Podcasts
Heading For a London Escape with Ubisoft’s Zombi [Safe Room Podcast]
The dead simply won’t stay dead, and to be honest, they have outstayed their welcome. Zombie media has always been a hot commodity, no matter the era in which it is being released. And despite their prestige and countless examples of well-executed undead media, to say we are inundated with ghoulish content feels like an understatement
.Sure, the hits will always stick out: Dawn of the Dead, Left 4 Dead, The Walking Dead, World War Z, and on and on and on the list goes. So given the overabundance of zombie media, it’s easy to understand why games such as ZombiU (aka Zombi) are somewhat forgotten over time.
Beginning life as a Wii U launch title, ZombiU, released in 2012 (re-released as Zombi in 2015), this mature-rated title was an enigma from its genesis. A mature-rated, hardcore survival horror launch title made it an outlier, to begin with, but even on a revisit, Zombi remains notable amongst the hordes of zombie games.
Whether it be the game’s 28 Days Later vibes thanks to its London setting, its surprisingly hardcore emphasis on survival mechanics, or crafting a story reflective of its world, all these years later, Zombi does leave a distinctive mark. And while it certainly has a few detrimental genre trappings, such as shoddy shooting mechanics and stock standard zombie types, Zombi delivers a hardcore experience within the confines of an unassuming zombie title that has more than a surprise or two up its sleeve.
We unpack this and more in this week’s episode! – Jay Krieger
Safe Room is a weekly horror video game discussion podcast with new episodes every Monday on
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Next week is the latest episode of our weekly review show The Inventory. We’ll be reviewing some of the latest horror and genre game releases. So far that will include discussions on gory Metroidvania Elderand, DreadXP’s latest game Red Tape, freaky point n’ click adventure Birth, and Mundfish’s retrofuturistic shooter Atomic Heart.
After kicking off July with discussions of Joe Dante’s seminal werewolf film The Howling (listen) and Ken Russell’s controversial erotic thriller Crimes of Passion (listen), we’re heading to Maine to dissect one of Stephen King‘s most misguided adaptations in Lawrence Kasdan‘s 2003 misfire Dreamcatcher!
Dreamcatcher sees friends Henry (Thomas Jane), Jonesy (Damian Lewis), Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and Beaver (Jason Lee) reunite for their annual hunting trip in Maine. Their reunion is cut short when they find themselves caught in the middle of a war between a hostile race of farty-farty aliens and an elite US military unit led by Colonel Abraham Curtis (Morgan Freeman), who has been driven mad after spending decades tracking the extraterrestrials. When Jonesy is possessed by one of the aliens, the remaining friends seek out their disabled childhood friend Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg), who they believe has powers that can save Jonesy…and the world.
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.
Episode 396: Dreamcatcher (2003)
Watch out for “ister gay” (oof), take some Gas-X and bite our bags because we’re talking Lawrence Kasdan’s baffling 2003 adaptation of Stephen King’s equally baffling novel Dreamcatcher.
Join us as we go all in on the farty-farty aliens populating this hilarious misfire that often feels like a bad Kevin Smith script. It’s a film filled with characters who get a single defining trait (if they’re lucky), played by respectable actors who are here for the paycheck (looking at you, Morgan Freeman).
Plus: blown-out assholes, using guns as telephones, pitying poor Donnie Wahlberg, and wondering why the hell this movie is called Dreamcatcher.
Cross out Dreamcatcher!
Coming Up Next: We’re going to be lounging around a posh Greenwich Village apartment as we check in on Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 513 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Forbidden Fruits, Saccharine, Evil Dead Burn, an audio commentary on Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (aka Howling II: Stirba – Werewolf Bitch), and the conclusion of our coverage of AMC’s The Vampire Lestat on the Requel Tier.