Zombie Virus PS2 [REVIEW] | Ambulance VS Zombies

Yeah, October is far, far away, but extreme times call for extreme measures, and even more extreme unaccounted issues call for improvisation, so we’re unearth a real piece of shit game from the bargain bin dimension of the PS2, with this rewrite for Zombie Virus..

The generic title does bely a more interesting idea that the original title, The Zombie VS The Ambulance, which might give away to more expert gamers that, yes, this is more trash coming from D3 Publisher budget line of releases, the Simple 2000 Series for the PS2, developed by an obscure studio, Vingt-Et-Un Systems, that mainly did work on these budget Simple Series title…. and to my total surprise is far from defunct, as in the last decade has worked for Capcom titles such as the RE 3 Remake, Ghost N Goblins Resurrection, and the Capcom Arcade Stadium collections.

Not to be confused with another budget title from the very same collection/line, Zombie Attack, which is an action game by Tamsoft, so eventually i’ll have to feature it here in some way.

This one is about the age old tale of zombies and their natural enemy, a sentient ambulance, or so i would say, but the game actually has a plot, because there has to be, not that it amounts to much and it’s hard to care about it since it’s a budget release through and through, with dialogues after important story beats but no voice acting, and most of the story told by silent walls of text.

Again, the usual fare for a budget release of this era sporting the various labels D3 published these things outside of Japan (as in, mostly in European territories), pretty much to be expected.

In short, everything was fine and dandy in the utopia known as Sunlight City, until an eartquake happened, literal dark clouds start spreading about, and presto, not even 1 minute into the intro cutscene and a good 90 % of people turned into zombies.

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[EXPRESSO] Companion (2025) | “You got metal fever, boy!”

I was lucky enough to secure a couple of tickets for a preview screening of the new movie from the director of Barbarian, Companion, which will launch in most theathers next week, so here we go.

A modern tale of why you shouldn’t stick your dick in the toaster, even if you upgrade to “sex gynoid with the bahonkadonkas”, and especially you shouldn’t jailbreak the sexbot or hit it with the ol’ “not a real boy” spiel.

Iris and his boyfriend go to meet some friends at an isolated villa by the lake for a nice weekend, but little does she know they have a plan to rob the rich host and owner of the villa… because she known very little to begin with, as Iris is just an elaborate robot dutch wife, but after she’s framed by her “boyfriend/master” as the one to take the fall for the crimes that occur, with him pityingly telling her the truth about herself, she tries to escape and break free…

AKA the american remake of Iku: I, Robosex via Ex Machina we didn’t ask, nor we actually got, but it’s not a completely incorrect way of putting it, since it feels like someone watched Alex Garland movie and figured there was a way to make a black comedy horror romance film about misoginy, emancipation, agency and all the expected sci-fi themes coming with the gynoid/doll archetype, balancing the comedy and the horror to an impressive result.

I haven’t tried to hide the “reveal” since the marketing eventually gave away the twist (plus the movie itself doesn’t hide it much), but i’d say the movie it’s still quite strong, witty and engrossing even if you know it, since it has great performances, strong characters and great execution to “back that up”.

Pretty good.

[EXPRESSO] Wolf Man (2025) | “Get away you weirdo monkey man!!”

Leigh Whannell continues his “remake rumpus” of the classic monsters following up his 2020 releaed The Invisible Man (and the whole Dark Universe failure) with his take on the Wolf Man.

The story revolves around a family on vacation in a house in the woods of Oregon, with the father trying to use the unfortunate circumstances that brought them there in order to mend his strained family situation, then being bitten by a strange animal while protecting his wife and daughter, and gradually transforming into a beastly creature…

The themes of “sins of the father/parental neglect-abuse” are interesting for a werewolf film, as it the idea to opt for body horror, to focus on the slow transformation to parallel the father’s descent into the brutal, alienated and alienating monster that once walked the skin of a man, and i’d never felt like the idea didn’t work or the script didn’t quite click, nor like there was some “filler”.

Nothing like that.

