Cinderella's Shady Trail

As a gamer now for over three decades...hold on, let me say that again, gamer for over three decades gulp! *reaches for the Botox* It is fair to say that I have played more than my fair share of videogames. Ever since rescuing Xenon princess Roz in Zorgon's Revenge on the Oric 1 inbetween my half hearted attempts at homework, I was addicted (and despite what Daily Mail scribes would have you believe, videogames have never done me any harm).
During that time, I must have spent a gazillion hours shooting zombies, raiding toms and solving bizarre puzzles (cheers Silent Hill). And so its natural that from spending so much time with your pixelated hero/villain, a bond is forged. A bond which makes turning a successful game into an equally successful movie very difficult, and rarely is a director enough of an alchemist to pull it off. Indeed from all the game to film releases, it is only the Resident Evil movies that have held my interest (and even this is because I find them entertaining in their own right and not because they are equal to the cool of the videogames).
So when I heard about The Last of Us movie that is evidently in the works, my little 'ol heart, that heart which has shared many a nervous jump with Joel and Ellie, was not exactly thrilled. And who can blame me? I still shudder when anyone mentions Street Fighter and Kylie Minogue in the same sentence. And less said of Uwe Boll the better.
All the best men know. Even the genius that is Hideo Kojima, who is a major movie fan, will admit deep down to being a tad wary of turning his beloved Metal Gear Solid into a motion picture because he knows like the rest of us know, 9/10 films of games are garbage. Just drop the aforementioned Mr Boll's name into a conversation with Kojima san, you'll get the picture (or not if you happen to be Uwe Boll). Why do you think a MGS movie has not been made yet? Despite being offered multi million deals? Hideo understands man.
Like I said, we gamers forge a special bond with characters over many hours of play, and seeing those "magic moments" reduced to a 2 hour romp ruins it. Take games like Skyrim and Fallout 3 for example. How many hours do we spend in the company of our newly created badass? It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say 200+ hours. You go through many different challenges together, notching up a heroes portion of triumph (and deaths), and all personal to you the gamer. Were someone to come along and turn Skyrim into a fantasy film it would fail, and fail hard because none of your private victories would feature. All those little things you see/hear/feel as you clutch your controller and add up to make a unique overall experience is gone, replaced with a directors vision which so often feels like huge disappointment. No more hero than a bit part player relegated to the side lines, and to be blunt, it f**king SUCKS! Its almost like the movie is invading "our" space. (Similar to books but games go even deeper as they put YOU in the action).
So forgive my failure to get all hard and excited (ooer!) over another game-to-film cash grab, but history shows we videgame fans are always better off sticking with the game. We have too much time invested to see it be reduced a film extra.

Undead Cool

Zombies. Slow. Brainless. Shuffling messes, devoid of any flicker of emotion. Say what you like about them, they have slowly (its their way) clawed back to being THE coolest horror creations ever. For a while it was werewolves who ruled the monster playground. Until the vampire came along and stole the spotlight with dashing looks and tales of romance, sending women (goths in particular) weak at the knees. The vamps had great PR behind them and seemed to get the best looking men in film/television to portray them.


Do the zombie shuffle!

But now those undead voodoo dancers have returned with a vengeance, leaving all other creeps behind in their fould dust and letting the fanged ones get on with faffing around in poncy looking cloaks and frilly cuffs. Effeminate bunch, vampires.
Of course zombies came to prominence thanks to the 'Grandfather of zombies' George A. Romero and his brilliant films, and now we welcome them again to where they belong, and indeed where they feel the most comfortable, surrounding us with their rotting presence. Recent movies like Zombieland, Dead Sno and Land of the Dead, together with videogames like Dead Rising and Burn! Zombie Burn! Have seen to that. We have seen a kind of 'zombie chic' emerge which prove that however mangled their corpses, or however pungent they smell, those grave dodgers will always be welcome to gnaw their way into our hearts.

Doughnut withdrawal can be fatal

The first time I ever appreciated just how frightening zombies can be was when I played the first three installments of the Resident Evil games. That single minded urge to simply want to feast off your flesh and the slow, shuffling towards you in a dimly lit corridor was very disturbing like a crawling, certain death with sole reason to cruelly rip your organs apart.
Films like Zombie Creeping Flesh and Night of the Living Dead did their best to creep me out, and to an extent they did, but it wasn't until the Playstation arrived where you could actually be 'in' the film/game that the terror truly took off. It was that step closer and anyone who has ever played the Resi Evil games must have felt the same.
Another icky thing about zombies is the fact that they dress like us (obviously because before getting zombified they WERE us) and I don't know about you dear reader but for me there is something utterly disturbing and freaky about that. The clothes give them a normality, human but not quite. They are the last link to how they used to live, a final snapshot of lost lives. Think about it. When you see zombies in film or videogames they are dressed in all manner of things; leisure wear, work clothes (like the police zombie above) and sports kit. Carrying on with life before they were turned into the undead. The viewer knows what job they had, or their hobbies and now its merely a shell.
There is something deliciously horrifying about that.