Poll: Ugh, zombies

[ThatDarnCoyote]

With zombie stuff, I'm mostly tired of pretending not to notice it's the same plot over and over.

 

[fenrizz]

I still love all things zombie related, the more the better.
There is obviously going to be some crap, but that is how it is with everything.

More zombies I say!

 

[Reaper195]

There is more shit zombie stuff than there is good zombie stuff. Just like there are good survival horror games, but a lot more shit survival horror games (Just look at EVERYTHING in Steams early access). There are some good military shooter games (Halo, CoD Single player, Black), and then there are a bunch of terrible ones (Battlefield single player, Bodycount)

 

[ItouKaiji]

Someone actually likes VHS over VHS 2? Both movies are pretty terrible, but the first one was boring as hell. With the exception of the third story, which was actually a bit of an inventive take on the 80s horror slashers, I was bored to tears by everything else. The second movie still wasn't very good, but at least it wasn't boring. There's also only one zombie story out of 4 in the second movie. The first story wastes a cool gimmick to tell a tired ghost story, the second story is the zombie story, the third story (the best in the movie) is Paranormal Activity meets Poltergeist and the last story is a crappy alien story that is nothing but loud noises and jump scares.

 

[Vault101]

I'm not sick of zombies because I never liked them in the first place

I can't say their explosion in popularity helped though, I just find it as a doomsday scenario...unbelievable..or more to the point how a military can get overrun by mindless meat bags...I guess the viral element is key but still

 

[MHR]

They're almost classics at this point to me. Gotta love the undead and pandemic infections. Both together is just pie.

The Walking Dead is zombies done perfectly. Why has nobody mentioned this yet? There's nothing to hate about The Walking Dead except that awful season 2 subplot with the missing girl that dragged on and on like a fat dog making a skid mark on a carpet. The effects are fantastic except for the overblown skull explosions when the zombies are hit in the head with even a dull pencil.

Zombies in video games are still great for me most of the time. Yeah they're basic and everybody is using them for everything, but that just doesn't bother me. Space Pirates and Zombies is fun too. That's a way to take a unique spin on them, though technically you're not dealing with them in the traditional sense trying to shoot them in the head yourself or anything.... Can't wait for SPAZ 2.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Zombies are a bit overdone at the minute as well. I'd like to see more attention given to vampires or werewolves, as they are way more awesome (particularly vampires).

(particularly vampires)

ohgodpleaseno.

Unless you mean ACTUAL vampires, aka burn in sunlight horrible evil monsters, in which case I'd say go for it, but I think we have enough terrible vampire things going on at the moment. It's reached the point of almost satiring itself. It's like Twilight being added as a secret ingredient to teen films. Then again, the last teen film without vampires was...

I have no clue.

The Host?

(As an aside, I sorta liked the Vampire Academy movie)

But yeah, get rid of zombie, vampires, werewolves and all that rubbish and do something new.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I hate to say it but the infected was the reason why I couldn't get into The Last of Us as much as I wanted to. I liked the characters but I hated the whole infected and how they came about. Honestly, I feel they weren't that integral to the story. They could have made the exact same game but filled with nothing but regular human enemies; the characters and setting could have been portrayed the same.

I actually really liked that about it, and I think it was done intentionally. The zombies are just the fall-out from the catastrophy, not so much the catastrophy itself. Most zombie movies/stories are all about the zombies, and it was nice to see a game where they took kind of a backseat.

I also liked how it wasn't some man made virus, side effect of a cure to cancer/aids/alzheimer, or atomic war that caused the infection. It was simply the evolution of an already existing species. No "mankind getting punished for their hubris", just nature taking its course. And that's why it was important for the zombies to be there, because they're a reminder that mankind is ultimately powerless against nature. Just the slightest change in something like a cordyceps fungus could wipe us out.

It showed that we're just a species like every other living on this planet, no more special to be ignored by the risk of extinction.

 

[Bat Vader]

I hate to say it but the infected was the reason why I couldn't get into The Last of Us as much as I wanted to. I liked the characters but I hated the whole infected and how they came about. Honestly, I feel they weren't that integral to the story. They could have made the exact same game but filled with nothing but regular human enemies; the characters and setting could have been portrayed the same.

