May 27-June 2, 2004

naked city

Dead and Loving It

Video games that kill or re-kill.

by Debra Auspitz, Jesse Delaney and Patrick Rapa

Red Dead Revolver

You know that thing fancypants cowboys do when they twirl their pistols around on their index fingers, sliding it in and out of their holsters all flashylike? Pretty stupid, right? Well it looks even more idiotic in video-game form.

But you can't blame Red -- yes, the star of Red Dead Revolver (Rockstar Games, Playstation 2, Xbox, $49.99) is named Red -- for showing off right after he's shot up some outlaw. Why be modest? This is the Wild West.

RDR is what gamedorks call a third-person shooter, meaning you control deadeye Red and his revolver, and you also see them onscreen. (Doom, wherein you were pretty much just a gun, was first person. Wouldn't you love to see a second-person-plural shooter?) You also, once in a while, say goodbye to Red to take control of some other characters, like Indian archer Shadow Wolf and Limey sharpshooter Jack Swift. The bad guys -- and really, isn't "bad" kind of relative when everybody's shooting everybody? -- and their henchpeople are all standing somewhere waiting for you to come and shoot them. There's Pig Josh -- you have to shoot him a lot. General Diego's someone else who requires shooting. Oh, and Bad Bessie, the ex-madam with the whip? You're gonna wanna shoot at her, too. Or throw dynamite.

The linear plot keeps Red moving in one direction from ghost town to canyon to graveyard to train to ghost town, but the sharp, detailed settings have plenty of secrets to explore. The controls are easy enough to master and you're given an infinite amount of lives with which to complete your mission. This is an effortless, user-friendly video game in league with the Max Payne franchise.

When he's not out there capping varmints from rooftops or dueling in slow motion on main street, the bounty hunter Red is wandering around buying guns and dynamite. He can also go to the general store for whiskey. It makes him feel good, OK? Lay off. Curiously, the game lets Red take out a loan from the bank and buy the deed for a saloon from the real estate office. So Red's got a nest egg. You can't be a gunslinger forever.

Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick

In the land of the dead, the one-armed man is king. It helps that he's a square-jawed S-Mart employee named Ash with a chainsaw in place of his severed limb. In Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick (THQ, PlayStation 2, Xbox, $49.99), all hell has broken loose and deadites (basically, the aforementioned evil dead) have overrun the town of Dearborn, Mich. Armed only with a spell book, an arsenal of weapons and a stream of barbed insults, it is your mission as Ash to dispatch evil back to the netherworld with a parting "Have fun cleaning toilets in hell, loser." The chainsaw in Boomstick runs constantly with no need to refuel it (an improvement from the first Evil Dead game), and there's a lock-on feature that targets deadites and allows Ash to execute nifty over-the-shoulder shots as he runs for his life. Best of all, there's no need to practice restraint when carving up enemies. Police and prostitutes who senselessly step into the arc of your wildly oscillating chainsaw are immune to your violence. Let those same characters become possessed with the deadite spirit (Gimme an "Aaaaaah!"), and watch the blood splatter.

SHOOT TO KILL: In Dawn of the Dead: Blackout (this image) and Red Dead Revolver (below) you can't go wrong aiming for the head.

Dawn of the Dead: Blackout

If you have a little time to kill and enjoy being full of rage, plug your headphones into your computer at work and try this unfancy but free bit of tie-in merchandising. Available at www.dawnofthedeadmovie.net/ experience/ blackout.htm (you need Shockwave for the game to work), Blackout is a bare-bones first-person shooter game based on the recent goreriffic remake of George Romero's classic film. No Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames or Max Headroom (he's in the movie, we swear) here -- it's just you, represented by some arms and a shotgun, behind a very ineffective wire fence. A "radar" in the corner of the screen indicates where zombies are attempting to climb said fence and devour you. You simply move your mouse to aim and hit the space bar to shoot -- there are no worries about aiming for the head in this particular fight. Unfortunately, those without insanely fast computers and Internet connections will most likely experience enough mouse drag to quickly prove fatal. That's where the rage comes in.

WHERE WOLF: Van Helsing is idiot-proof.

Van Helsing

Here comes another video game concerned with taking the undead, half-dead and mostly dead and making them all dead. Unlike the movie, with its John-Henry-and-the-steam-shovel motif (human Hugh Jackman battles computer-generated monsters), Van Helsing (Vivendi, Playstation 2, Xbox, $49.99) levels the playing field by pitting a cyber-Jackman against equally digitized monsters. The player's raison d'etre as Van Helsing is to unlock the secrets of the past by blasting and hacking zombies, vampires, werewolves and gargoyles into dust. The gameplay is idiot-proof; tutorials pop up at every turn with tips on using weapons and navigating puzzles, and it is impossible to fall off cliffs. There are two lessons in Van Helsing. First, Hugh Jackman is in danger of being typecast as a man with a mysterious past (Wolverine, Van Helsing, Kate and Leopold). Secondly, leave the past dead and buried. Moving backward in the game causes previously vanquished monsters to regenerate, which is perfect for sadists and padding one's kill score, but essentially annoying.