not watched yet but I'm sure it's awesome, go check it out!

Memories of Knightmare

So last night I was playing Haunting Ground on the PS2 for Twitch and I reached a certain corridor puzzle that got me very excited.  The puzzle was a room full of hexagons with a suit of armor at the end.  I had to carefully navigate my character across the right set of hexes to avoid getting a crossbow to the face.  This room reminded me VERY heavily of an old TV show I used to love when I was a kid called Knightmare.

Knightmare was a game show for kids that started in 1987 and ran until 1994 that aired on British TV.  The premise was simple, a bunch of kids met up with this dude called Treguard the dungeon master and they would pick one member of their team to don a "Helmet of Justice" and go into the dungeon.  The helmet blinded the player to everything except what was directly underneath them and it was up to the other kids on the team to guide them to the end.  The real reason for this was that the kid in the dungeon was actually just walking around a chroma key studio so only the viewers could see the dungeon.  If the kid didn't have the helmet he'd just see a lot of green(?) I guess.

Anyway the show, despite being for kids, wasn't easy on it's contestants AT ALL.  Difficult puzzles, traps that would instantly kill the player and fiendish puzzles were all put in place to hinder progress.  Not only that but each team was on a time limit to finish since the kid in the dungeon had a "life force" that was slowly ticking away.  So you could be the best dodger of traps in the world but if you got bamboozled by a talking wall then good fuckin' luck reaching the end.  Off the top of my head, I don't remember a single team winning in an episode for as long as I watched.  However it was a long time ago and I probably missed a bunch of episodes so I'm sure someone won at some point.

I was pretty obsessed with this show as a kid too.  My mother often reminds me of my younger years with stories of us going to the park and "playing Knightmare".  I assume this meant one of us closing our eyes and being commanded around by the other.  Apparently my obsession with Knightmare was so great that we even did this when waiting at bus stops and I can't imagine now how that worked at all. 

I have since learned that there is in fact a Knightmare video game on the Amiga but I've only played it for about 5 minutes on an emulator.  From what I can gather it has very little to do with the show and it's a dungeon crawler more akin to Wizardy or Dungeon Master.

I'm sure if you look hard enough to episodes have been archived somewhere so go see if you can check them out.  It's a great show even now and it might be fun to watch even now for a bit of a laugh.

South Park: The Stick of Truth

This game got a lot of praise and was talked about rather highly upon its release.  This usually makes me far more harsh on a game and it's a bad habit because it can have a habit of ruining a title for me.  However, South Park is one of those games that easily lives up to all its praise and it's absolutely worth playing.

The game revolves around a "new kid" who comes to South Park and he is quickly swept up in some kind of LARP, Dungeons and Dragons type thing being run by the cast of the show.  While all this is going on, some kind of terrible government plot is happening and it is up to you and your friends to stop it.  The story to this game is essentially one big episode of the show converted into a simple RPG game so fans of the show will know what to expect from the game plot wise.

Game play wise, I find Stick of Truth to be a little lacking.  It's an extremely simple RPG with some Mario RPG esque timing things attached to the various attacks to make them hit harder or apply an effect.  I played as a Mage and found all the combat to be stupidly easy to the point where my buddy character was completely pointless.

That said though, while Stick's game play is very simplistic it makes up for by having tons of character and being genuinely funny.  There are many little nods to old episodes of the show while also having a ton of it's own humor.  It has been a long time since I genuinely laughed out loud playing a video game but a few of the moments had me hitting the pause button so I could get my shit together.

There's also a hell of a lot to do in this game.  There are tons of side quests and things to collect.  If you are a perfectionist then you will definitely get quite a significant amount of play time out of this game.  Not to mention that there are 4 playable classes (warrior, mage, thief and Jew) that all have their own unique skill sets.  The animations on some of the attacks alone warrant multiple playthroughs and have a pretty big effect on how you tackle certain situations.

I could talk for fucking ages about how good the game is and why you'd probably love it but I'd be here all day if I did that.  It would be easier to say that if you are a fan of South Park then you absolutely WILL like this game.  If you're not familiar with South Park then this isn't a good place to start but there is enough for a newcomer to enjoy too.  If you don't like South Park or you're looking for a deeper RPG experience, then you're clearly an idiot looking in the wrong place. 

Sony Press Conference Thoughts!

This is the last of the bunch, enjoy!

Game Centre CX

OK! Recently I discovered a TV show that's been in airing in Japan for a long time but I've only recently discovered, and good lord is it AWESOME!

The show has a simple premise, there is this guy called Arino, a comedian from Osaka who puts himself into a small room with a filming crew and plays some super hard games.

The thing that makes the show so entertaining is this guy has the most tolerance for retro game bullshit I've EVER seen.  No matter how often he dies, no matter how often the game flat out fucks him over, he always remains calm, but his reactions are really funny.  Think AVGN but he's filled with joy and wonder rather than rage.

If you're like me and you live in Japan, he also covers some unusual game centres and does interviews with various well known people in the industry.  Not only is this show super entertaining but you can learn a lot about old games that you probably didn't know before.  For example that Shuwatch article I posted, I gained that bit of knowledge from this very show.

So check it out, you can pull them up on youtube, but I'm gonna be hunting down the DVDs from now on!