I actually really liked that about it, and I think it was done intensionally. The zombies are just the fall-out from the catastrophy, not so much the catastrophy itself. Most zombie movies/stories are all about the zombies, and it was nice to see a game where they took kind of a backseat.

I also liked how it wasn't some man made virus, side effect of a cure to cancer/aids/alzheimer, or atomic war that caused the infection. It was simply the evolution of an already exsisting species. No "mankind getting punished for their hubris", just nature taking its course. And that's why it was important for the zombies to be there, because they're a reminder that mankind is ultimately powerless against nature. Just the slightest change in something like a cordyceps fungus could wipe us out.

It showed that we're just a species like every other living on this planet, no more special to be ignored by the risk of extinction.

It was nice to see them take a backseat but I just felt like they weren't necessary. The Cordyceps thing was interesting but I don't know. Maybe I am just so bored of zombies and infected as enemies that I am starting to get biased against them.

Zombies/infected just seem like the go to enemies when people want to create survival or horror games. Kinda like how Russians are the go to enemies in most American FPS games.

I don't think I would be bored of them so much if people tried to do new things with them. Something I would love to see is zombies as free thinking and intelligent and the only thing separating them from humans is their need for brains and/or human flesh. I can see an entire world being based off of this. People opening up restaurants where they just serve zombies or zombies and humans. I don't know though.

 

[Tsukuyomi]

Snip 2: Return of the Snip

I can see what you mean with that. Although I think there's also an element of easing frustration at the world too. Amongst the people I know who are zombie fans, I am the only one who, when we invariably talk about what to do in the situation, thinks about solving the problem. Not so much how to possibly cure those who are infected or to create a vaccine, but also a wider-spread solution to killing the buggers. Everything from a counter-virus to breeding swarms of carrion-eating insects that do the dirty work for us while leaving the living alone. It's all absurd and way over my head in terms of having the intelligence to actually DO it, but we're talking in theory and fantasy anyway so I figure why not?

thing is, when I mention such things, people actually become confused, stunned, or even mad or disappointed. I actually had the following exchange with one of them, which baffled me so much that I still remember it despite it being so long ago:

"dude, the way you solve the problem is to shoot them in the head with a shotgun!"
"That's...not solving the problem. That's killing them off one-by-one, which eventually you WILL run out of ammunition and be overrun. The better solution is to find a way to eliminate the threat in large amounts in such a way that the method either propagates by itself or is cheap and easy to reproduce as many times as needed."
"But...that's not as fun, though."
"We're talking about survival of the species, not what's fun."
"Man, you're weird."

Basically for at least some of the people I know I feel like it's their way of expressing that they want to not only be free of the constraints of modern society, but they also want to be able to blow someone's head off or otherwise shoot people without the repercussions of, you know, actually shooting people. Which isn't bad, as everyone gets frustrated to that point on occasion I think, but the fact that they don't recognize it for what it is is annoying.

They're all perfectly happy considering the moment-to-moment living of just blasting zombies and trying to survive. Rebuilding the world, the population, civilization itself never occurs to them or if it does it seems to rain on the parade. It kind of makes me laugh since they all loved World War Z the film, yet I can't get ANY of them to read the book. It'll be funny to see their faces if the films actually stick to the book in terms of how things go.

 

[Ratty]

:Hipster:I love zed before they were cool:Hipster:

I actually had seen the original NotLD and serpent and the rainbow when i was way too young and as a result for years it made me afraid to sleep because i was afraid they would break out of the ground and eat me except in the winter because that meant the ground was too hard for the zeds to break out of. I ended up conquer my fears by becoming a huge fan of zed films, books, and games(mostly mods back in the day).

Someone thought it was funny to show me the NOTLD remake, ROTLD and a bunch of others behind my mothers back when I was very young. I had nightmares for so many years that I actually started to get bored of zombies even as I was being eaten alive by them for the twelve thousandth time.

Also Zeds? A fellow Killing Floor player?

