Shoot that fucking zombie in that face.
When you do, it makes a wound.
Facewound.
Shoot that zombie in the face again.
When you do, the head is gone.
Headgone.
Pick up them plutonium sticks.
You need credits.
It don't matter if you get cancer, fucking zombies man.
Why have zombies haunted my dreams since I was 12? I've had "zombie dreams" on a regular basis for the better part of a decade. Incidentally, the decade in question corresponds with the most chaotic period in the history of the world. Combine future shock with survivalism and you've got the fried, gleeful carnage of zombie-dom. All through the popular culture, the undead hordes have made a comback, like an economy fueled by speculative debt, you might say, and they have eaten their way into our paranoid hearts.
The truth is: what's worse than being stuck in a city full of zombies? Being stuck in a city full of starving people. Coming to a nation near you, 2012.
So we're in a situation where, playing our indie psuedo-abandonware, munching on Red Hot Blues, we inflict facewounds to forget the looming potential of food crises. Why else would Garry happen to decide to release this years-old Beta now? Could it be a coincidence? Or is Garry a subconscious vessel for the collective unconscious, an enlightened zombie of the sub-ether? So, we are inured to the real horror by ragdoll flailing, brain ships, those goddamn radioactive pigeons shitting tumor-laden waste right on the bald-spot.
What's interesting about Facewound, as opposed to other zombie stuff, is that it is as beautifully broken as its toxic cityscape. The game is unfinished and keys offer different debug-mode easter-eggs, just waiting for your accidental discovery. It is as fun to play with cheat codes akimbo as with its sometimes punishing constraints in place. You can fly around and try different weapons, or you can play a taut (perhaps too taut) progression game, killing enemies for credits to buy better weapons.
Aesthetically, I find Facewoundcloser to There Is No More Firmament than Dawn Of The Dead. But on the other hand, it's also pretty slapstick, it's like what Groucho Marx would have done if his descent into surrealism went off exponentially, and he was then resurrected by George Romero. The backbone of this are those petty, honest moments where you're blowing some guy's head off and an Ikea billboard, or something like it, reads off to you in the background. Maybe you could read something about race relations in there too, but I ain't going no where near it.
Chaos
"Incidentally, the decade in question corresponds with the most chaotic period in the history of the world."
You were 12 in 1915?
Can't let this pass
most chaotic period ...
How about the Middle Ages. Certainly more chaotic than now. Or the Dark Ages, following the fall of Rome. Or the high tide of the slave trade in Africa. Or ... or ...
These times are relatively stable, historically speaking.
Chaos
Well, yes... I was thinking Fall of Rome, 30 Years War, the Napoleonic Era, the Great Depression... In fact, in my lifetime, I'd say the 70s were more chaotic than the last decade. We're in 2008, so "the last decade" starts in 1998 -- let's take 1968 through 1978. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the Cambodian bombings, the fall of Saigon, the Chicago Riots, the Weather Underground, Watergate, Nixon's resignation, the Patty Hearst kidnapping, stagflation, the energy crisis, the hostages in Iran... I'm trying to think of anything positive that came out of the period, and about all I can come up with is "punk rock" and "Dungeons & Dragons".
Not that the last decade has been exactly the best of all times to be alive, but there's certainly a lot of competition for 'most chaotic decade in history.' But hey, Patrick is young, and prone to hyperbole, if you hadn't noticed.
Woodstock! Ha! Feminist wave
Woodstock! Ha! Feminist wave and a bunch of other social changes. Charles Bukowski. Yellow Submarine. Jimmy Carter.
And last but not least... PONG!