Poll: Zombies: Slow or Fast?

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I voted slow.

While I don't hate fast ones (I love 28 Days Later!), I feel like the slow ones are actually more menacing.

Like Maddness666 said, they represent a sense of inevitability. That death is slowly coming for you, it's not going to stop, and the longer you wait to do anything about it, the more futile escape is going to be. Add on top of that the fact that slow zombies are typically shown as being incredibly durable to weapon damage that doesn't directly destroy the brain. Though the game series is incredibly campy, I always liked the moment in the introductory cutscene to Resident Evil 3 where you see the Raccoon City Police Department and S.W.A.T. deploy themselves and their vehicles as to create a wall across the road and an effective firing line. The police open fire on the wave of approaching slow zombies with handguns, shotguns, and submachine guns doing very little visible damage to the approaching zombies. Despite their best efforts, the police are completely overrun, one of the last moments of the cutscene being the reflection on a bloody S.W.A.T. helmet visor of a zombie shambling through the police barricade. To me, THAT is what slow zombies are all about, and what makes them (in my opinion), more threatening than the fast-but-incredibly-fragile variant.

 

[Monkeybald]

I prefer slow zombies over fast ones, but I think there should be a few rare kinds of zombie that should be nimble, just to change things up.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

Somewhere in the middle for me but zombies should never be able to run at full pelt.

Just my opinion but if someone comes back from the dead, I would assume they're gonna have some pretty serious drain brammage. This should almost certainly include complicated motor functions like running, or advanced communication.

 

[Aethersniper]

Fast for me. IMO it's way more menacing to see a horde of shambling zombies than a load of sprinting ones.

 

[Lev The Red]

zombies use whatever physical prowess the human had before he/she died, so they can do a shambling run before they start to decompose.
however, sprinting zombies are bullshit.

*edit*
if you haven't already, go buy The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. it's essentially a Zombie Wiki boiled down into a how-to book. no self respecting zombie fan should be without a copy.

 

[Chezza]

One of the medias I find lacking in zombie content that I want (Almost all games have zombies somehow! But all fast or super infected as you say) is PC games.

I want a slow paced, high tension survival zombie game where I count every bullet desperately, only feeling pimp when I have a 2 full clips or magazines which should be rare. The zombies should be slow and not always swarming. A few unique quicktime events when some get close would be nice and the incentive to take risks to go into abandoned buildings is to find food, shelter, items, ammo, weapons etc which is difficult to come by.

In addition I want it to be free roaming without many linear paths. Similar concept to the STALKER series I would like to occasionally meet other survivors quietly scavenging for their own means however it is difficult to identify if they will be friendly or hostile to strangers. Furthermore various rare events that take place like military patrols on a single mission or a group of guys in a Ute with a mounted-machine gun could come by in which could be either beneficial slaughtering a swarm of zombies or waking up the entire neighborhood which will expose you and any partners.

I believe this would be the ideal zombie game for many players. It Also has quality multiplayer potential in terms of co-op. As long as its mainly survival and you can starve or thirst, you need sleep, ammo is rare, inventory management, stamina and finally the game companies are prepared to try such a unique game-type.

HaHa thinking about it, someone with good modding experience can do a total conversion mod for Stalker and make this wish come true

 

[Daverson]

Though, scientifically speaking...

The undead are as varied as the people they used to be. While the "fast zombie" archetype is just plain ridiculous, especially in the """remake""" (you could never add enough sarcasm quotes there...) of Day of the Dead (zombies running around and climbing around ceilings?! Preposterous). That said, the idea that undead should move at nothing more than a snails pace is equally as foolish. As the body decays, the physical limits of what it can do drop, so nearing the end of their "lifetime" (for lack of a better word), they won't have the capabilities of fresher undead.

I voted slow, not to say zombies can't zombie-walk pretty fast, but sprinting? That's just silly.

(Funny you should bring up NotLD though, the first ghoul in it is pretty nippy!)

 

[Psychedelic Spartan]

fast, they just run right into my shotgun blasts!

 

[RanD00M]

Well since most of them are rotten all over, I think slow is more logical. It's not that I like fast ones, but a real zombie, I.E. the living dead running takes a lot of hard work to convince me of happening.
Running infected, ala 28 Days Later are cool with me as long as people realize and say that they are infected and not zombies. Many people need to learn that there is a difference between the two and that they should not be mixed together in a conversation with me.
Now if someone is bitten by a slow zombie then I can totally believe that they can run fast since it's been such a short while since they were bitten, but they should be slow after a day or two just because of decomposition.