I don't normally mind zombies. Sadly I can't remember the exact quote but Walter from Hellsing put the purpose of Zombies/Ghouls very well: effective in their own way, certainly tenacious, but essentially not much to write home about compared to the REST of the horror-movie menagerie.

"Bit on the slow side aren't they? After all a ghoul is just a ghoul. In theory threatening, certainly tenacious. But honestly they're quite a distance from indestructible or invincible!" - from the Hellsing Ultimate dub translation.

I agree that zombies are about as dull as it gets for monsters, especially now that they've become the vanilla of the modern horror scene.

Then again the mainstream always fucks up and overdoes horror. Like when vampires were popular in the 1980s and 1990s?[footnote]And let's not even get started on Slasher films, the most boring and for the longest time in the 1980s and 90s most popular form of horror movies.[/footnote] Emo-goth Anne Rice stuff everywhere. Good material came out of that, like White Wolf's World of Darkness, but most of it was crap. Like today's zombie craze. Of course zombies reflect the human condition and social isolation and consumerism and yadda yadda, but they're just over-saturated at this point. Can we at least get some Egyptian Mummies up in here?

Werewolves will always be my favorite.

 

[Tsukuyomi]

Then again the mainstream always fucks up and overdoes horror. Like when vampires were popular in the 1980s and 1990s?[footnote]And let's not even get started on Slasher films, the most boring and for the longest time in the 1980s and 90s most popular form of horror movies.[/footnote] Emo-goth Anne Rice stuff everywhere. Good material came out of that, like White Wolf's World of Darkness, but most of it was crap. Like today's zombie craze. Of course zombies reflect the human condition and social isolation and consumerism and yadda yadda, but they're just over-saturated at this point. Can we at least get some Egyptian Mummies up in here?

Werewolves will always be my favorite.

Saddest part? White Wolf redid World of Darkness awhile back. Vampire: the Masquerade became Vampire: the Requiem and it had a HEAVY infusion of sparkleness. A lot of the more traditional horror/make-you-not-hungry-anymore elements were kinda gutted as far as I've seen. Hell, there is LITERALLY a talent that basically gives the character god-mode in terms of social situations. Literally they ALWAYS say the exact right thing at the exact right time. As I recall it's not even by dumb luck, they literally ALWAYS KNOW the perfect thing to say. I looked at it and went "seriously?!" so loud that people around me at Half-Price Books actually looked at me weird.

Ugh. Stupid Twilight vampire crap. Worst part is the ONE game of Masquerade I was going to be a part of fell through due to the GM's work schedule. I was really looking forward to that.

Thanks for dragging up the proper quote, by the way. Some people may question the flippancy of the statement but it's Walter. He's been hanging around Alucard long enough to know what REAL monsters and terrors are.

 

[Darks63]

I'm not sick of zombies because I never liked them in the first place

I can't say their explosion in popularity helped though, I just find it as a doomsday scenario...unbelievable..or more to the point how a military can get overrun by mindless meat bags...I guess the viral element is key but still

The reason the militaries get beat in zombie fiction are legion: Most soldiers and police are trained to shoot at the center mass not for the head and breaking that habit is not as easy as you might think.

In most fictional zombie outbreaks the disease is a slow burn disease. This allows people who hide their bites to get into areas where they can infect others when they turn. this in turn causes military protect safe zones to fall from within if they don't have stringent checks for refugees. However those same stringent checks could also cause clashes between civilians and military.

The psychological factor of having soldiers firing on what appears to be unarmed civilians en masse for sustained periods. also there is the possibility of soldiers seeing loved ones or those who look like loved ones among the horde. This could cause mutinies, suicides, or soldiers turning on their comrades.

The effect of the breakdown of social order causing the police and soldiers to fight a war on two fronts; one versus the zombies and one versus the looters and other crazies coming out of the woodwork in the chaos. Military units mutineering for various reasons. Guys deserting because they would rather be at home defending their families than fighting in their units. Also the pure unbelievability of the whole thing would cause a very slow reaction.

snip

Nah just a shorthand name for em on a Zombie fansite i used to frequent

 

[Story]

I've never liked zombies. I've actively avoided any media with them in it. And it's not because I'm sick of them, it's actually because they freak me out a bit, which makes them a good movie monster but whatever.

