Earlier this year Sony unleashed a few details about the upcoming PS3 game, Siren: New Translation. At that point all that was known was that the game was part of its horror-themed Siren franchise. Last week they unleashed a demo of the game to Japanese PS3 owners and gaming news site IGN got a chance to check it out.

The game follows a foreign film crew in Japan who find themselves stuck in the middle of a zombie outbreak. Gameplay, of course, consists mostly of using various weapons to attack zombies, but there are some unique twists. You’ll have the ability to execute dramatic “finishing moves” (`ala Mortal Kombat) that lets you dispose of zombies in creative and cinematical ways. The game also takes advantage of the motion sensing capabilities of the SIXAXIS controller. For example, in order wake your character up from a stupor you’ll shake the controller to wake him up, and to reload your weapon you can just tilt the controller to one side.

There has been no official word from Sony on a US release, but based on the English dialog in the demo it’s suspected that it will come stateside at some point. We’ll keep you updated!

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Sierra Online announced several new games coming to the XBox Live Arcade this summer. One of the titles, Zombie Wranglers of course stood out to us. In the game, players will be able to choose from multiple characters with different zombie-fighting abilities. With kid-friendly graphics it looks like it could be fun!

Via Kotaku

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Check out this new downloadable PC first person shooter game Cry of the Infected, from Cyborg Arm Games. You can play a demo here, or download it for $4. From their press release:

How Would You Like To Be A Zombie?

Cyborg Arm Games breaks the zombie video game mold with their new PC first person shooter: Cry of the Infected. In a unique twist on zombie games, gamers can feel what it might be like to be a raging zombie. An entire city of civilians has been turned into zombies as a result of a biological warfare experiment gone wrong. Gamers play as Robert, a zombie trying to find his missing wife in a city torn apart by the outbreak. Groups of soldiers shoot anything that moves out of their own fear and loss of control. Some zombies attack their own kind in fits of agony. Perhaps worst of all is the crushing hopelessness that Robert must overcome as he rips and tears his way through this abandoned city.

“The story is really told through two perspectives,” said Luke Porter, creator of Cry of the Infected, “You experience this gruesome environment as a zombie, but you also find pieces of a letter from one of the soldiers assigned to contain the zombie outbreak.”

For only $4, gamers can experience 13 levels of action bound together by a compelling story and game environment. The main game contains 1-2 hours of gameplay, and the game can be replayed for an alternate ending and an unlockable secret weapon.

It looks like it could be pretty fun, check out this preview of the game play:

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After the somewhat controversial teaser trailer was released last year, there has been almost no new news regarding the upcoming Resident Evil 5. This week a mini-featurette appeared on a DVD accompanying the latest issue of Famitsu (a Japanese gaming magazine). The video doesn’t really show us much new, but the supposed “zombies” don’t look any un-deader than before. Check out the video below:

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Stone’s War (originally titled War of the Dead, but not to be confused with the War of the Dead web series) is an upcoming Finnish zombie movie about a group of soldiers in World War II who suddenly find themselves fighting the same group of Nazis whom they thought they already killed. If this sounds too familiar check our last Classic Zombie Trailer for Night of the Zombies. This film from Scandinavia has already been picked up for US distribution by The Little Film Company and may also be shown at Cannes. Check out the trailer below:

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There’s a new zombie comic coming soon, called simply The Dead, from veteran comic creators Alan Grant (Judge Dread, Lobo, Batman), Simon Bisley (Sláine, Lobo, Doom Patrol, TMNT) and Glenn Fabry (Preacher, Thor, Neverwhere, The Authority). Not much info out there yet on this project, but we’ll watch for any new info on the book. In the meantime, check out these sample pages, including variant cover pencils by ZRC friend Vince Locke.

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Eating Steve: A Love Storyis a new zombie graphic novel by J. Mark Schmidt which a charming story of life, despair, and zombie-ism and is currently available from SLG Publishers, who have a fantastic four page excerpt up on their site. The best part is, it’s under $6.00 for 76 pages! Sounds pretty fantastic and been getting great reviews.

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The trailer for Diary of the Dead has just been released on the Official Diary of the Dead website on MySpace. Along with the trailer is the announcement of a contest for one lucky filmmaker to get his/her own short horror film to be included in the release of the Diary of the Dead DVD.

Diary of the Dead is a filmabout a crew of film students shooting a horror movie that end up in the thick of a full on zombie outbreak. Instead of heading for the hills, they decide document all that they see. George A. Romero considers this movie to be a “reboot” of his storyline as it does not follow his other releases where the outbreak has happened and society has broken down. Instead it begins where the original, Night of the Living Dead began, on the first night of the outbreak.

Diary of the Dead is set for a limited release on February 15th of this year.

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Cinema Libre Studios were kind enough to send a screener copy of American Zombie so Friday night some of the ZRC staff (Jef, Erik, and Erin) got together to watch it. With no pre-conceived notions with what to expect, we were all pleasantly surprised and charmed by the end of the night. American Zombie is genuinely funny AND supsense-laden with some shocking twists and turns. Yes, you can finally have your cake and eat it too.

The movie starts out following several “high-functioning” zombies who are fully integrated into human society. There’s a convenience store clerk who works the night shift because as a zombie he doesn’t need sleep, a scrap booking obsessed customer service rep zombie, a middle-aged flourist zombie, and a zombie fighting for undead rights under his non-profit group, ZAG (Zombie Advocacy Group). For the most part, the movie is filmed from the perspective of the film crew, and they provide an outsider’s perspective into this strange world of highly functioning zombies. This part of the movie is lighthearted and funny. There are many subtle jokes here and there and I’m sure if we watched it again we would have picked up on more.

While it starts out ostensibly as a Christopher Guest style mockumentary, American Zombie slowly unfolds into a mystery as the documentary crew uncovers a hidden agenda in the zombie culture. The zombies seem to be holding something back and the directors struggle to maintain a balance between uncovering their secrets while trying to earn their trust. Eventually they learn about a zombie convention (aptly named “Live Dead”) and work their way in as the first humans to attend. What they find is deeply disturbing and the film crew realizes that may have gotten into their subject matter a little too deep. I don’t want to give out too many details and spoil the ending for you, but from here on out the movie takes on a much darker tone and is suspenseful as any Hitchcock film.

We REALLY enjoyed American Zombie. We all found the pacing to be a little on slow side at times, but really that’s our only major beef with this fantastic film. The camera work was really good and the acting was simply outstanding. In fact the acting is one of this movie’s strongest points and we all talked about it afterwards.

American Zombie is the must-see zombie movie of the year. Unfortunately according their website, they are still showing it around at festivals so it may be difficult to catch. Hopefully they get it picked up for wider distribution or a DVD release is in the works so everyone can watch this fantastic film.

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Zombies Calling is a new graphic novel, by Faith Erin Hicks, coming out in November from Slave Labor Graphics. You can read a fifteen page preview of the book here. It’s like Scott Pilgrim vs. Return of the Living Dead. It will only cost you $9.95 for 104 pages. That’s pretty cheap. Read the creator’s thoughts here.

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