A few years back, someone put together a great little flash game called The Last Stand, and it was a blast. The premise was wonderfully simple: survive the night as the zombies tear at your barricade, then spend the day searching for weapons, making repairs and finding survivors. After twenty days of survival, the military picked you up.
A couple years back, Tony and I were into the sequel, Last Stand 2, which added a few elements to gameplay, such as intercity travel, traps, and the ability to arm your survivors with better weapons. Your goal: to make it to the city before the final helicopters leave and the place is completely nuked. It's not the most challenging game, but the randomized element of searching and the occasional difficulty in protecting your fellow survivors from being killed made each play interesting.
In the weeks before Halloween, Tony and I logged in quite a bit of playing time, and I used it as an excuse to listen to new music. The following are five heavy songs that will always remind me of playing this charming Flash game.
Download the playlist HERE.
Pentagram - Madman
Easily the catchiest track from Day of Reckoning, "Madman" was stuck in my head for the entire autumn of '08. The overdriven guitar melody following the chorus, with the machine gun double bass drumming, is great stuff.
Weedeater - Monkey Junction
The laziest, murkiest, reddest-eyed blues-rock song ever recorded, "Monkey Junction" is a haze of bass distortion, and marked the beginning of the first Weedeater album, which I grabbed from eMusic in preparation for a local show. Tony thought it was funny that I referred to it as "southern metal."
Pentagram - When the Screams Come
A fantastic crawling riff opens this classic doom song from the band's vintage (and best) era. Total Sabbath worship in the best way possible. "You have entered hell, I guess you weren't so cool!"
Kenny Rogers - Lady
I ain't jokin'. Well, I am, sort of. One of the survivors in Last Stand looks exactly like Kenny Rogers (note the above image, second survivor from the bottom), and he became the most valued member of the team. It was pure melodramatic tragedy for Tony and I when poor Kenny would get too close to the sharp end of a zombie-wielded meat cleaver, and I just had to crank up Kenny's 80's ballad "Lady" as a tribute.
I first heard the song as a kid: we had this VHS taping of a Disney TV show called "DTV" (Disney TV as opposed to Music TV...get it?) that featured a bunch of 80's music set to montages of Disney music. The one for "Lady" was a really sappy compilation of clips from Lady and the Tramp.
Just listen to Kenny lay his heart on the line. Sing it, Gambler. And keep those zombies at bay, man. Your voice won't get you nowhere in this apocalypse.
Vaste Burai - Cath Maige Tuired
This one is from a band I've only recently discovered. Texas natives from Longview, it's just a guitarist and drummer sludgin' their lovin' brains out. Makes for good zombie annihilation tuneage when the final stop of The Last Stand 2, an abandoned military fort, finds you armed to the teeth with landmines, a machine gun and an RPG. The last stop was a good place to camp out and rack up that high-score. Tony and I would compete to see who could put more zombies down. My kill count this game was 1,425. Ya got better?!
I'll leave you with an image of The Last Stand pièce de résistance: a .50 caliber headshot to zombie clown, while two Kenny Rogerses fight side-by-side.
It's a thing of beauty.
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