Down the rabbit hole!

I've found my next whipping horse

Every now and then I find myself browsing the marketplace of my local digital storefront just to gawk at the weird and downright awful titles that you never hear about. (Yeah, I have a lot of freetime.) Sometimes I even bring my brother along for the ride and we sit there flabbergasted by the most embarrassing cash grabs of all time; like the Top Gear racing game that was real and had 4 player co-op. (The extra person got to play as another Jeremy Clarkson. Yay!) This is how I make fun for myself.

Today boredom struck, so I decided to delve into the madness once again and was greeted with something I never thought that I would see again; A movie license game. Yep, for the upcoming 'Zombieland: Double tap' it seems that Sony Pictures wanted to resurrect that long-dead practice and see if they could make a quick buck out of it. Honestly I was never a huge fan of 'Zombieland'. Don't get me wrong, the movie was fine, but I just couldn't see myself sitting down to watch the thing more than once. I just felt like the whole time the film was trying too hard to be quirky and likeable to the point that I wanted to poke my eyes out with a fork. Maybe it's just another symptom of general-zombie-fatigue-syndrome but I feel the cells in my brain start to shut down everytime I look at a piece of promotional art for the new one. But doesn't mean that the tie in game can't be good, right?

Well, we're looking at a twin stick zombie shooter with local co-op. (A twin stick. In 2019. Okay.) The screenshots, what few I could find, seem to show us that the game has players taking the role of these ugly looking mannequin people that appear to represent the academy award winning cast. (You can tell because of the photoshop filtered JPEG's at the bottom. Also some weird lighting choice makes them look badly cropped, is anyone else seeing this?) The description is hardly that descriptive either, telling us merely that the game is "It's own unique story" and also how it is "Ridiculously fun." (Well, if the description said it, then it must be true!)

"Play as your favourite heroes from the original - Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita and Little Rock-" (Those were their names? How quirky!) "as well as new unlockable characters from the upcoming sequel." (Could that be an omen hinting at Microtransactions? Magic eight ball says: I don't know, Probably.) "The game embraces the game-like elements seen in the film by  incorporating everything from the "Rules" to "Zombie kill of the week".  I'll admit, that sentence made me vomit in my mouth a little. (Oh, by the way, that double space before 'incorporating' is there in the official description. This game just oozes quality, huh?) "Use your special abilities... (blah blah) ...weapons... to stay alive against huge numbers of uniquely grotesque and dangerous undead monstrosities in Zombieland: Double Tap." Firstly, 'huge numbers'? Not too specific there. Also, look at these screenshots, what about these blocky sprites scream "Uniquely Grotesque"? What does that even mean? Also the game will have a "story-based mode, wave-based horde mode and boss battles." Not entirely sure why they thought 'boss battles' counted as its own mode, but at least they are excited to talk about the game.

Truth be told, I hardly thought that this game would be worth a mention on this blog. As I skimmed past all the screenshots and glanced over the description nothing seemed to hook me at all. I just ended up thinking, "Oh, this game looks like a free-to-play mobile title from the early 2010's" and brushing it aside. Curiosity bade me to take down the studio name on the storefront to see which poor sod Sony managed to rope into making this turd and see their history. I googled their name, GameMill Entertainment, and discovered that Giant Bomb had an entry on them reading:"GameMill Entertainment is a third party video game publisher. The company is best known for being the publisher of 'Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing.'" 

The room fell into a hush. (I was the only one in it, but still.) I'm sorry, they what? They are responsible for the legendarily terrible 'Big Rigs'? The game that was so bad of a racer that, in the original release of the game, your opponents didn't even have AI and wouldn't leave the starting line? A game so incompetent that, upon reaching the end, you are greeted with a message reading: (And I quote) 'You're winner'? Someone gave them money to create a movie tie-in to a multimillion dollar movie? Is this real life? Is this just fantasy? Well, no, not entirely, GameMill merely published Big Rigs just as they are merely publishing 'Zombieland: Double tap road trip', but it sets the tone for the quality of people that this publisher works with. 

Let's take a look at their other publishing roles. It seems that they also published an unnerving amount of games based around hunting like 'Big buck trophy hunt', 'Pheasants forever: Wingshooter', and' Deer Hunter Reloaded'. (Which they also developed.) They've also been picked up for this 'low-budget' tie-in game thing before; They published the DS games of 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2' (Did not know that movie got a sequel.) Frozen: Olaf's Quest (No comment) and Hotel Transylvania. (Because if any movie screamed for a video game tie in...) Also, they published a game called: Water Sports. I have nothing more to add to that, because the name says it all.

But we are besides the point right now, there is little honor in kicking the publishers in the shins when there is a developer who is likely more to blame for this impending train wreck. They appear to be one 'High Voltage Software'. The company responsible for developing some of GameMill's more... rural titles; such as 'Country Dance' 1 & 2 for the Wii and 'Victorious: Taking the lead'. (Wait... does that mean that there is a Wii video game with Ariana Grande's likeness in it? Oh my god, I found it below. My life is complete.) They also developed the ports of Injustice and Saints Row 4 and the HD re-release of 'Zone of Enders'. (All of which were trash.) High Voltage got a chance at a big break when NetherRealm, apparently not learning from the first time, entrusted them with porting their own baby to the home computer; Mortal Kombat X.  That went... incredibly poorly. Yeah, NetherRealm decided to go with a different company for Mortal Kombat 11.

So these are the guys that Sony Pictures think will bring justice to the Zombieland brand on consoles. (I can just imagine the look on Sony Entertainment's face when they find out their sister company went behind their back with some two-dollar hoe from the off-licence.) I'm usually a more measured 'wait and see' kind of guy, heck, I sit on the fence so much it's started to mold to my butt groves, but I don't think such trepidation is required when assessing this to-be-released title.  'Zombieland: Double tap Road trip' will be one of those beautiful disasters that get swept under the rug by most media and only ambulance chasers, like myself, will stick around to gawp at the gorey remains. At least that's something to look forward to this October.