Zombie Games: Done or Just Getting Started?

[astrogamic]

Zombies have been around for ages and become an accepted part of our media, but have they worn their welcome or are they getting better than ever? Every time I see a new zombie game I'm like "really? zero points for originality bro." But I usually end up playing it anyways because I can't resist a zombie shoot em up. At what point does hack and slash horde mashups become too redundant to enjoy? I wasn't sure how much more I could take until...

Last year Telltale Games put together a point and click masterpiece that was shy on killing and more focused on decision making named The Walking Dead. The Last of Us showed that even in a post apocalyptic wasteland (yes, I know they're technically not zombies, but close enough)a story can be the resonating force that drives a game to success. For next gen, Dying Light looks promising as an early open world contender for the most compelling game design I'v seen in a zombie game thus far. The Division, set in a post Black Friday disease laden Chicago, also looks beautiful and has the conceptual potential to be more than just an online shooting bonanza.

Is our age done with games like Left for Dead, Zombie U and Day Z, which are fine games in their own right with intricate game mechanics, but still lack the depth that made Walking Dead and TLOU GOTY candidates? Let me know your thoughts.

 

[Zhukov]

I'm sick of them and I wish they'd give it a break for at least few years. As far as concepts go, zombie apocalypses have reached the same level as Tolkien rip offs and Americans shooting Russian and/or terrorists.

...

Except I keep buying the fucking things. And some of them are really good.

Thing is, basically all my favourite zombie games aren't really reliant the zombies. DayZ, Walking Dead and The Last of Us could all have worked fine with some other kind of disaster. And I kind of wish they had.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I'll be honest. The only zombie 'series' I have ever truly loved has been the Call of Duty zombies mode. In World At War, Black Ops, and Black Ops II (just Origins though), I paid for each map pack just to play zombies. The reason being that, while mindless fun on the surface, the storyline is really impressive. Probably the best zombie storyline I've ever seen done with zombies. And the way it's told--though hidden radio messages, objects scattered around the map and sometimes out of the normal areas--reminds me of the way Valve does their stories: show, don't tell.

I don't think of The Last of Us as a zombie game, though I do agree that they are zombies. I think of it more as a survival game, because humans are trying to kill you just as much as infected.

Never played The Walking Dead series, and I don't really want to. I hear it's heartbreaking.

And while I do enjoy my Resident Evil games, let's be honest: the storyline there is so twisted and warped that it's really just about shooting zombies now.

 

[josemlopes]

The problem with zombies is that if it was compared to the racing genre then every racing game was a Mario Kart clone, I do believe there is a lot of cool stuff that can be done with zombies (dont really need to be zombies, just an apocalypse) but every time a game announces that it has zombies its always the same shit, no wonder it gets stale.

The same happened with WWII games, you either only got the shitload of incredibly linear FPSs, the hystorical RTSs or the combat flight sims. Where is the open ended french resistence RPG? WWII is a great setting for anything, the only problem with it is that it actually happened but it is something almost straight out of a fiction movie.

Spoiler: pics

WWII

Fiction

It makes me glad that Wolfenstein is still going to come out even though its just another FPS, at least it tries to stylize WWII into something new.

Spoiler: Wolfenstein

 

[chozo_hybrid]

The modern military shooter can go away first, that's been so over done it's burning... Every market has its fans, so nothing really should go away just because some people are sick of it, those people could just play something else.

 

[Evonisia]

We just need a break from them, they can really be perfected but Zombies have just become as common as the Modern Military Shooter or the Elder Scrolls wannabe in terms of generic, bland, soulless games.

I'll be honest. The only zombie 'series' I have ever truly loved has been the Call of Duty zombies mode. In World At War, Black Ops, and Black Ops II (just Origins though), I paid for each map pack just to play zombies. The reason being that, while mindless fun on the surface, the storyline is really impressive. Probably the best zombie storyline I've ever seen done with zombies. And the way it's told--though hidden radio messages, objects scattered around the map and sometimes out of the normal areas--reminds me of the way Valve does their stories: show, don't tell.

It's just a shame that they always ruin it at the ending. Der Riese, Moon and Origins all had horrible endings to their game's worth of maps.

Edit: Well Mob of the Dead was a self contained story which had a brilliant twist and ending, but 'Black Ops II' did have a crap ending.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

We just need a break from them, they can really be perfected but Zombies have just become as common as the Modern Military Shooter or the Elder Scrolls wannabe in terms of generic, bland, soulless games.

