First Blood: ZOMBIE DRIVER

Zombie Driver is a simple game about a simple truth: It's pretty great to run a zombie over with a car. EXOR Studios focused on this point to such a degree that they almost didn't bother to put anything else into the game.

The controls are less than optimal, with your car behaving as though the entire road is made of heated butter, and the writing and voicework go beyond B-movie so-bad-it's-good horrible into just regular everyday not-good-at-all horrible. The game is fairly shallow, featuring a race mode in which you drive around, a slaughter mode in which you run over zombies, and a "story" mode where you drive around and run over zombies. And if that isn't enough for you... well, too damn bad, it's all we've got.

Given the ineptness with which the game's story and characterizations are handled, I have to guess that it is only by accident that Zombie Driver contains one of the most compelling characters in all of gaming history: THE MURDERBUS.

Hi. I kill zombies.

The MURDERBUS is an unstoppable pathos machine. I identified with it immediately and found myself fascinated by its stubborn refusal to be pulled under the wave of apathy and madness that inevitably affects man in a zombie apocalypse. It was a shining beacon in the night. Also, it had these:

FIRE THE MURDERCANNONS!

Who among us can turn his back on such majesty? Truly, the MURDERBUS represents all that is hopeful and good in man, seemingly the only inhabitant of this wasteland with the agency and vitality to do what needs to be done.

My work here is done.

Indeed, the MURDERBUS was such an unstoppable slayer of all things zombie and otherwise that I often felt as though it was driving me, compelling me to perform acts that in my foolishness and lack of vision I often did not understand, such as killing this TARDIS:

Taste the PAIN, Tennant!

But I trusted in the MURDERBUS, and not once did it steer me wrong (LOL BUS PUN). Unfortunately, as it must in this sort of well-planned serious drama, tragedy struck: In the final mission, the MURDERBUS could neither drive fast enough nor stop its murderous rampage against inanimate objects long enough to escape the cliche zombie containment nuke, and I had to abandon it in favor of a police car covered in sharp metal bits and guns. Ordinarily this would be fairly awesome, but alas, it was feeble before the elegance and animal magnetism of the MURDERBUS.

Well, this is just silly.

In the end, the MURDERBUS fell to his hubris and blind dedication to principles, as have so many great heroes. I prefer to remember him as he would have wanted to be remembered: a giant bus studded with cannons devoted wholly to the destruction of all things, living or otherwise.

Here, the MURDERBUS kills a fence and prepares to pounce on an inferior automobile.

MURDERBUS, we salute you.