Games are doing my head in. Specifically MMOs.

When MMOs started to really hit it big, to crawl out of the shackles of “cult status” and start to rake in the big bucks, I was one of those kids that every market loves. I was young, middle class and with parents affluent enough to loan me the dosh to buy into anything that the marketing gurus persuaded me that I wanted. For MMOs, that was Anarchy Online, followed by Star Wars Galaxies and Planetside, then World of Warcraft. I’m now sick of these games, and I want to tell you why.

It’s nothing to do with the individual mechanics of each and every MMO, even the ones that are poor and translate into each successful game. No, my problem lies in the design philosophies of the games. The main tenet of their design is not playability but profit and, while this is true of most every game now, they do very little to hide this. The level grind, the uninspired quests, the ludicrously hard boss fights, it all comes together to make you shell out more money for less gratification. In fact, given that most endgames require large groups of players, your input becomes invisible amongst the unbridled throng of spells and people shouting about DPS.

You will often spy developers lauding their achievements in creating a living, breathing world. I don’t mean to be harsh, but these people are liars. They’ve not created a world, they’ve created a set, similar to those used for films except substantially larger. They may have stuffed it full of actors and props, but it’s no more alive than a strip of celluloid. There’s no life in an online world, it’s all heavily scripted and rigidly defined so that what variation the players experience is extremely limited.

If you were to map the average “life” of a Warcraft character you would most likely find that they are worryingly similar. Every player does the same quests at the same levels, kills the same creatures, collects the same useless ingredients. If they’re lucky, their race choice will allow them a slightly different set of quests from another player, but not always. A living world would let players build their own stories, have their own unique tales to tell.

This isn’t a problem in single player games because, by their very nature, they have pre-made stories ready for your consumption, designed to be told through a narrative structure that progresses along with you. Multiplayer games don’t have this safety net being, as they are, intent on creating an entire world around you, rather than situating you inside one that has already been built. Come into our world, the MMO will cry, be who you want to be or who you wish you were, unlock your potential in a risk-free environment.

It doesn’t annoy me so much that they don’t provide these worlds, as I am aware how monumentally difficult that might be, but that they lie about having already done so. There’s no emotional connection to an MMO world because, despite claims made by most developers, your character isn’t really part of it. The world itself is frozen in time, never progressing except for sudden and frustrating jumps forward when expansion packs are launched, and your avatar moved through the world so unnoticed that he may as well have never existed.

The MMO ideal appeals to the part of the mind that likes to make stories, your inner writer. You may be terrible at writing in the real world, but everyone’s life has a story behind it and the realisation of that is what makes MMOs so enticing: you can make a new life online, built from the various events and occurrences, and it will be like your real one but so much cooler. What actually happens, of course, is that you are slotted neatly into one of perhaps 20 different life stories replicated thousands of times. There is no individuality, no sense of self, everything has already been hard coded by the developers, and the only time you really get a choice is when they want you to have one.

You would think that people would know the world is not made up merely of sword fighting and auctions, that for it to be truly alive there must be more within it than mere violence and commerce. There’s science, art, love, solitude, togetherness, independence, and so much more. If you could guess the course of someone’s life from a single glance, knew how they got to that point without having to ask, what would be the point? You can’t stare at a girl in your Film class and go “I know everything about her, from her early life, where she lived, how well she did at school, right up until what brought her to this very place”, that’s not how life works.

Life is about secrets and unknowns and stories above all else.

I know that this is hard to put into a game, to replicate everything about life that makes it feel alive, and I’m not saying that developers should already be there. They should most definitely be trying to get there of course, but all I ask is that, until they manage it, they stop treating us like mindless sheep and lying to us about it. No, your MMO world isn’t a “living and breathing” universe yet, and until it is you will get nothing but bile from me if you declare it as such.

I want a narrative, a journey, almost unique to everyone else, that I am able to convey to people via conversation or trophies or word of my exploits in the press. I want the MMO to be the world I can’t have in reality, the one where you can be famous and have fun, yet without having to follow the same path as everyone else. I want freedom and individuality in a virtual world full of other people seeking the same thing, where half the fun comes from sitting around a virtual fire and asking other people how they came to be at this point themselves, hearing a new story each time.

I want the chance to be the person online that I can’t be in the real world.