I'll be honest. The only zombie 'series' I have ever truly loved has been the Call of Duty zombies mode. In World At War, Black Ops, and Black Ops II (just Origins though), I paid for each map pack just to play zombies. The reason being that, while mindless fun on the surface, the storyline is really impressive. Probably the best zombie storyline I've ever seen done with zombies. And the way it's told--though hidden radio messages, objects scattered around the map and sometimes out of the normal areas--reminds me of the way Valve does their stories: show, don't tell.

It's just a shame that they always ruin it at the ending. Der Riese, Moon and Origins all had horrible endings to their game's worth of maps.

Edit: Well Mob of the Dead was a self contained story which had a brilliant twist and ending, but 'Black Ops II' did have a crap ending.

But...but I liked those endings... :-(

Origin's ending with Sam and Eddy had been being hinted at all the way back in Shi No Numa, and with what Same says after the screen goes dark, I think that's a perfect way to wrap things up but also leave room for a new chapter (I have a theory on how the zombies are now robot zombies in that Chinese CoD that's coming out, but that's for another time). And the ending of Moon was awesome I think. Unlocking the secret playable character, seeing how everything comes to a head, finding out how 935 got all there stuff...I loved that.

Der Riese though I didn't think had an ending. Do you just mean the Teddy Bear Hide and Seek game?

 

[Evonisia]

It's just a shame that they always ruin it at the ending. Der Riese, Moon and Origins all had horrible endings to their game's worth of maps.

Edit: Well Mob of the Dead was a self contained story which had a brilliant twist and ending, but 'Black Ops II' did have a crap ending.

But...but I liked those endings... :-(

Origin's ending with Sam and Eddy had been being hinted at all the way back in Shi No Numa, and with what Same says after the screen goes dark, I think that's a perfect way to wrap things up but also leave room for a new chapter (I have a theory on how the zombies are now robot zombies in that Chinese CoD that's coming out, but that's for another time). And the ending of Moon was awesome I think. Unlocking the secret playable character, seeing how everything comes to a head, finding out how 935 got all there stuff...I loved that.

Der Riese though I didn't think had an ending. Do you just mean the Teddy Bear Hide and Seek game?

Der Riese's description and background suggest that this is some climax. That turns out not to be the case. Nothing that happens in it which is the problem seeing as they were building up some kind of interesting plot point.

Moon's ending (well, Moon in general) I hated purely because they clearly didn't put any work into it. The map was originally going to be set in Paris, and some of the Moon elements suffer. The device is the problem. It's given no origin so it's basically "Aliens did it" or "Magic". Richtofen's discovery of it's completely baffling as well, how did he survive in a place with no atmosphere? Maxis' merging with the computers has no explanation either so it's completely meaningless and done for plot convenience.

Origins is bad because you can tell that they made that ending to justify why Origins would basically retcon the rest of the Zombies series otherwise. "It was just a game" is a cop out to justify Origins' existence and nothing more.

Though once again, Mob of the Dead's ending is still pretty good.

 

[babinro]

I'd rather have to much content then not enough.

Even though I'm not hyped by zombie games and haven't been for a long time now, there's still a few gems that pop-up. I was sick of them before The Walking Dead: Season One came out and that was great. I'm still sick of them and yet I plan to eventually pick up Season Two.

Besides, zombies in gaming are spread out among all developers. Making instantly more varied than other yearly series like EA Sports games, WWE games and CoD games.

Bottom line: If you're sick of zombies...don't buy products involving them for several years rather than denying everyone more content.

 

[Something Amyss]

The modern military shooter can go away first, that's been so over done it's burning...

Oddly enough, I suspect the popularity of both have similar grounds in a lot of instances. Which is why I doubt either will go away. Between the two, I'd rather see MMS go away first myself. Ironically, zombies have been less of a plague.

 

[GundamSentinel]

While there are still games that prove zombies can be done right (like The Walking Dead and The Last of Us), there have always been many games that just used zombies as a cheap excuse for an enemy. Because, well, zombies are the type of enemy you don't have to feel bad about killing, or rather: the type you can actively feel good about killing, as you're doing them a favour.

But it's the same in every genre, really. There's always a couple of good ones and a horde of bad ones. I personally don't like zombie games that much, but I don't mind seeing them.

