WARNING! HERE BE SPOILERS!!
NOTE: If you haven't played God Of War II and you don't want to the ending spoiled for you, skip the first paragraph of this entry.

Initially this was going to be a long rant about God Of War II. What possibly could one have against this exquisitely made game you may ask? Three words. The Bell Puzzle. The Sodding Bell Puzzle (make that four). There I was, whirling, twirling, slicing, dicing, dismembering, disembowelling and joyously cutting a gruesome and bloody swathe throughout the world of myth and legend. The fun halted in the Temple of the Fates thanks to a puzzle so hard it made hate every living thing on the planet and the wall of my flat now has several PS2-controller-shaped dents in it. The puzzle involved ringing a bell, freezing time, jumping onto a bridge, leaping onto a platform and them ringing the bell with the bridge you just leapt on after ringing the first bell and freezing time. If that sounds confusing - GOOD! Imagine playing it. I don't know how I got past it - only that it took a long time and my neighbours probably think I have Tourettes. Anyway, the point is, rage was soon replaced as I resumed my violent activities, and it wasn't long before I was yelling at Zeus from the back of Gaia as the Titans clambered up Mt Olympus to wreak gargantuan amounts of revenge and havoc - oh yes!

So Sony's new game gets a reprieve, and instead I'm going to heap scorn on the sequel to a very good film and on two characters in particular:

WARNING! HERE BE MORE SPOILERS!!
If you haven't seen 28 Weeks Later and don't want to know what happens in it, then read the whole blog anyway, because I'm about to stop you wasting eight quid (or the foreign equivalent thereof) and an hour and a half of your life.

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NAMES: Tammy & Andy

KNOWN ALIASES: Puppies/those rotten kids (admittedly that's mine, ed)

QUALIFYING FIELDS: Damnable/Contemptible/Useless

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: Being both young in body and high-pitched in voice which costs them half their hero-points to begin with; acting like complete morons whenever the screenplay requires them to in order to move the plot along; tainting any good memories associated with the first instalment in this series; inadvertently re-starting a plague that nearly wiped out everyone in the entire UK - and pretty much ensuring the spread of said plague to mainland Europe.

SUMMARY: There are a couple of things the writer on any horror film can do which will pretty much guarantee the final cut is be shot down in flames, and one of them is to centre the plot around characters who are so stupid, they don't deserve to live. Yes, yes, I know that horror isn't high art, and some suspension of disbelief is required - but this doesn't equate to characters being allowed to act illogically at certain points, just because there's no other way to move the action forward. If this happens, the audience loses any sympathy for the characters and the whole viewing experience starts to feel like some death cult gathering in an Indiana Jones movie, complete with the steady chants of "DIE! DIE! DIE!"

Over the course of the film, Tammy and Andy exhibit quite a lot of stupid behaviour, but none so more than Tammy's plan at the beginning of the film.

Tammy and Andy return to the UK 28 Weeks after the outbreak of the Rage virus. Most of the population has been killed off and the few survivors have congregated in a quarantine zone out by Canary Wharf. As Tammy and Andy catch the DLR into Canary Wharf - passing tons of machine gun nests and military fortifications - they are told that they're not to leave the quarantine area, as the NATO forces in charge of the zone aren't sure if all the infected are dead. They're reunited with their dad, who appears to be something of a traumatised wreck and who tells them mum got eaten by the infected.

So, what's a child to do upon hearing that their mother was eaten by zombies and that they're to stay in a quarantine zone in case the infected are still out there posing a threat to the miniscule amount of Brits still left on the planet? Well, rather than stay safely in the quarantine zone, Andy and Tammy (well, Tammy really - Andy just goes along with her because his brain is obviously made of pudding) decide to sneak back into no-man's land. They don't know what's out there, they don't know the risks involved, and sod how it may affect anyone else - they need a picture of mum, so off back home they go. It's at this point, you lose half of all your sympathy for the grown-ups too, as one of the NATO snipers doesn't just immediately grease these two little twits when he has the chance. (And as a side point, just how crap is NATO if two idiot kids can slip through their intricate security web so easily?)

At home they find mum, who happens to be a wild-haired, demented banshee - and is also infected. The NATO forces swoop in and grab 'em all up and the kids are placed in an interrogation room. When dad arrives, Tammy, who's broken quarantine, placed her brother squarely in harm's way and caused NATO troops to be re-directed from guard duty to pick her and her dumb-ass brother up, has the stinking gall to give her father gyp about the fate of her mum. (For those who haven't seen the film, yes, there's a grey area, but dad had every reason to believe that mum had become zombie nosh). It's here when you lose the rest of your sympathy for the grown ups, because rather than punching her lights out, dad stands there like a pillock with his bottom lip trembling. (And as another side point, just how crap is NATO, if the janitor has access to every single facet of the NATO base, including the room where they've quarantined the infected mum?)

Yes, thanks to Tammy and Andy, the Rage virus spreads through the remaining survivors - and then off to mainland Europe where hopefully this franchise will die, because the only way I'd sit through the next instalment (28 Months Later - you just wait) is if it starts like this:

INT. COURTROOM - DAY

Tammy is brought before the court wearing State Issue. She stands tearfully in the dock. The Judge glares down at her.

JUDGE: Do you have anything to say before sentence is passed?

TAMMY: I...(sob)..just...(sob, sob) wanted to...

JUDGE: Oh shut up! You have been found guilty of being the most useless article known to humankind. Incredibly useless. Stupendously useless. You are to the human race what the appendix is to the human body - to wit, a small useless piece of human flesh that gets inflamed and irritates all and sundry. I sentence you to be burned alive!!

JEEVES: Yay!

End Scene