If you like smashing stuff up, Red Faction: Guerrilla is the game for you. It sounds like an obvious statement – and it is – but this is a game that truly relishes in you causing more complete and utter destruction upon Mars than Handy Andy ravaged upon the song If I Had A Hammer back in 1999. Previous entries into the Red Faction franchise have been first person shooters, but wisely Volition have taken the move of making the latest game into an open world game in a similar vein to their previous game, Saints Row 2. The move makes a lot of sense, after all why impose a linear path on a concept based on making your own?

So the game itself then – playing as a new recruit to the Red Faction on Mars, your mission is to basically break as much stuff as possible, with something resembling a plot around avenging the death of your brother and bringing down ‘The Man’ – in this case the Earth Defence Force – by smashing his stuff up. Completing missions and other tasks gains you favour with the local population, making them more inclined to drop what they’re doing and take up arms to join the Faction. These missions consist of, primarily – blowing stuff up, destroying buildings and generally making a mess – as expected. It’s not an overly fantastic plot, as is the case with most of these open world games. It doesn’t really need to be mind, but the game doesn’t really try and make a big deal of trying to cover it up. But by the same token, you never really feel connected to the characters at all during the game nor really finding yourself caring whether or not the Red Faction prevails. In a game like this it’s not a big criticism, but it’s worth noting what might be fairly obvious – people looking for a game rich in story would do better to look elsewhere.

Visually the game makes it very obvious that you’re supposed to be on Mars – it’s very dusty and very, very red. Some criticism could be levelled though at the fact that unlike Saints Row 2 a lot of the areas feel a bit bare and barren. Of course, you can argue it’s Mars and it’s supposed to be like that, but it does mean that going between destinations can be a little uninspired. However, in the areas that are populated, massive props (is there a pun there? If so, let’s pretend it was intended) goto the Geomod engine which really does a good job at making the destruction look and feel suitably solid and satisfying when you do start smashing stuff up. Some people have reported it’s fiddly to get the settings right, but personally I found settings that worked on my rig (a 2.1 Ghz Quad with a GeForce 8800 and 2GB of RAM) fairly quickly, with only some slight slowdown during acts of mass destruction.

The main problems with the game are in the controls. Credit where it is due, technically it is a pretty good port working fairly well with both keyboard and mouse as well as gamepad. However the driving model doesn’t quite feel right – most vehicles don’t seem to have a great turning circle and I found myself using the mouse and keys for on foot action, with the gamepad for driving. This proved most irritating on missions where I had to escape from many angry men shooting at me because I’d broken their clubhouse or something. Also combat can be infuriating at times, simply due to the lack of any sort of lock on button. There may be aim assist and I agree I’m certainly not the world’s best shooter by far, but on Normal I died far too many times simply due to the lack of being able to aim at people accurately, even when in cover. And woe betide you if your cover gets smashed, I found trying to recover my aim like trying to wrestle in treacle. It’s a game that is badly missing some form of lock on feature for playing on any difficulty higher than the easiest setting. The friendly AI can also have moments of absolute stupidity at times which can prove disastrous on escort missions or even just for getting in your way while trying to take a shot.

Looking at the positives, the destruction is great and manages to remain fun for the entire game, and there’s something about being able to make your own door into any building. The weapons get ever more explosive and satisfying to use and the faction idea itself (do missions well and people support your cause, even taking up arms to join you) is brilliant. But Red Faction’s main trump card is something that took me by surprise – it’s the multiplayer. Once you get over the fact it’s the infamous Games for Windows Live system, modes like Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Team Deathmatch are there as almost standard multiplayer fare (more on the almost later) along with Bagman (hold onto a bag for as long as you can) and of course, destruction based gamemodes. The dash of genius comes in the Backpacks found in the multiplayer game. Each one gives a certain buff, whether that’s super speed, invisibility, a jetpack or just the ability to bash down walls with the Rhino pack. The caveat to these awesome powers is that you can only have one at a time. It’s a system that helps to develop a kind of class system into the game, with a well structured team being able to support each other well and even the single player modes as the player can find the best backpack to match their particular playstyle. I dare say I’ll be getting a lot of play out of the multiplayer for some time to come.

