Add

When Nothing But The Anything Else Will Do

Working on the novel just makes the lure of distracting things even more lur-iffic.

So in the spirit of self-torment I have been breaking up writing sessions by playing Popcap’s addictive, Plants vs. Zombies. I’m not really in the ‘casual games’ demographic, but Popcap’s Peggle was the crack-cocaine-like exception to this rule for me, and PvZ turns out to be a  very entertaining little tower defense game. I am hooked.

My other zombie distraction of choice is the copy of Left 4 Dead that arrived in the mail the other day. A surprise addition to my gaming swag. I had almost bought this game, having heard good things and read glowing reviews. What stopped me were the reports that it was purely multiplayer. I’ve never really been a multiplayer kind of gamer. LAN, yes, as I enjoy playing with actual real-life associates, but being shot over and over again by faceless 1337 14-year olds playing Counter-Strike never really caught on for me. (I have extremely warm memories of private Quake deathmatch sessions at a friend’s family-owned computer training business in the mid 90’s, though…)

Anyway I’ve been playing the Left 4 Dead single player (multiplayer with bots) campaign and I can see what’s to like. It does feel like a Zombie movie, (the film grain effect is nice)  and I have been genuinely startled once or twice by a horde of ‘infected’ rushing at me. The ‘AI controller’ sounds like an innovative game mechanic, though not sure exactly how it effects the in-game enemies behaviour. The whole thing is a tad repetitive though. Shoot zombie, turn corner, shoot zombie, go up stairs, shoot more zombies, make it to safe room, start new level, shoot zombies, repeat. I’ve tried to play online through steam once or twice, but couldn’t seem to find any active games. I’m probably doing something wrong, I know.

In the spirit of not writing and all things zombie I watched ‘28 Days Later’ at midnight last night, the first viewing surprisingly enough. (I know, I know, everyone else saw it 7 years ago when it came out. What can I say? I was waiting for just the right time…) So I know now where pretty much the whole Left 4 Dead concept came from, down to the graffiti on the walls and the behaviour of the ‘infected’. And yes, to concur with what the rest of the world was thinking 7 years ago, its a pretty solid film.

I also watched Terminator : Salvation yesterday (See? Anything to avoid writing…) so I had that expensive piece of cinematic nothingness to compare it to. I had heard lots of complaints about various plot elements and other things from people, but no-one had mentioned to me how utterly boring, humourless and empty a film it was. It was like a Michael Bay eye-candy actioner trying to be a worthy and thoughtful piece of cinema with something profound to say. Only they didn’t seem to have two ideas to rub together and I couldn’t care less about any of the characters. *shrug*

Okay, back to writing. I mean writing the book and not this blog.

A Boomer from Left 4 Dead. Not to be confused with Boomer from Battlestar Galactica. (It is also a good representation of how I felt after having three servings of home-cooked curry followed by gourmet chocolate and ice-cream on Friday night. Thanks Warren and Julia…)