Honestly, it’s far from bad, but it also frustates me as being so close to being straight up a good, because it’s quite decent but it’s bogged down by feeling honestly uneven, starting good, delivering on the tension, on the claustrophobic atmosphere, even managing to make you care more than you’d wager about these characters that at a first glance feel generic… and honestly never proper bloom, despite the good acting, especially by Christopher Abbott (yes, funnily enough) as the father.

That combined with some questionable special effects, some retreads on cliches, the movie never achieves the emotional depth it soughts to, so it ends up feeling incomplete, like something is plain missing, uneven in execution and underdeveloped where it counts in spite of clear effort.

Not bad, at all, just… kinda disappointing, especially considering the talent involved.

Pity.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #48: I Am T-Rex (2022)

Time to close off this year’s 12 Days Of Dino Dicember with a family/children dinosaur movie, one ailing from mainland China and also fairly recent, as in released originally in 2022 as “Wo shi ba wang long”(which i assume translates to “The Tyrannosaurus Rex”, as can be seen in its original Chinese theathrical poster) but localized/released online with the “I Am T-Rex” title.

It’s also a CG animated film, because we already had plenty of no budget puppet dinosaurs, some high quality (and some low ass quality) dinosaur stop motion animation, caveman boning of the implied kind, cannibal movies sold as dinosaur flicks, pseudodocumentaries, dinosaur comedies with yellowface or comedy bits that aged like the reptiles themselves, so for the sake of variety, let’s move away from all that shizzle.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #45: Jurassic Triangle (2024)

Ah, yes, the parody of Roben Ostlund’s celebrated english-language feature debut. FINALLY!

Imagine that, and that how it would require some wit instead of just any lack of shame, but instead what he have is just another low budget dinosaur film, distributed by Cork’d Entertaiment, a company offering stuff like The Amytiville Murders, Monsternado… and also the quite fun italian horror The Well, but mostly dealing with mockbusters or mockbuster looking cheap flicks, think it as an Asylum adjacent kind of film distributor, just marginally above Wild Eye Releasing that pumps out Mark Polonia films and the like.

So, it’s one of those that you see the opening scene, witness the god awful CGI for the dinosaurs (especially the pterodactyls look shit and seem to have framerate issues like it’s a Pokemon Scarlet/Violet asset), and 5 minutes in, you feel done already, that it would be better to stop while we’re ahead, and we could march to our inevitable grave without deciding to eat so much garbage.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #44: Dinosaur Hotel 3 (2024)

Yeah, no waiting about another year, i’m reviewing both Dinosaur Hotel sequels back to back, hoping to Dino Saint Nicholas Of Myra that 2025 doesn’t bring out a Dinosaur Hotel 4.

Please, Jagged Edge Productions, focus on the Winnie The Pooh and fairy tale slasher stuff instead, because to say i didn’t enjoy any of the Dinosaur Hotel films so far.. it’s being overly kind.

Honestly i think i enjoyed working more than the first Dinosaur Hotel, the sequel was a slight improvement but still an experience that felt like a thousand years had passed since i started the film, despite the 72 minutes runtime, but that one had an open ending that was very “battle royale-esque” of sorts, with the frontman/creator going rogue to get back at the new people running the show that tried to push him, leaving on that plot thread for Dinosaur Hotel 3 to pick up.

Oh i guess SPOILERS. Who cares. I don’t. And these movies have barely a plot anyway, the characters are stereotypes at best, and are a struggle to sit through, so bite me, as they say, i’d rather you not bother even for the morbid curiosity some dino buffs might want to satisfy.

Heck, no one even bothered to leave a review on IMDB for this one, that does say a lot.

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[EXPRESSO] Awaria STEAM | Ghostsmoochers Inc.

After taking the internet by storm with “Johnny Bravo goes to hell for a demon girl harem” AKA Helltaker, vanripper is back with a new game on Steam, Awaria, sporting a new original soundtrack by Mittsies, and being more of a bullet hell- action puzzle game thing “about working in a haunted maintance tunnel”, which yes, means ghost girls to talk, interact and sometimes kiss, though, the Steam page content warning makes it clear by saying “it’s all tame”. It is. Pretty cute designs, still.