A bit of a mixed bag then overall, I would definitely say this is a game worth hazarding a purchase on while waiting for the heavy hitters later this year – the single player has a few flaws but they are of the sort that will depend on the player to how frustrating it gets – I would recommend playing it on the easiest setting and enjoying the ride of smashing something up. But the multiplayer has the fun coming out of it in spades and is truly the hidden gem of this game. It’s a good game, but there is a certain something stopping it from greatness. Obviously depending how much you love smashing stuff up will have a massive factor on your enjoyment of this title. And unless you’re dead inside, that’s probably a lot of you.

Enjoyable, but more bowling ball than wrecking ball. Great multiplayer.

This is the second part of our massive interview with AI War’s Chris Park. The first part went live yesterday Hit the jump to see the rest of our discussion along with more shots from version 2.0 of AI War. Read the full story

Chris Park is the mastermind behind space based RTS AI War. I recently had the chance to talk with Chris about many subjects relating to AI War and Arcen Games. Chris was also kind enough to share some screenshots from the upcoming version 2.0 of AI War which features some new visual effects. Read the full story

I am not, by design, a very sporty person. This makes me a curious person to review a game that, behind all its violent trappings, is still a sports game. I don’t watch or play sports, but Blood Bowl still manages to speak to me in a way that I imagine football and rugby speak to the ordinary and well adjusted members of society.

Blood Bowl is a curious sort of mash up of American Football and Speedball, created by Games Workshop as a tabletop game and finally brought to the PC by Cyanide Studios. You choose a team from a handful of typical fantasy races and kick, punch, bite and claw your way into scoring more touchdowns than the other guy. On the face of it, the game is simply a turn based American Football in fantasy trappings, but to declare Blood Bowl merely that alone would be incorrect.

My biggest issue with sports, as an objective observer, is the lack of violence. There is something primal in me that requires all team sports to relate back to gladiatorial combat, and few sports manage that in reality. There are violent sports, sure, but the hideous rules and primadonna players make them less interesting. Blood Bowl avoids this by pushing out almost all of the in-game rules, opting to make the majority of the constraints related to player stats rather than how they are allowed to act.

Your players in Blood Bowl have four specific stats: movement allowance, strength, agility and armour value. These influence your dice rolls and declare how effective each player is in a specific role. High agility players will be good runners and have enviable ball skills, but will tend to be rather squishy, whereas high strength players will be much more suited and smashing the opposition into the dirt but will likely also be clumsy as a newborn lamb when it comes to ball control. The different teams have different arrangements of these stats, and as a result picking the right team for your play style is of the utmost importance.

My preferred team during the game is Dwarfs. When portrayed against other teams, the Dwarfs are ridiculously hardy, but also ludicrously clumsy. The majority of a Dwarf team will be made up of players called blockers, which should give some indication as to the usual Dwarf tactics. They’re all about being violent enough to prevent the opposition from getting close to the one player who can actually carry the ball. Yes, the Dwarfs are so monumentally clumsy that only the handful of more specialised players can even come close to maybe picking up the ball.

During my first few hours of play, it was this quirk of the Dwarf race that led me to absolutely loathe the game. I did eventually overcome this irrational hatred however, once I realised the true cause of my frustration. It is very important that you understand this if you have any intention of buying this game: despite including a single-player mode, Blood Bowl is for online play. The playing the game offline, while somewhat fun on easy, is dangerously unforgiving on normal and higher. I don’t want to claim that the computer fixes dice rolls, as that would be childish and unprofessional, but if I were playing the tabletop version against an anthropomorphic personification of the CPU I would find myself surreptitiously checking to see if they were using trick ones. The computer will pounce on any chink in your defences, sometimes with attacks that you could swear would never ever work, with unprecedented accuracy and crush you. It’s frustrating, and after four hours of back to back matches I was about ready to surrender.

Some may say that this stems from my total failure to grasp the metaphysics of sports in general, that athletic tactics are useless when provided by me for I cannot understand the nuances of a competitive sporting event. That may be true. On the bright side, however, taking the game online made the game much more enjoyable. Once I had worked out exactly how to navigate the somewhat clunky interface, the online competitions were much more fun and engaging, and the persistent nature of the online universe means that you can become attached to your players, levelling them up and choosing which talents you want them to have after each outstanding game. This makes it all the more painful when they die horribly, of course, but also all the more sweeter when it is you who does the killing.

