ARTS
The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, March 8, 2000-8
Dreamcast's'Zo
gets big marks
"Zombie Revenge" is the beat 'em up follow
up side story to the "House of the Dead" series
of-games. That's quite a legacy to live up to, and
it's not surprising that it doesn't fully make it.
From a story point of view, "Zombie Revenge"
clears up a lot of thematic loose ends that were
never clear in the "House of the Dead" games.
Grade: B+
Zombie Revenge
Sega Oreamcast
Reviewed by
Daily Arts Writer
Ted Watts
The undead are super sol-
diers made for the govern-
ment but something went
wrong yadda yadda yadda.
God players even get to
fight at the original and titu-
lar house of the dead and
see it from a 3D perspective
instead of the predetermined
tracks that previously
mbie Revenge'
with the living
gling fedora-ed dwarves that throw hatchets at
you to shambling unwrapped mummy things, you
have the chance to get up close and personal with
a variety of old friends. But of course it's ilways
good to meet.new people, or in this case mutated
humanoids. Immense skull faces with one huge
extra vulvic red eye in its forehead on the top of
a fleshy stalk, old factory workers who transform
before your eyes into something you need to take
a shotgun to and purple-poison spitting plants are
just a few of the cast of characters so horrifying
that you could've met them at a party.
The game play is straight forward; draw a bead
with your gun or release a flurry of fists on the
advancing well wishers whose good intentioned
glad handing is a little too putrid and friendly,
like the security at Altamont. Hold down the fire
button for long enough and you can release a
highly charged shot to rip through one or more of
the local science experiments.
You can even change the rules of the game;
you can jack up either the force of your gun or
your winning personality at the expense of the
other. You can be aloof or all up in that and suc-
ceed; it's a nice way of catering to player's differ-
By Jennifer Gates
For The Daily
ences. There's a choice between playing in nor-
mal arcade mode or in an original mode which
allows you to collect food items for the inspired
zombie raising mini-game. You can raise a zom-
bie on the Dreamcast VMU to fight with in a
fighting mode on the main console. But the best
part of the mini-game is that you can play mini-
games within it, including "Zombie Fishing." A
fun little parody of Sega's Bass Fishing, the very
concept is enough to make this game attractive.
"Zombie Revenge" is not the incredible inno-
vator its "House of the Dead" predecessors were,
but it is a good game. For a legacy game like
this, it's the little touches that matter. Now get
out there and fish, uh, I mean fight!
'Brothers' comes
straight out of the
basement to 'U'
Senior theater student Jessica
Spenny was in for a surprise when
she read Jonathan Gentry's script for
"Keeping Brothers" last semester.
Drawn to the script, she ended up
directing it as this weekend's Base-
ment Arts show.
The play, part of a brother-focused
trilogy senior theater student Gentry
is working on, concerns the brothers
Donald and Daniel Ryder. While
Daniel lives under the public eye as a
television star, Donald is a phobic
who hasn't left his house for 25
years. When an incident hightens
Donald's fears, Daniel must return
allowed one to tour the infested manse.
Actually, getting to see the old set helps to
show the failings of the new game. Because it's
familiar, the fall from the lushly rendered
racked-shooter graphics smacks you in the puss
the way the characters in the game do the
strangely athletic corpses.
Familiar game sprites also pop up. From gig-
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UNiVEPSITY
ACTIVITiES
CENTER
LSA STUDENTS & MAY 2000 GRADS
Seeking a REWARDING SUMMER JOB?
Be a Summer Academic Peer Advisor!
Info at LSA Advising Center, 1255 Angell or
Attend an Information Session at 4:30 p.m.,
Wednesday, March 8, 3410 Mason Hall
Keeping
Brothers
Arena Theatre
Thursday through
Saturday at 7 p.m.
Tickets are Free
home to care
for his brother.
Spenny,
searching for a
play to direct as
the final part of
her senior pro-
ject, was imme-
diately drawn to
the play
because like
Donald, she too
had experi-
enced agora-
phobia, or fear
of open spaces.
ago I was a bor-
niche.
As director of Basement Arts'
"Keeping Brothers," Spenny said
that she has to make sure Gentry's
play "functions on the stage but
doesn't lose what he wanted." Spen-
ny relates her role as it stands to the
University actors, most of whom
have been in other Basement Arts
productions - Dan Hall from "After
Liverpool," Kevin Raleigh from
"Rosencratz and Guildenstern ar9
Dead," and Dan Granke, Aimee
Clark, Anathea Alberda and Erin
Harrison - to a hiking journey. "I
know the big picture. The actors lead
me up to the path, and I make sure
they don't fall off the mountain,"
Spenny said. Other students involved
in the production include Becky
Hibbs, Alvin Wierzbicki and Angela
Zuck.
Spenny, who last worked wits
Basement Arts as one of the direc-
tors of "Shorties," deemed the pro-
ducing unit "a great venue." As a
student-run theater company subsi-
dized by the University, it allows for
innovative freedom. The director of
"Keeping Brothers" believes that
through Basement Arts you can "see
some of the best stuff and the worst
stuff all in the same place. A produc-
tion happens because someone
thought it was really neat rather then*
'well we can keep an audience up if
we do this."'
While Spenny was personally attract-
ed to "Keeping Brothers," she said that
it could be relevant to anyone. "It is
kind of like you are looking at this one
guy's reality and what he does with it'
Spenny said. "I suppose if there is a
message, it is to take a look at your own
boundaries - have you really changer
them or are you still sitting in the same
box with the same wallpaper?"
"About eight years
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derline agoraphobic," Spenny said,
"And I realized that if I didn't fix
this I was going to end up dead, and
so I went out into the world."
Her venture outside her house led
her to sign language, to Lansing
Community College, to "accounting,
to door sales, to retail, to fast food,
to non-fast food" and to the Univer-
sity of Michigan and directing,
where she has finally found her
I k
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Spend six weeks in Israel touring,
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Call Hillel at 769-0500 and
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University of Michigan Students
after five weeks of digging in Israel
If
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