What I do object to is developers just cramming zombie-modes in completely unrelated games. It's just disgusting pandering and popularity leeching. Stop it!

 

[aguspal]

The modern military shooter can go away first, that's been so over done it's burning... Every market has its fans, so nothing really should go away just because some people are sick of it, those people could just play something else.

...........


Did you just contradict yourself in the very same post in the VERY SAME SENTENCE on purpose?..


I dont get it, it must have some sort of meaning.

Anyways, zombies are an interesting theme, so more can only be better. That aplies to anything and everything, and if I dont like it, then I ignore it. The end.

Probably why I love COD and other unpopular popular stuff... I dont really mind having "more of the same" when said "Same" is the same awesome game...

 

[Ryan Minns]

I'm not sick of zombie games. I'm sick of bad zombie games which seems to be too common. Granted that's probably due to me wanting Zombies and survival to be in the same game all the time.

 

[Squilookle]

Yeah I'm pretty sick of zombies. It's a setting I could happy see retired without missing it much, given the games we have for them now. As for a setting that was once common but needs to be returned?

Back to WW2! Back to WW2 I say!

Not just because it's the last conflict that mattered...

Not just because it involved so many countries and shaped the entire world as we know it...

But because if you want more innovative gameplay, more variety in who you play as, what vehicles you wage war with, where you go, and what kind of terrain you experience, then no conflict in history has you covered like WW2 has. Sci-Fi can arguably match it, but it's only ever as good as the writing of it's creators, whereas WW2 is written by actual real events; real decisions made by real people, acting on believable impulses, because they really happened.

World War Two, man. That's where it's at for shooters. There has never been -nor will there ever be- a setting more perfectly suited to gaming.

 

[AldUK]

I don't really agree that any genre can be 'overdone.' You have good games and you have bad games, in any setting. Fact is, we've had some incredible zombie games in the last few years and as long as that continues, I don't mind one bit.

The Walking Dead is of course, a masterpiece. Emotional, immersive, gut-wrenching and thought-provoking, Telltale really outdid themselves with a game that'll be getting talked about for years to come.

The Last of Us is not as popular on the Escapist as it is on a lot of other gaming websites. My guess is thanks to its exclusivity and a perceived notion of it being a bland zombie 'shooter' from people who haven't looked at the game. However, I thought it was a hell of a journey with the relationship between Joel and Ellie feeling more genuine than anything I've ever seen in the medium. Also, the combat was brutal, the voice acting knocked it out of the park and the ending was perfect.

I have to add State of Decay as well. Undead Lab's first big offering originally just for Xbox Live, was so hugely popular they brought it to Steam. I decided to see what all the fuss was about and I was blown away by just how much fun it was to play. It feels like a cross between Left for Dead and GTA which is an awesome combo.

So as I said at the top, keep making games of this standard and as far as I'm concerned, long live the zombie genre!

 

[bluepotatosack]

Is our age done with games like Left for Dead, Zombie U and Day Z, which are fine games in their own right with intricate game mechanics, but still lack the depth that made Walking Dead and TLOU GOTY candidates? Let me know your thoughts.

In all honesty, I don't think games like Left 4 Dead or Day Z should be compared to the Walking Dead game. Hell, L4D shouldn't even be compared to Day Z. All are trying to do completely different things. L4D is a fast-paced action game, Day Z is about survival, and TWD is character driven. So, what kind of depth are you talking about exactly? I'd argue that in terms of gameplay, TWD is the one that's lacking depth.

 

[selfty]

I'm with bluepotatosack in that its very hard to compare DayZ like games [http://gameslikefinder.com/games-like-dayz/] with other zombie games. Sure they all have zombies but each one is trying to achieve something very different in terms of gameplay. We've seen some really strong zombie themed games these past few years and they are all great in their own right by trying to compare them is the old apples and oranges argument.

 

[sweetylnumb]

I think they...still have some life left

*puns!*

 

[DementedSheep]

There dose seem to be a hell of a lot of them but most zombie games are not in genres I'm starved for so I just ignore most of them and it's not annoying yet. At least it's fairly diverse.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

I think zombies as an enemy are really dull. They're basically stupider versions of people, which makes them one of the least threatening enemies in existence. You might have a few with some gimmick here or there, but they usually just have AI that charges straight at you. I wish games focused on something else already.