Gore. No pun...just gore.

There are some things in this life that will always be cool.  Two of those things are zombies and ninjas. For my birthday I got a couple games that celebrate those aforementioned cool things:  Left 4 Dead and Ninja Gaiden 2.  I don't care who you are or how old you are, ninjas are awesome.  There isn't a whole lot that's cooler than being able to sneak around in an ultra-stealthy manner and dispatch your enemies with effortless martial arts.  Ninja Gaiden was a old series of games for the NES back in the 1980's, and in 2004 Microsoft picked it back up and redesigned it for the Xbox.  Ninja Gaiden (2004) is the hardest game I've ever played.  It is also the fastest and one of the most fun, except for the 40% of the game that teeth-grindingly, hair-pullingly, eye-gougingly frustrating and impossible.  It also has the least climactic ending of all time, but it is fitting for a highly trained ninja - no theatrics, just an end to the quest and a start to more training.  

Having had so much fun with Ninja Gaiden (2004), I looked forward to Ninja Gaiden 2 with much interest and anticipation.  Then word got out:  Ninja Gaiden 2 was going to be a little bit easier this time around.  I may have to turn in my official "Badass" card, but I was secretly relieved.  "I might actually be able to finish this game on a Normal difficulty level in less than a year!" I thought to myself.  (Here's hoping.)  So far the game is great.  It is easier, but only by a little bit.  There are finishing moves in gory close-up action, new weapons and a different treatment of dead bodies.  In the previous game the bodies of your fallen enemies would disappear after a time.  This helped the video game be fast as the computer wouldn't have to keep track of those fallen corpses.  This time around the bodies stay put, in all the many pieces you carve them into, forever.  It's really satisfying to pile them up.  And also heads roll downstairs. It'sreallyfuckingcool!!

Okay, so that might not have appealed to everyone reading this blog, but what I'm about to discuss is a magnet of awesomeness that no one can ignore: waves and waves of screaming, sprinting, jumping zombies...on fire.  Left 4 Dead, the other violent game I got for my birthday, takes place in four different types of locations and consists of four survivors of the zombie apocalypse running through said areas and fighting off the zombie hordes.  Each section has 5 zones that you've gotta get through, and at the end of each zone is a safe house that you hole up in and in which you can find weapons and health items.  You can have pistols, a shotgun, an AK-47, a sniper rifle or an uzi.  You can also find pipe bombs, molotov cocktails and propane tanks lying around which are all quite useful.  (The pipe bombs have this red glowing light on the end that attracts the zombies.  They all crowd around the pipe bomb desperately and then they all get blown to smithereens.) Mostly you run around picking off the individual zombies here and there, but sometimes the huge rampaging masses of zombies come pouring into the hallway, street, room, closet, cabin in which you are hiding out.  When that happens it's all guns and bombs and fire and blood and ridiculous chaotic violence.  And it's too much fun to unload an entire clip of your uzi into the 100 zombies that are running straight at you.  

A great addition made by Microsoft with the Xbox360 is the inclusion of achievements for all games.  Achievements are these milestones that you can reach for performing certain feats. Lately the achievements are getting "punny" names, such as the achievement in Dark Sector that you get for cutting off two people's heads with one throw of your boomerang/razor blade/hand thingy: "Double De-Cap Latte".  

The other day, as I was fighting the zombie hordes from the top deck of an abandoned cabin in the woods, I threw a molotov cocktail into the air, and it landed on a huge group of zombies through which the flames spread like wildfire.  That simple action put me over the top of my burning zombies limit and I was awarded the "101 Cremations" achievement...a badge that I will wear proudly.  See when one zombie gets hit with the flames, he/she runs around and spreads it to the next zombie and so on and so forth until it is quite warm out.  It's a fun domino effect to watch.  I would've spent more time watching had I not been attacked by a bunch more zombies from a different direction.  No time to stop and smell the roses when you're under attack by the living dead.

There is a lot wrong with violence in the real world.  I could write many blog posts about my feelings of violent acts in the world, and more specifically the quickness at which we arrive at the decision to do violence to one another.  But letting loose in a fantasy world is nothing to be ashamed of and is quite theraputic and fun.  Grand Theft Auto 4 is a lot of violent fun as well. So is The Warriors and F.E.A.R.  I'm trying hard to stay away from any outright commentary, so lets just leave it at this:  In the real world and video games, I fully advocate man-on-zombie violence. Left 4 Dead actually makes me fear a potential zombie apocalypse, so in between gaming sessions, I'll be boning up on my Zombie Survival Guide.