This series of interactive YouTube videos straight from New Zealand puts you in the shoes of a pizza delivery dude stuck in a zombie-infested city. I’ve seen it described as “Zombieland meets Beached As” and, having watched a few clips, it’s a darn accurate assessment.

Could my homeland be any more awesome? Probably, but not by much.

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A shakycam trailer of The Walking Dead from Comic-Con 2010. Colour me excited, or whatever palette you feel strongly signifies happy.

Is This Zombie TV Show Tipping Its Hat To Dead Rising? [Kotaku AU]

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Zombie marches are held everywhere, but Melbourne’s own undead shuffle is taking place this weekend on May 1. The horde will start at the Carlton Gardens north of the city at 1PM, and shamble its way to the metro core, bringing all the fake corpulent skin you could ever want with it. Even if the only shooting will be done with cameras, I’m sure it’ll be fun for everyone who doesn’t instantly drop a potato in their underdaks. If the photos from previous years are anything to go by, it should be a blast.

And, despite being an amateur affair, some of the makeup and effects are quite good… more than good enough to find their way into a certain zombie survival simulator…

Melbourne Zombie Shuffle 2010 [that's melbourne]

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Lifeless isn’t the only zombie series in the works – there’s also the Frank Darabont adaptation of Image Comics’ graphic novel The Walking Dead, which looks like it’s gaining traction. In movie world, Zombieland, a ZomCom starring Woody Harrelson, is out soon and there’s always World War Z, tentatively dated for 2010. Here’s hoping J. Michael Straczynski can do a wonderful job of it… though I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t.

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There’s a story (it’s a little advertise-y) over at the Wall Street Journal about a fellow called Robert Smith? (the question mark is part of his name, it seems), an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa. He’s putting out a book soon on infectious diseases that’ll include a chapter called – wait for it – “When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection“.

Gets me randy, it does. A bit from the WSJ story:

If you go for a cure, “unless the cure was 100%, which it would never be in reality, you can’t turn all the zombies back.” You wind up with “this equilibrium where people are always switching back and forth” between human and zombie. Entirely unsatisfactory.

Cure? Pfft, we know there’s no cure. Luckily, it seems there’s another answer:

…the students were interested in a mathematical technique that looks at intermittent pulses of activity. So they modeled a human counterattack that came in multiple waves.

“While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies,” they concluded, “the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.”

The best part? You don’t need to buy the book to check out the research, the chapter is available free as a PDF. I just skimmed it and the amount of numbers mixed with letters mixed with insane is, well, insane. But the References section is packed with everything from Romero and Brooks to Mikami and Pegg, so the pedigree is super-fine.

Be warned, it’s dense as heck.

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First, a bit of background. In Zafehouse, you had to collect water to keep your survivors hydrated. Water didn’t serve any other purpose, and it’s not surprising that it was a neglected resource. I wanted to change that in Z2.

Now, water has been replaced with alcohol, everyone’s favourite beverage.

Alcohol is collected like ammo, barricades and medicine. You’ll find plenty of bottles in houses and stores, but not so much in police stations or hospitals. Alcohol can be used to make Molotov cocktails, to douse and burn suspicious-looking corpses, to steady the nerves and, if consumed in copious amounts, to uh, waste the undead.

Let me explain. Imagine John finds himself alone without a bullet or weapon to his name. The necrotic, animated remains of his friends and family are bashing down his bedroom door and, it goes without saying, things are looking grimmer than a 24-hour Brady Bunch special. What’s our doomed John going to do?

Quench his thirst for the bottle, of course!

His first taste has a positive effect; he’s feeling more comfortable with his situation. It doesn’t change the fact his internal organs are to shortly become an evening snack.

Ah, that second drink is even better than the first! Why did he spend all his time decapitating the undead when he could have rustled up some superglue and added an ethanol-powered glass appendage to his body! The mind boggles.

*Bernard Black voice* What?!? There are zombies in the Christmas tree? What’s this I’m drinking? Iceblock-flavoured bleach? Get the dragoons to my car so I can smoke my coat in peace!

Zzzzzzz…

It’s not like we didn’t know it wasn’t going to end well. But wait a minute!

Yes, you read that right. If a zombie is unfortunate enough to feast on the body of a drunken survivor, they too will have a BAC well in the thousands. Gameplay effects included reduced biting accuracy and bashing strength. It’s all good, really.

That, my friends, is the booze bomb. Put those useless survivors to work, and tune in next week for another scotch-stuffed update!

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House of the Undead [deviantART]

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This video (which looks to be one of a future many) is an attempt by myself and fellow designer Rob MacBride to review Resident Evil 5 – humour added where appropriate (or wherever the heck we pleased).

We were prepared for zombies. We were prepared for the axe-wielding crazy dude. We were more than prepared for the boob camera. What we were not prepared for was launching a split-screen multi-player game.

Watch. Enjoy. Comment.

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Even with the knowledge that it’s not real, I would have done a U-turn over the median stripe and put the pedal to the metal. So to speak.

Hey… you can never be too careful.

Road Sign Fail [Failblog]

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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies might be my salvation. You know, because I’ve been so desperate to read Pride and Prejudice. Sarcasm aside, I really do need to sit down with a good book soon or the Internet will turn my brain into unproductive mush.

Amazon’s description of this spawn of classic English literature and one of horror’s classic creatures is as follows:

“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone crunching zombie action.

Don’t know about you, but it’s enough to get me interested.

It’s not out until June of this year, but you’re free to preorder. I’m happy enough to wait for a few reviews before putting down my buckage.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies [Amazon]

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First, there was World of Warcraft and its zombie invasion. Right, I can handle that. Then Call of Duty: World at War (which, apart from the co-op, is very much in “meh” territory for me) flaunted its unlockable zombie mode.

So, my fill of zombies and gaming was definitely had. The buttons on my pants were undone and to consume another morsel of cadaverous goodness would surely result in something distinctly Monty Python-esque.

Then… bam! Zombies!!! for PSN and Xbox Live Arcade. I’ve played a few games of Zombies!!! the board game and let me just say, well, it’s no Settlers of Catan. It’s very luck-based, and the dogs in the fourth (?) expansion are hardcore to the point of epic fail.

There is such a thing as overexposure and as much as I like zombies, they’re basically the gaming world’s Brangelina right now. It’s almost enough to turn me off Left 4 Dead.

Almost.

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