Robot Zombies

So maybe it's just because I've been unfortunate enough to work retail, but if there's anything more cathartic than plowing through hordes of zombies in a sports car that you just stole I haven't found it yet. Seriously. You have to kill fifty three thousand of the bastards to get the last in a chain of kill achievements, and I was entertained the entire way there. Of course it might have had to do with the fact that at any given moment my car could break down and I could end up in a poorly lit maintenance tunnel surrounded by the undead with only a baseball bat and my own two feet to get me to another parked car.

On an unrelated note: I've been playing a lot of kid friendly movie tie in games lately, partly because I'm a whore, and partly because I wanted something whimsical and entertaining that was as far away from mainstream gaming as possible. While I did find it with Kung Fu Panda, I very much did not with Wall-e, which is ironic because as movies go I very much found Wall-e to be vastly superior.

Wall-e fails as a game for one reason, its intended audience (kids) would never touch the game because it's so goddamn buggy and unlikeable that it actually makes you wonder what you could be better doing with your life until you shut the console off and wander outside.

My point can no better be summed up than level 7, "100% unsanitary," and while I heard on the internet that the last level would fill me with hair pulling frustration I found that untrue, and instead got bogged down on this one for the "finish it without dying" achievement.

The platforming isn't what's wrong with it, even though the control is terribly loose and slippery, it's that this level was designed by some sort of malicious prick that apparently hates children. It's based on the part of the movie where Wall-e ends up in the garbage dump of the axiom, and any strayance off of the narrow platforms results in instant death. The ground is slippery, Mo is beserk and shoving you around, there are rotating cannisters that you have to traverse with goddamn pinball bumpers in them that immediately catapult you into instant death soup, and then there's the assembly belt at the end of the level.

Earlier in the game you're told that red floors = instant death and purple floors = mild irritation, but here that goes out the fucking window. If you touch a purple floor even for a moment the game basically throws an unseen die to see if you're going to explode into a shower of kid friendly robot parts. That and if you so much as touch a wall or barrier it's game over instantly.

Why can't the buggy part be at the beginning? Why does it have to be at the very end of the level! I died so many goddamn times in this level I will have my route forever burned into my memory.

AND THEY MADE AN ACHIEVEMENT FOR NOT GETTING KILLED IN THE LEVEL.

It's a shame too, because free flying in the eve levels was actually somewhat unique and entertaining, but even they were long and tedious with glitchy instant deaths.

But in hindsight, it has made me look back more fondly on my time spent trying to beat call of duty 4 on veteran. In fact I may rent it again.

Hal