303: How Games Get Zombies Wrong

[mikespoff]

Great article - excellent points.

It certainly seems that zombies are just the current trendy totally-interchangeable monsters du jour, and the games as a rule never really move to what makes them interesting.

One mod which managed to stay true to the "try to survive but inevitably get eaten by zombies" concept was the nazi zombie survival mode in Call of Duty: World at War. It was horrible, and only playable as a brief extension to a core game, but it stayed true to the zombie concept pretty well.

I'm not convinced that it's possible to make a good game about zombies, but that's not a reason to make bad games about them - it's a reason to make good games about other things.

 

[omega 616]

THANK GOD someone wrote this. While shooting zombies with guns is fun - why else do we do it, I can't wait for the game that is based on surviving and staying away from the zombies and most importantly - other humans.

Good news dead rising! I have only played the second one but there are alive people who hunt you with snipers, a crazy mayor, a crazy guy who lives in a toilet, a crazy army guy, a crazy mail man, an insane chef and a guy with a pet tiger ... oh and two evil twins, as well as the 10,000 zombies per area.

On topic, Why did it take the article half a page to get to the point? I think a dead rising meets GTA4 would be a great idea and would sell billions but it would mean a PS3 doing the 360 trick of multiple multi layer BR disks to play on a console and I reckon it would take up a lot of PC space and power.

That's why it is the way it is, zombies are just a re-skinned enemy X. Just something to shoot at, they could be made to look like pirates (the ones with boats, not computers), ninja's or werewolves.

 

[kidd25]

making a movie or a comic or even a show is more or less easier than a game, because someone else is doing everything someone else is fighting for their life without in inch of trust for the others. making a game like that would seem on paper that it would be a great mmorpg, you know if you can make it work but their would have to be a lot of tweaking and changing with the mmorpg mechanics to keep people playing. there was a game that came out that was top down and worked with other people on the forums.

 

[Ukomba]

This is why I was excited about Dead Island by the trailer, and supremely disappointed by the actual game.

I love left 4 dead, but being immune eliminates 99% of the fear.

 

[Pahakeisari]

When was the last time people who commented about the pinball analogy (about half a dozen) last played a pinball?

Score is certainly still a central tenet but since ~1989 many pinballs have progression, they're called "modes". You beat a pinball game by completing all the modes. Not so good analogy after all?

Of course playing for the wizard mode is pretty exclusive to people who own the game, as it'd cost way too much to try and get to a good level in an arcade.

Here's some homework: http://www.flippers.be/basics/101_deep_rules.html

 

[Vigormortis]

I believe that the in-development game Project Zomboid (http://www.projectzomboid.com/) will be more to the author's tastes.

Very much so. Project Zomboid is essentially everything the author of this article is looking for. A "you can't win", "hold out as long as you can", "worry about the threat of the zombies and the other humans" style survival game.

In fact, anyone who's a fan of the zombie mythos, old-school isometric games, or survival-horror should check that game out. It's fantastic.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

Humans aren't the real threat; I'd take the possible chance of fighting with another 'survivor' for food and/or water, etc., over the zombie horde that will eat me alive.

 

[The3rdEye]

You are arguing that someone has done something wrong in fiction based on reasoning grounded in reality. Things just don't work that way.

Take any sci-fi or fantasy scenario and try to apply real world logic to it and you will always end up with a headache. Watch:

Zombies
If zombies are mindless, soul-less eating machines, why don't they attack each other?
If their goal is to spread the virus/entity that they are infected with, why do they so frequently end up mutilating a living victim beyond any hope of being a viable carrier?
...etc...

Suggesting or presenting ideas for future work and how you think they would appeal to an audience? Good.[footnote]As a small aside, minus the gratuitous fan service Highschool of the Dead is my favorite depiction of the zombie apocalypse to date. Even with a vast majority of humans turned zombies, it's the living breathing that end up screwing everyone else over.[/footnote][footnote]"You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.[/footnote]

Appointing yourself the Grande Poo-Bah of zombie culture and slapping people's wrists for how they misrepresented "your" zombies in their portrayal? *zap*

 

[TJM8]

I agree with a lot of this. I like the points on how most zombie games don't take advantage of the other threats zombies pose as an enemy, but the whole article just seems kinda arrogant in the way it was written. I mean I get the idea that its that you think MOST people don't understand how zombies work but anyone that is really into the zombie genre knows all this already. If you're speaking to the gun crazy players that just love to slam that game into their xbox and shoot wildly for kills, then I think you're writing for the wrong site cause I don't think many of those people are here.

I saw someone posted something bout a cracked article, and yes I read that one too. The article suggests that really its more about surviving the zombies until nature/climate kills them off. Like in 28 days later (at least in the movie I didnt read the book) which you mentioned, they survive by moving to a remote area until the infected (not zombies) starve.

I had a few other points but just reading the first page of comments they have been said multiple times haha so I'll stop here. This article a few years ago would've been good and well timed. now, zombies are so exposed. people have laid out zombie plans and argued it tireless with other dorks that did the same. There are books and books on it. countless websites/blogs. You underestimate the dorks my friend

 

[Starik20X6]

Right now here's a thought: take DayZ, and add this feature- when you get attacked, if you take a certain amount of damage but don't actually die, you should get infected.

Over the course of the next few in game minutes/hours, your control over your character gets progressively worse, and you start hallucinating, seeing zombies that aren't there and seeing other survivors as zombies. Eventually when you do succumb to the infection, your character becomes one of the NPC zombies, now a threat to anyone still living. Naturally, any armour you were wearing when you died is now being worn by the zombie, making it that much harder for a survivor to kill.

Maybe there should be a cure that can reverse the effect of the infection if you take it prior to falling, though it'd have to be rare.