It’s a game of stark contrasts then. On the one side you have a satisfying tactical system, where every movement you make will have a direct affect on the flow of the game, on the other a fiddly interface at times and a great source of mind numbing frustration at times. When things work the game feels amazing, but the one time a dice goes against you will be enough to start the hair pulling. But that’s how it should be, right? Isn’t that how sports tend to unfold, every mistake by your team becoming a beacon of rage and hatred for the fans? Blood Bowl captures that perfectly, except with the added bonus of being able to literally kill a player that has wound you up something chronic.

Example. A recent online league match pitted my Dwarfs against a team of Lizardmen. Lizardmen are tougher than Dwarfs but even more clumsy, with the exception of their star players, the Skinks. These things are tiny and weak but can run like the clappers, and their high agility means they can slip through your defensive line like they were mist. As a result, I quickly went 1-0 down and spent the rest of the game trying to claw my way back to a draw. Despite a spirited attempt, my beer-pickled Dwarfs fell short and I lost the game. Still, I went away happy in the knowledge that, in one of the last few turns, one of my Dwarfs punched a skink so hard that it dropped dead on the pitch. In my mind I pictured the slippery little bastard’s head erupting in a volcano of gore as twenty pounds of Dwarf-fist punched right through. Skinks are cheap to replace, but that sweet taste of vengeance is priceless.

So I suppose the best way to describe Blood Bowl would be as a legitimate sports game, albeit with sanctioned violence and a legal channel for revenge. It has a few design oddities that can become frustrating: the unashamedly evil AI, the clunky interface, and the brain-strippingly annoying commentators (who can be turned off, thankfully), but the core game is enjoyable enough to keep you coming back for more, even if sports are not your thing.

Word of advice, though. I recommend playing a nice online league with friends or people of a kind disposition from your preferred online community. This game will annoy you from time to time, and it’s best that you experience that with people who aren’t going to be sending you ‘lol noob’ messages every five minutes. Just a thought.

In spite of a few oddities this is a game that makes me wish this sport were real.

Ok so it’s been out on the PC for over a year now. And on the Xbox 360 even longer. But I only just got round to playing Mass Effect, and speaking as someone who has become gradually disillusioned by the RPG genre, I was completely blown away by what is an absolute creative masterpiece. It’s also the first console port I’ve played that isn’t a total, head-spanking mess.

Having been weaned on the proverbial teat of Star Trek, Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica, Mass Effect was the ideal vehicle for my re-entry into the fantasy saturated world of RPGs. Not a single mention of an elf, a goblin or a magical spell of any kind, which, when you tot up the ratio of fantasy to non-fantasy RPGs and MMORPGs being released, is actually an incredibly refreshing thing to be faced with.

Although not the primary appeal of the game, I was very excited about getting stuck into the combat, as this was the first RPG in some time whose combat wasn’t semi-turn based, with you and your opponent standing in front of each other taking it turns to click the attack button and bop the other with a big sword. Incidentally, this is also why I have never played a single MMO in my entire life. As narrow minded and ill-informed as it might sound, the whole World of Warcraft phenomenon passed me by entirely because it, and others like it, are completely hinged on this dice-roll combat, which usually results in static battles that are very dull to watch. That may seem like a petty reason not to play a game, but I remember feeling incredibly disappointed, angry almost, at how misleading the cinematic trailer for Warhammer Online was. There was a Dwarf breathing fire on hordes of charging Orcs, an Elf ducking and diving in combat with another Orc, some Priestly looking fellow clashing metal with a tall, angsty looking guy, blocking and parrying attacks, growling some incantation that ignites his hammer into flames as his head gets impaled by a mace. “Great”, I mused, “this really captures the raw and gritty spirit of Warhammer”. Wrong. I later discovered after watching a clip of gameplay footage that, once again, combat consists of you standing in front of your opponent, queuing up attacks and abilities, taking it in turns to hit each other.

The idea behind all this is obviously that the battles are supposed to be representative instead of literal, and the focus is on preparation for them; maximising your chances of victory by gaining the right abilities, items and skills beforehand by doing quests and gaining xp. With so much focus on the preparation, however, the battles themselves seem like foregone conclusions and woefully anti-climactic.