I like vampires but they've been neutered so much that they are more funny to me than scary. I dig werewolves for both reasons, but they are all a bit played out at this point. (I would love more werewolf stuff though).

 

[Thaluikhain]

I never really liked zombies in the first place, especially in horror, slow moving groups of unintelligent beings just doesn't sound very frightening to me. Maybe I just haven't seen the good zombie movies yet but I have never found them in any way scary.

Yeah, I know, if there's one thing the military is very good at, it's killing people that announce themselves as the enemy and wandering around until they get killed. Running straight at the machine gun nest didn't work so well in WW1, so you give the defenders more powerful weapons, take away the attackers weapons and don't let them run. Yeah.

Though, The Bleeding Chalice, a 40k book, had zombies brought back to life by evil magic, with varying degrees of intelligence. Some would shamble forth mindlessly, but some would remember how to use weapons and machinery, to the extent that they could fly spaceships. They were commanded by various evil wizards as well. So, instead of a mindless horde, they were much more like a proper military.

 

[Nadia Castle]

God, my parents had 'Return of the Living Dead' on VHS and the artwork with a big grindhouse painting of Tarman on the cover used to petrify me. Now it's one of my faves.

I don't mind zombies in of themselves, but what really p**ses me off is this idea of zombies as DLC. The only game that did it well was Red Dead Redemption. Everything else is just as lazy as throwing in amusing cat pictures. Each time I think I'm tired of zombies something else comes along and refreshes my interest. World War Z (book) and the Walking Dead game are still recent enough in my mind to keep me fond of the shamblers.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

I would say that I'm tired of zombies, but honestly even before they were overdone I didn't like zombies.

I like my monsters to be big and menacing. Either something viscious and powerful you really don't want to fuck with, or something with some sort of sinister motive. Zombies are none of those things. Zombies are more like this melancholy obstacle that slowly chips away at the protagonists until they die. That doesn't do anything to excite me, it's just kind of a bummer. Even visually there's nothing about them that I would describe as threatening, they're just kinda gross.

I'm a bit more receptive to the cheesy played up splatterfest zombie stuff. I did like Dead Rising a bit just because of how it refuses to take the zombies seriously at all (gameplay wise at least. The story would have been just as much of a drag were I not fitted out in a summer dress and lego man head.)

I guess the appeal is those kinds of things is you can get the catharsis of seeing a bunch of humanoids getting killed where you can feel like it's morally justified, but honestly I think that's why it's more boring to me. If I want to vent my frustration about people, I'd rather just have them be human. It's all fiction anyways. It's much more satisfying to go on a rampage in GTA or watch a film like good bless america

Spoiler: which is amazing by the way

 

[william12123]

I've had my fill of zombies. They've never made much logical sense to me, and they've never had much appeal. I fear a pack of wolves more than a gaggle of zombies. I've never felt the allure of zombies, neither as foes or as anything. They are mere disposable enemies.

Also: science zombies make WAY much less sense than magic zombies. Decomp is very powerful, and it's never made much sense to me that zombies might exist past a few months of creation.

 

[the December King]

Someone actually likes VHS over VHS 2? Both movies are pretty terrible, but the first one was boring as hell. With the exception of the third story, which was actually a bit of an inventive take on the 80s horror slashers, I was bored to tears by everything else. The second movie still wasn't very good, but at least it wasn't boring. There's also only one zombie story out of 4 in the second movie. The first story wastes a cool gimmick to tell a tired ghost story, the second story is the zombie story, the third story (the best in the movie) is Paranormal Activity meets Poltergeist and the last story is a crappy alien story that is nothing but loud noises and jump scares.

The zombie tale in V/H/S/2 explored some compelling ideas, to me. I don't want to get into the details, and I don't think the ideas were actually unique, but still, I was entertained. I didn't think it was exactly a thinking man's collection of horror, mind you- just had some nice good concepts.

I'd like to see V/H/S, but it isn't available on canadian Netflix just now.