"The Walking Dead" (Season 1)

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"The Walking Dead" takes place in a world where a virus has overwhelmed the human race and has turned them into zombies. For a genre that usually involves excessive violence, comedy, and very little storyline or character development, "The Walking Dead" manages to overcome this stereotype and create a series with a promising future. The characters are likable and not two dimensional. This show still contains massive amounts of blood and gore, and should not be watched by those who are easily queasy.

The show starts with the last memories of a police officer before the catastrophe. Though a small miricle, officer Rick Grimes manages to survive the initial outbreak while in a coma, in a hospital. At first the details of what happened are a mystery, but become evident when Rick comes across the top half of a woman slowly pulling herself across a city park.

As all too often, it seems as if every person that survives the zombie apocalypse has never heard about zombies before. The survivors quickly learn that they react to sound and can only be killed with brain injury. This show is phenomenal when it comes to properly depicting how the mindless undead would react to different situations.

Survival priorities and goals are set forth early in the series. New characters are added through the show, and developed excellently. Instead of keeping the characters to the cast producers mold when they are introducted, they have several conflicts and are developed excellently because of this.

Unfortunately, the character development can slow down the show to a crawl. While a good portion of the show is zombie slaying and survival action, the slow points taken to make the characters more believable can become excruciatingly slow. However these slow points don't last long as either the conflict escalates, or survival becomes more difficult. On the other hand, these slow points manage to create much needed resting spaces from the massive amounts of gore.

While almost all of the actions and decisions of the characters seem believable, many fall short of logic. All shows usually have moments when the viewer thinks, "why the heck did he/she just do that?!" and this series is not an exception. These actions sometimes seem just to be a way for the story writers to create later conflict of suspension.

Most zombie themed stories seem to usually brush off the origin of the epedemic. However "The Walking Dead" directly addresses this issue near the end of the first season. The ending manages to leave a sense of resolution, while still being a massive cliffhanger.

This is a new and referring take on the classic "zombie apocalypse" scenario. The first season only has 6 hour long episodes, and can be agonizingly short. If gore, blood, and violence is not a problem, then this can turn out to be a very enjoyable series.

"The Walking Dead" is produced by AMC

Portal

"Hello, and welcome to the Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Center." In Valve's hit game "Portal" the player play as a protagonist who never talks, and is only glimpsed through 'portals'. This game manages to teach the player to think in new ways, while keeping them laughing all along the way with dark humor.

The game begins with a voice waking the player up from a sleeping chamber and informing the player that they are about to take place in an experiment involving 'portals'. The first tests are some simple 'box and button' puzzles, in which the player must move a box onto a button to open a door and continue. This simple test is given a new twist by the player's ability to move from one part of the room to another using portals.

The first version of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device is obtained within the first few minutes of playing the game. This device is able to 'shoot' a blue portal, which connects to an orange portal. Puzzles go from easy to hard very quickly when the player learns to fling objects though space using momentum. By the end of the game the player is a pro at bending space to suit their needs.

The bland atmosphere and solitude of the game can become quite depressing, if it wasn't for GLaDOS, voiced by Ellen McLain. She keeps the game interesting by making jokes and adding some dark humor. While at the beginning of the game she seems benign and almost nice, it becomes quite evident she is anything but. The humor kept up by this sentient robot keeps the game alive and enjoyable throughout the game  including the boss battle and credit song.

The one actual 'song' in this game is "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton, and sung by Ellen McLain. It becomes a bittersweet reward to the player after finishing the game. Jonathan manages to give the game an excellent farewell with this masterpiece.

While this game is very short, Valve manages to stuff a whole entire universe into it. Evidences of past test subjects can be glimpsed throughout chambers and past events fall into place as the player nears the ending.

Portal is an excellent example of how a puzzle game can also be a first person shooter. It provides a few hours of head scratching puzzles and humor. Though some puzzles can be very difficult and a break might be necessary before being able to solve it, the game is still enjoyable and humorous.

Portal can be bought online from Valve for $9.99