It also has the same business model as Helltaker, as in it’s free, but to support the developer you can buy the optional DLC as a “thank you”, which also nets you a digital artbook and a Babezki (a kind of Polish muffin) recipe, but again, you can also unlock the same content in the in-game gallery.

Gameplay is pretty frantic, and has you move your character about to collect items, activate item printers and interact with broken generators, requiring certain items to be fixed in a limited time, while avoiding the ghost girls attacking you, as you die in one hit, a drone will take a hit for you and respawn every 10 seconds, which are lot more than they sound given you’ll need to be constantly zipping around the level.

It’s a 2 hours affair, a bit more if you want to finish the game on Hard difficulty and unlock everything, but it’s quite intense, the gameplay is easy to learn but actually challenging and rewarding, the final boss levels this time around are better designed (as is the game overall compared to Helltaker), Mittsies soundtrack is another banger, pity for the sometimes laggy performance, but it maybe be my old rig.

Once again, i highly recommend playing it and supporting everyone involved.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #43: Dinosaur Hotel 2 (2022)

To say i didn’t like the first Dinosaur Hotel is being nice, but that won’t change the fact it had some of the worst CG i’ve seen in a while, even for modern cheap low budget dinosaur flicks the effects were plainly pathetic, the premise old and already done better years before.

But since this is a modern low budget dino flick from the UK (it’s another Jagged Edge Production thingie, the same company backing the Winnie The Pooh slasher films, BTW), a sequel was bound to happen… and at least it happened fast, i guess, since only 1 year later, Dinosaur Hotel 2 hit the internet and general VOD services in some regions, and this year they dropped another sequel with Dinosaur Hotel 3. At least they keep the titling consistent and simple.

Curiously, if a movie like this would have been released in the 90s, it would have done the usual “sequel in name only” shuffle we’ve discussed countless times before, but in this case we’re doing actual sequels, for best or worst, even if it doesn’t quite matter, as we’re still doing the same idea, again, with people doing a survival game in a place full of dinosaurs, with the jackpot for the lone survivor being ONE MIL-oh, wait 10 MILLION DOLLARS, gotta outbid Dr. Evil.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #42: Caveman (1981)

Ah yes, the caveman movie with Ringo Starr, that was a thing, and honestly anything with actors or people that are actually known in the wider sphere of interests… it’s a welcome break from a lot cheap ass dinosaur flicks done with nobodies and with the cash of a ham sandwich, i’ve said this before but i’ll repeat myself since the 30 cents trash is by far the more numerically abudant.

Especially as it’s kind of ambitious for what’s conceptually just another cavemen comedy, as the main appeal is the cast, with Ringo Starr, Dennis Quaid, Barbara Bach, but it’s almost completely recited in “caveman language”, and in some theathers they even gave out a translation phamplet for 30 words in caveman lingo, which isn’t a complete gimmick since there is a sort of caveman dialect-vocabulary that’s recurring through the film, so no subtitles will ever be needed to watch it.

There is a plot of sorts, with Atouk, a caveman a bit too thinky and curious for its tribe, getting kicked out and joining a merry band of outcast cavemen, and with them they basically go on to improve themselves, invent fire, weapons, learn to walk not hunched like a baboon, all that stuff.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #40: Planet Of Dinosaurs (1977)

Yep, without the “The”, because dinosaurs in space don’t need proper grammar or explanation.

More sci-fi dinos, but this time with more of a budget, kinda, thought it’s one of those cases where the movie just will never be able to live up properly to it’s theathrical poster, which i love, it’s such a perfect sum of late 70s/80s cheese that’s kinda glorious.

I’m not even kidding, that theatherical poster kicks ass, ironically or not, it does.

The movie is actually a fairly typical mash of sci-fi and dinosaur flicks, set in a generic “future” where space travel is a thing, with the crew of the starship Odyssey forced to crashland on a planet that looks a lot like Earth, despite being many light-years away, and a prehistoric sort of Earth, ruled and inhabited as it is by many kinds of dinosaur.

The surviving members, lead by Captain Lee, try to survive in the hope of being rescued, until they encounter a mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex, that proves to be a toughie, forcing them to find a way to kill it in order to survive on the planet.

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