Mass Effect, on the other hand, manages to maintain this fundamental role playing format whilst integrating an action-based, third-person shooter mechanism. Although not the first to do it, it blends the two together beautifully, and in spite of the occasionally cretinous AI, it makes for a thoroughly enjoyable system that doesn’t undermine the importance of either preparing for the fight or your own personal skill employed in the fight itself. This formula works perfectly, as much like Deus Ex, it rewards adequate preparation as well as good aim, with both being equally important requisites for victory. Squad management took too much of a back seat, however, with very little direction for your comrades actually being required (with the exception of the occasional remedial request, such as moving out of the way of incoming gunfire).

I can hear the WoW fanboys protesting already, and I do realise that I am making a somewhat tenuous comparison here. But there is really little reason for developers to rigidly stick to this dice-rolling mechanism anymore, especially with APB and Dust 514 on the horizon promising to raise the bar and successfully blend action with role-playing in an MMO context. Don’t get me wrong, I was a huge Neverwinter Nights fan- but I enjoyed it in spite of its combat system, and don’t see any reason to grudgingly cling to this for sentimentality’s sake. With this in mind, is a Mass Effect MMO really that difficult to imagine? If implemented in a similar way to EVE, with varying concentrations of AI controlled ‘police’, then it is perfectly feasible, with no changes to the fundamental principles of the game or the addition of the traditional dice roll-combat being required (hint hint Bioware).

It has been generally agreed that Mass Effect is a great success both critically and financially, but in the year after its release it was still subjected to a continued torrent of criticism, some justified and others not so.

Amongst the most baffling was from Eurogamer’s very own Kristan Reed, where the game was accused of failing to gradually ease the player into the world and prod them in the right direction when things became a little overwhelming . Not only does this show little awareness of science-fiction and of RPGs in general, it criticises the game for something that is actually one of its biggest strengths. Mature players don’t want to be patronised with continuous explanation, exposition or “prodding”. They want to be plunged into the world they are interacting with headfirst and allowed to explore it at their own pace without having the illusion shattered with reminders of what you ‘should’ be doing. That may well turn off the more impatient players, but this isn’t a game about action necessarily- it’s a game about dialogue, narrative and exploration, which Bioware have achieved to near-perfection in almost all of their titles, particularly Mass Effect.

I would, however, be the first to concede that the Mako is probably the stupidest vehicle ever designed in any game. Ever. Seemingly indestructible, it has a mounted gun that can only aim horizontally as well as having the mind boggling ability to climb almost sheer cliff edges with ease. It does some of the most ridiculous things that not only defy gravity, but tell it to fuck off and give it a big kick in the nuts. The side quests became somewhat repetitive after a while, and the DLC has added little in the way of substantial material. These are forgivable flaws, however, as the fully-fleshed out plot, reactive narrative and diverse, detailed characters redeem it spectacularly, and make it one of the most enjoyable titles I have played in years.

It also has a pretty good sex scene. What more could you want?

It must be a little annoying to be a German in the modern day.

The usual place to begin when characterising an antagonist, according to the American media especially (although I admit it is not exclusive to them) is Europe. Depending on exactly what kind of villain they want will depend on where they look, but the top two choices are England and Germany. Depending on the current global climate, the prevalence of each choice will swing one way and then another.

That said, Nazis seem to never go out of style.

Wolfenstein is a game that takes every single Nazi stereotype and crams it into one game; from the Thule Society to busty blonde assassins, this game has it all. There’s even the odd Nazi zombie and jet-pack trooper. Oh, and a blimp.

That’s Wolfenstein in a nutshell really. The very first Wolfenstein was a game where you shot Nazis, hundreds of them, for essentially no reason other than Nazis are clearly very evil. While there was an arguable plot, it was so thin as to be irrelevant. Raven have learned a little over the years, but still the game boils down to shooting Nazis in the face because they are Nazis.

To be fair, this iteration does have a distinct plot. You play the Polish-American super spy William Blaskowicz, a name that is made even more ludicrous when shorted to his nickname, B.J. Apparently following on from the now dusty Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Billy has been sent to the obscure German town of Isenstadt to help the local resistance bump off a particularly irritating Nazi General. Your arrival at this town is where the game begins.

The plot is actually quite entertaining, if taken in the proper context. If you come into Wolfenstein expecting a nuanced and deep plot á la Bioshock then you are, quite frankly, a fool who is about to be very disappointed. Wolfenstein is a B-Movie, harnessing everything you expect of a movie let loose upon on the Nazi related myths, dialled up to eleven and shoved into a game. It’s cliché, it telegraphs some key plot points very early on, a little generic, but ultimately very entertaining.

