Articles
Everybody Loves a Zombie
Shaun of The Dead, all wielding
very different renditions of
the undead. But the real
surprise of the last 5 or 10
years however is the volume of
zombies making appearances
in our games consoles. The
gaming industry really has gone
undead crazy, but we love it.
Zombies initially were the thing
of nightmares. Early editions of
the Resident Evil series had the
horror tone down to a tee and
established zombies as the kings
of survival horrors, spawning
fan favourites like Left 4 Dead
and Dead Space, truly terrifying
experiences which captured
the zombie survival genre in it
finest form. But zombies aren’t
always there to scare the crap
out of us, they are the perfect
cannon fodder, like endless
hordes of dummies lining up
for slaughter. For every gaming
masterpiece like The Last of
Us, where the living impaired,
as they prefer to be called,
boast: fear, eerie character
design and spine tingly sound,
there are a plethora of arcade
zombie genocide emulators
which take a more tonguein-cheek approach to this. Of
course zombie genocide isn’t
an official genre, but games like
Dead Island and Dead Rising
Issue 61 • November 2014
are exactly that, kill as many of
the walking dead as you can in
which ever way suits you most!
This genre has spread its wings
into further fields too, linking
up with some triple A titles,
think the Call of Duty Nazi
Zombies expansion or Red
Dead Redemption: Undead
Nightmare, which took a
zombie B-movie stab at the
iconic western. Kill zombies as
a soldier, cowboy or just your
everyday Joe Bloggs, whoever
you are, it’s hours of fun and
a night and day comparison
from the early ‘play with the
lights on’ horror games.
They may now be considered
a cliché, or ‘overused’ as
mentioned in South Park: The
Stick of Truth but we speak
with our wallets and apparently
we can’t stop buying zombiethemed games, cliché or not!
And now even the undead
are dragging their bodies
into child-friendly games, be
it Minecraft where the dull
groan of a zombie is more a
burden on building time then
it is scary. Or take for instance
the not-so-subtle Plants vs
Zombies where I don’t really
have to explain myself, it’s in
the title. Zombies are getting
everywhere and pretty much
everybody loves them.
With no sign of letting up, it
seems zombies do control
the metaphorical (gaming)
world, popping up in almost
everywhere, we’re surely
only a few years away from
zombie FIFA, zombie Assassin’s
Creed or even a zombie kart
racer. One thing is certain,
zombies haven’t been this
popular since Michael Jackson’s
‘Thriller’, and we love them!
9 • GameOn Magazine