Editor's Note: Rise From Your Grave

[Russ Pitts]

Rise From Your Grave

Zombies will always infect videogames, because gamers need something they can shoot guilt-free.

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[Thaluikhain]

That's true enough, but hardly a new thought that's going to surprise anyone.

I would say that an important point has been missed, though. As well as not feeling bad about killing them, a player is always going to sympathise with doing so. Whomever you are, zombies are going to be the "other", the "them" to an "us" which encompasses all of humnaity.

If you create a game about US soldiers killing soldiers of People's Islamic Terrorist State of Generica, everyone can get behind that, because everyone in the world is a US citizen, according to marketing experts. But if you create a game in which you play as the PITSG soldiers fighting the US, there will be arguing.

Zombies are more generic and easier for everyone to hate than even Nazis. They are a default badguy everyone is familiar with and nobody sympathise with.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

I never have trouble fcking over enemy AI of any ...er.... nationality?
I do enjoy using non lethal weapons when given the chance.

Tho I am getting tired of zombies becoming super creatures, I mean I can see 4 main types of zombie archetypes ,regular/slow, mutated for speed,mutated for heavy damage and mutated for mind fcking(high level predator).

I really don't mind it if the slow types can barely use weapons but when you take regular zombies and make them super human..... uhg....... its almost as bad as making vampires as powerful as normal humans...

 

[Jyggalag]

I think it's more than just because they're monsters and that removes the guilt of murder. Zombies create a disturbance via their personification.Because they're monsters we can kill them without a second thought, but, in one way or another, they're still...human.

 

[Ophiuchus]

Please, tell me the title of this week's issue is a reference to Altered Beast...

 

[messy]

You want guilt free killing? In the film suckerpunch they fight steam powered re-animated Nazi zombies. As in they were Nazis, killed, brought back by the evils of science, powered the dangers of industry, and then become Nazis again.

 

[Ligisttomten]

There's no guilt about killing anything in video games... Seriously. It's just a game.

 

[freaper]

Personally I prefer Nazis to Zombies. Give me something I can really hate, not just revile.
I mean think about it:
One is a brain dead, soulless, murdering monster
and the other's a monster =D

Nazis are humans like you and me, loving fathers and passionate lovers.

OT: I had the same thoughts the other day. What about a game where you're a disfigured pariah and have to fight Adonis-like opponents? For something completely different.

 

[tcurt]

I thought that's why we had to kill so many space aliens for so long. Or demons from another dimension. Just as long as it's not human.

Then again, warped space creatures did reign during the age of when making a realistic human was kinda laughable.

 

[The Random One]

I stand by my point: zombies represent living in a society based on dwellings far greater than the maximum number of people humans will process as actual other people (which is about 150 different people - see the monkeysphere [http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html]). A zombie represents an unknown person. It looks like a human being, but it's not one - because you have no emotional attachment to it, which is the most important thing in humans to humans. It's murderous because you don't know if a stranger is murderous. It's an illness because you can't tell when strangers are sick. They're numerous because you are always submerged by a crowd of not-humans all day long. And if you break away from your group they'll turn you into one of them - you'll lose all of your individuality and crave only what the ones around you crave. Or maybe the turning is an even darker metaphor - it means that, to those we don't know, we are the zombies, it is us. (I know who I am, but who are all you zombies?)

 

[108Stitches]

There is also a deeper, underlying sympathy in killing a zombie. They were, afterall, once human and you are doing them a favor by freeing them of the affliction that has turned them from human to zombie.