I have never read a book that made me feel so scared of our current technology. Computers and AI are getting scary, so Daniel Wilson wakes us up with a man-made computer with hyper-intelligent AI that takes over the world and starts killing us. Before you go rolling your eyes, thinking this is some cheesy sci-fi story, think again. David takes his story seriously, and this is all in the way he tells the story itself. The book is a journal written by a war hero named Cormac Wallace, who sees video and audio on a “black box” from recordings of every robot or “Rob” that was connected to Archos (the evil AI).
Throughout these passages is his retelling of what he is seeing and hearing, but he tells it like he might be interviewing the people in the recording. We follow several war heroes from just before Zero Hour and on throughout the war against the robots. Daniel tells the story in a relentless balls-to-the-wall sort of way that sucks you in just the first couple of pages. Each scenario describes the torture and gruesome death scenes as we get torn apart and destroyed by these robots. The characters are well portrayed and vary greatly. Each person has a completely different personality, so you have many people to look forward to reading about.
Each story from each person is heartbreaking, and you really feel what it is like to be afraid of what we rely on on a day-to-day basis. Simple machines like service robots and high-tech military drones are overwritten and start attacking people. Daniel does an excellent job of telling you how innocently each robot acted before Zero Hour, and then suddenly they became killing machines. Things like smart cars start running people over in the streets. The book is far from cheesy and will just take your breath away.
My only real complaint is that I wish there were more. I wanted to hear more stories from these people, but overall, what we get is one hell of a ride through robotic hell. Other than that, the book is excellent, and any fan of technology should read it and be wary of the future.
World War Z is a book of short interviews with survivors of the zombie war. The book is depicted as if it actually happened, and this is a nice change for zombie stories. The book is broken down into different major events of the war. The book starts with warnings and signs of a zombie infection. After this, you get to hear about how people of all walks of life survived the war under various conditions. This ranges from businessmen, teenagers, astronauts stranded in space, soldiers, generals, doctors, moms, families, and every other type of person you can think of. They are from all over the world, and each story is completely different from the last.
Of course, there are a few duds that are full of dry politics, or the characters ramble on about one subject and never switch topics. Some of my favorite parts were when the author argued with or offended someone during an interview because it made it seem more real. Some interviews are short, while others just drag on too long. These uninteresting stories don’t come up too often, and they usually don’t talk much about an event or tell a specific story. They just talk about the politics surrounding the event or philosophize about it.
The zombies themselves are depicted as an unstoppable force that we can’t stop. Max Brooks chose to make you fear these things because sheer numbers overlook what they can do to you, and it all started. Battles are fought over millions of zombies coming at you, and this can create a fairly scary image. Towards the end of the book, you start to see how conventional warfare just doesn’t work on these things. Knowing that our army and high-tech equipment are ineffective against the undead is just astounding. This was probably the scariest thing of all. We rely on our military to protect us so much that when a problem comes up, they can’t fix it. You know everyone is screwed.
While all this is really interesting, the book doesn’t exactly have a hard conclusion or overall story. The book feels very loose and almost random because the interviewer jumps around all over the world, and each person’s story takes place at different times and locations, so you feel disoriented when reading. Despite all this, this is a wonderful zombie book that even takes storytelling to a different level. Just be patient and stick with the book, and you will enjoy it.
There seems to be no end in sight to zombie games, but the good ones are far and few between. With Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising being the staples, Dead Island puts itself on the map as the true zombie simulator. It holds true to that statement with realistic combat, atmosphere, and a terrifying story (albeit it doesn’t get really interesting until towards the end). You can pick one of four characters who each specialize in a certain weapon (sharp objects, blunt objects, throwing objects, and guns). You follow the four heroes through the story of the resort island Banoi, which has been struck with some sort of biological weapon or disease. No one really knows. You must help the survivors get off the island, but things don’t go according to plan.
I would like to say that Dead Island feels like Fallout meets Left 4 Dead, with a little bit of Dead Rising thrown in. The combat is superb, if a tad unwieldy, because it features an analog-type combat system. The game is in the first person, so the last melee game in the first person you probably played was Oblivion. You can move the weapon around via the right analog stick, pull back, and push forward, bringing out a full swing. It feels awesome because each weapon feels different, and the game has a great dismemberment engine, so when you aim for that part, it will most likely come off. Even the shooting in the game is solid, and that’s a one-two punch that most games can’t get right.
There are RPG elements thrown in, so when you complete missions or kill zombies, you’re earning experience. You get one point per level to use in one of three categories: fury, combat, or health. Fury is a model that you can activate to do ultra-damage to enemies and earn 10x the amount of experience when doing so. There are a lot of ways to upgrade, and you won’t get them all in one play-through. Thankfully, the game levels up with you, so you won’t run into areas that require level grinding to get past. A lot of the quests are mixed with escort missions, fetch quests, and zombie-killing quests. There are undead people to kill as well, but most of them have guns, so watch out.
The atmosphere of the game is amazing and just really creepy. There are zombies everywhere, in all shapes and sizes. The two most common are Walkers and Infected. Infected people cannot be avoided since they run at you faster than you can even run. There are floaters, thugs (these guys are almost impossible to take down when you first start), suiciders (they explode), and the rare butchers. Each zombie is freaking creepy, and there is a huge variety of them since they change with each area you change into. The game is nonlinear, with huge open areas to explore at your leisure. Like in Fallout, you can collect stuff from pretty much anything and use it to make mods, of which there are dozens. Some of these are awesome, like attaching a saw blade to a bat, turning swords into shock weapons, making guns shoot fiery bullets, etc. These are mostly found by completing missions, so try to get all the side missions you can.
You can drive in the game, which feels just fine and is a blast to run over zombies; this is required in some missions, and it is best to travel long distances across the island. Also, the areas vary from the beach to the jungle, the city of Moresby, and the prison. There is a huge variety of everything, from weapons to zombies to environments, so you never really get bored with the game. While that’s the core of the game, you just always want to wander off and find people in distress (hey, you are immune to zombie bites!) and just try every weapon out there as well as upgrade them at the workbenches. Of course, weapons break and need to be repaired, which costs money, and you can sell stuff, trade, and even pick the money up out in the zombie wilderness.
The game is also very hard most of the time since it was designed for a four-player co-op. There is a drop-in-out co-op online, which is a blast, and there are plenty of people playing. A lot of the time, missions are just so hard because you get too many zombies thrown at you for just one person. If you die, you just wait 7 seconds and respawn, but you lose a lot of money as a penalty. The more money you have, the more you will lose. This is a great idea, but healing is a problem since medkits are rare and food only heals you so much and you can’t store it.
The only problems with the game are that people with high-end PCs are jipped unless they go edit the config file themselves to push the graphics further. There are a lot of glitches, and the combat is awesome, but controlling it is a bit off and finicky. I mentioned that the difficulty is all over the place, so expect some frustrating sections where you will die over a dozen times. While the story is good, the characters are boring, not likeable, and just feel pretty generic overall, so this took a big hit for me more than anything. Overall, Dead Island is my favorite zombie game so far, and fans shouldn’t miss it.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.