 

[Timedraven 117]

You know that is agreat way to classify zombies.
Zombies: Slow moving with large numbers/dead
Infected:Fast moving, good size groups/living cant feel pain.

 

[badgersprite]

I don't actually think the "slow/fast" dichotomy is that big of a deal when it comes to the difference between zombies and 'the infected'. What I care about a lot more is whether it follows the rule of "everyone who dies comes back to life regardless of the reason" and "it spreads like a virus".

A lot of people seem to forget that the Romero movies followed the rule of "everyone who dies becomes a zombie". In a way, that made things much more interesting, and it made the spread of zombiism at such a fast rate much more justified (as you had a large number of people becoming zombified even if they never came into contact with a zombie), and that in turn justified the slowness of zombies. With the infected, they have to actually bite you or get their blood in you to spread the virus, so, if they're not inhumanly fast, your characters would have to be really stupid for it to spread. If it were just a slow zombie who hate to bite you, it makes way less sense that that can cause an apocalypse. If all the dead rise, suddenly it makes more sense that you've got a huge army of zombies coming right the fuck out of nowhere and taking over, as opposed to a patient zero who could easily have been killed.

I just have a lot of feelings. <_<

 

[Nurb]

Slow... Fast... Either way they're entering a world of pain

 

[Aprilgold]

Classic Romero zombies- They can be fast occasionally, and show some intelligence, but are mostly stupid and slow.

I'm with you. Also, I don't think theres been a comment about how ZOMBIEZ R DE STPUID. So I can do a INB4 Zombie hate.

 

[deckai]

Should I ever end up in a zombie apocalypse, slow. When it comes to movies, fast. But more important are the other things, zombies should be more resilient, stronger, dumber and most importantly, come in dozens.

 

[Ryokai]

Generally, fast zombies are living "infected", while the slow are rotting undead.

 

[TornadoFive]

Slow, shambling and plentiful. That's how I like my hypothetical undead. Fast zombies are good for a quick scare but there's something quite terrifying when you see a walker shuffling his way towards you. He may be slow, but he doesn't ever stop and there's plenty more to take his place should he fall.

 

[Midnight Crossroads]

I like my zombies slow.

Think of the tide versus a tidal wave.

In one scenario, a man has his foot trapped in some rocks as the water slowly rises above his head.

In the other, a man has little time to react.

The first just seems more terrifying. It gives the story enough time to build tension and go through the emotions.

 

[NotSoLoneWanderer]

Slow. It just makes more sense.

 

[WeAreStevo]

Now, personally, I feel that if they are running, then they should be referred to as "infected" (like in 28 Days/Weeks Later, L4D series, Dead Island) but some people disagree.

Uhhh, so the zombies in Return of the Living Dead are "infected," despite the fact we readily see them rise from the grave and re-animated? Okay... I get the sense you've never seen RotLD before, which is sort of ironic since you are doing the whole "I liked them before they were cool herp a derp!" nonsense...

Anyways, both are fine. I find it unbelievable that there are people out there who don't see the merits in both 'styles' of zombies. Is it supposed to be edgy? Cool? I don't fucking get it.

Actually, I have seen Return of the Living dead, which not only has fast "zombies" but talking ones as well.

See, the issue with throwing this in there for comparison opens up the whole series of RotLD (including the 3rd one where the chick has to "pierce herself" to prevent her from eating her BF)

See, the issue is that in RotLD they are not referred to as "infected." The whole premise is that they have the actual zombies from NotLD in barrels in their basement and the vapors come out. They also can't be killed by any means.

Thus, there is no point in adding RotLD to this debate because as far as I'm concerned it is an whole different category entirely, thus changing the entire nature of my question. If I wanted a bulky, all encompassing "do you like fast talking zombies, slow talking zombies, zombies that talk and walk at a medium pace while commenting on the escapist, zombies that telecommute in lieu of going into the office as a result of soaring gas prices" then I'd do that. However, I asked a simple question, one to which you'd rather try to slam your e-peen down by saying "herp a derp" (well played, I am hurt ) and then because I neglect one zombie movie, you basically scream that my argument is invalid.

Hell, by your standards I suppose since I didn't include Redneck Zombies I must be a n00b fanboy herp a derp. Right?

And to answer your question about the "merits" of both types: There are merits. However, the point I would like to express from my side is that Zombies = slow/ INFECTED = fast. And just because someone doesn't like one and prefers the other doesn't make them "edgy" or "cool", but by insinuating that makes you a douche.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Slow, obviously. And I'm tired of all the zombie-related games/movies anyway...