The reason all these strange and intriguing myths have built up around Nazism, the Thule Society and other alleged links to the occult, are precisely because they have a certain dramatic quality that, when coupled with what we know to be true about the Nazis, makes them compelling villains. My brain can never truly comprehend the horror of the Holocaust, the millions of dead for no rational reason, but give me people tapping mystical energies for the means to win a war and become gods and that’s something I can get behind. Not very historical, and it’s certainly not going to win any prizes for it’s treatment of the true horrors of war, but this is a game for entertainment. The occult is a much easier thing to make entertaining than attempted genocide.

This may sound a little like Wolfenstein is a bit lazy in its design, but that’s not strictly true. The story is a bit weak, a bit safe and generic, but on the other hand it is in no way convoluted. It serves as a gentle hand to guide you through the various missions and set-pieces the game has to offer, a strange pre-GPS GPS to usher you through the open world aspect.

It was the open world that made me decide I liked Wolfenstein. It can be best described as a condensed version of the Far Cry 2 model. You get missions elsewhere on the map, you go from A to B while occasionally visiting a gun shop on the way, and the enemies respawn each time you do this. In Far Cry, the respawning enemies was a massive frustration because the commute between missions was so vast, stopping at every intersection to have a gunfight with some locals and then breaking out the socket set to beat your car back into working order. Wolfenstein avoids this by having a nicely compacted world, traversable in five or ten minutes, meaning that while you may get somewhat irked about having to run from your briefing to your mission you won’t be fed up of it by the end. You might not enjoy it, but it won’t actively detract from the game.

I found it hard to find anything that would actively detract from the game, to be honest. My one gripe might be that, difficulty wise, the game is a little on the easy side, until the very end where it becomes far too hard for my liking. This is largely down to the magical powers you accrue throughout the course of the game, some of which get a little broken as you upgrade them.

Allow me to illustrate. Of your four powers, the shield is by far the best. When you first acquire it, it’s soul purpose is to melt bullets aimed at your squishy bits, giving you time to pick off the vile villains at a leisurely pace. Its one weakness is that it does not stop flesh, meaning mêlée centric enemies can still charge right up and beat your face in. This flaw is, however, completely undone with the second upgrade, which causes the shield to disintegrate most enemies who touch it. It’s a very cool effect, but it also borders on being a win button.

There’s a fine line that developers need to walk when balancing supernatural powers inside games, and it is never done correctly. The player has to feel powerful, but also maintain some challenge to the game. Most developers come down on the side of challenge, which somewhat detracts from the purpose of having supernatural powers in the first place. Raven have come down on the side of power, but that has made the game easier and there’s no getting away from that. The difficult thing is deciding whether that’s a bad thing or not.

In my opinion, the powerful feeling Wolfenstein provides works well in context. I must stress how important it is to go into this game in the right way. Its B-Movie nature perfectly suits the gung-ho madness that the powers provoke. Things explode, you fire billions of bullets at faceless enemies, and the whole time you are thinking that Wolfenstein is an Action Game that feeds on the Die Hard definition of the word ‘action’.

The game has a few problems. The deliciously gory bullet wounds are a blink and you’ll miss it affair, vanishing after less than a second in some instances. The toughness of the enemies is very strange, with the first cultist enemy being more dangerous than the crack warrior women who turn up much later. The roster of weapons is relatively small. You could guess the endgame twist after only ten minutes of play. The final boss is monstrously hard and frustrating. The mouse sensitivity is a bit weird at times. The manual lists Xbox controls first. I could go on.

But I won’t.

The problems, for the most part, are minor. When listed like that they seem a lot more numerous than they are, and they are much less noticeable in game. When it comes right down to it, there is a simple question that will reveal whether you will like this game: Do you like action movies? If the answer is yes, you will like Wolfenstein. If you are more of the serious cinema sort of person, you might find Raven’s latest offering a little… dry.

Bang Bang Mein Herr

This is part two of my ongoing series of diaries from the world of Champions Online, written in character as The Exclamation.  This week, fresh from his victory over the Qularr, Ex is sent to Canada to help the armoured mounties defeat a strange zombie invasion brought about by a sudden and dangerous storm.  He is not amused.

Read the full story