Zombies, often known as flesh-eaters, Keith Richards, and The Undead have become so popular and ultimately, so extremely boring, that the gaming world is lost in a sea of
Zombiephile. When Zombies are dead and gone, as the nature of their tight niche and biological standing deems it necessary, what will be the eventual evolution? I hope something a little bit more lively... Perhaps not.
Stop Zombiephiles/NaziZomz today! We must, for if we don't, what will this world of shuffling, mindless zombie lovers become other than Zombies themselves... My God, the logic is so retardedly circular
Zombie
Concept »
Zombies, more accurately called the walking dead, are reanimated corpses who feed on the living, and have become a ubiquitous video game enemy. They often move slowly, but can be deadly in large numbers, which is unfortunately how they tend to travel. Shotgun time!
Zombies: The boring reality
" Zombies, often known as flesh-eaters, Keith Richards, and The Undead have become so popular and ultimately, so extremely boring, that the gaming world is lost in a sea of Zombiephile. When Zombies are dead and gone, as the nature of their tight niche and biological standing deems it necessary, what will be the eventual evolution? I hope something a little bit more lively... Perhaps not. Stop Zombiephiles/NaziZomz today! We must, for if we don't, what will this world of shuffling, mindless zombie lovers become other than Zombies themselves... My God, the logic is so retardedly circular "Hipster attitude? Not in my Giant Bomb :@
Zombies are still cool. In "serious" games like Undead Nightmare and Left 4 Dead, for example, or in more goofy and humorous one, like Dead Rising 2. Don't let the current popularity of the trope fool you. You can still use zombies in very, very cool ways.
They're still cool. And I will still prepare for the zombie apocalypse.
Including them in other game types (with the exception of Undead Nightmare, which I thought was okay) is the problem. We haven't got enough of pure zombie games (those shitty top down ones don't count).
Zombies had a great resurgence with 28 Days Later (I know not technically a zombie film) Shaun of the Dead, and Zach Snyder's surprisingly solid Dawn of the Dead remake. Unfortunately they've become fucked-out in regards to pop culture, there's such a glut of zombie content in almost all geek mediums these days. Sure there have been some great games such as the Left 4 Dead series but whenever I see a new zombie game in the pipeline all I can think of is "this again?".
These days, everything is over-saturated. There are plenty of games out there for you to play that don't feature zombies.
" @JoeyRavn: I can only be as hip as your extremely hip glasses. Zombies are neat, of course, but I tire of their overuse and underwhelming ability to appear in uncreative games. Still, zombies need a fresh input of creative madness to bring them back to life. Thank you for your response, as lacking in any "serious" debate you raised, I still appreciate it. "Chill out, dude. I think it was pretty clear I was joking. Besides, it's not that your original post was "serious" in any way, so don't expect "serious" answers. As I said, you can have zombies done well in games, despite the massive overuse they are subjected to nowadays. I don't really know what else you can expect from an answer. The FPS genre has been obscenly milked in the past few years. Is the genre to blame? No. It's the people who abuse it, i.e. game companies. But that doesn't mean you can have good FPSes among the massive sea of bland, generic shooters.
And to be completely honest, the glasses on my avatar are the only ones in the whole Marketplace that are remotely similar to my old-ass, plain glasses in real life :P
I think the reason they are becoming boring is because they are always portrayed as tongue in cheek in games nowadays. L4D is barely serious, Dead Rising you are placing giant plastic hats on em. Even the "zombies" in Resident Evil cannot even be constituted as zombies. Black Ops and World at War have characters and such that keep it extremely light hearted.
I still like zombies and always will. I just think zombie games need to have a little more serious attitude.
" I think the reason they are becoming boring is because they are always portrayed as tongue in cheek in games nowadays. L4D is barely serious, Dead Rising you are placing giant plastic hats on em. Even the "zombies" in Resident Evil cannot even be constituted as zombies. Black Ops and World at War have characters and such that keep it extremely light hearted. I still like zombies and always will. I just think zombie games need to have a little more serious attitude. "I agree. A zombie game with a more serious tone might help breathe some life(Unlife?) into the genre.
Sure there are tons of Zombie games... but who cares, Zombies are pretty cool and always will be! I'm not a believer in the Zombie-Apocalypse... but man do I enjoy listening to a good debate about how its all gonna go down and what preparations people have! Just in case it does happen...I wanna know where to go and save my ass from becoming over sized brain stew
zombies are kind of hard to work with on a narrative level simply because they're usually very numerous and hard to overcome as a result of that. it's like superman from a different (much different) direction. there are a bunch of exceptions to the rule, but you have to know what you're doing to get it to work.
Just about every game featuring zombies also features the same damn gameplay in the form of "Fight your way through!" There's always some goal beyond just suriving the damn things: you're trying to reach a rescue vehicle/extration point, or you're trying to find the cause of the outbreak, or the zombies are being used as cover for something else, etc. And you know what? I think that's the problem. Zombies are boring to me simply because you flatten untold thousands of them in every game they're in on your way to some goal.
Why can't survival itself be the goal? Picture this: The outbreak occurs and you + your group of friends decide to hunker down and make the best of it. During the day it's a mad dash for supplies; you raid supermarkets, hardware stores, gun shops, even an army depot left standing after the military pulled back in the chaos. You have to move quick, because the undead are out in full force at night and you're screwed if you get caught in the open. The risk/reward system keeps the tension up; better items and locations such as the depot are farther off in the distance, leaving you less time to grab what you need and set up your defenses. During the day you may have running gun battles with looters or you might run into other survivors who might trade the location of a supply cache for leaving one person behind for a night to help his depleted group survive. To stop players from building too impentrible of a base, have the millitary plan to nuke the city; you discover the plan with only a few hours remaining and have to make a mad dash into the countryside to avoid being atomised.
I could go on, but the point is: it's not the zombies that are boring, it's what's done with them. Left4Dead is fun because it encourages teamwork, but the loss of progress over each campaign (you always reach "the end" only to be right back where you start) kinda kills it for me. Just do something, anything, different with them!
The worst part is when movies/games try to explain zombies using some virus explanation. No virus is going to allow someone to go for days without food and water and still have the energy to fight... or instantly recognize other zombies and know not to kill them... or completely disable a person's logic center but then allow them to open doors...
" Just about every game featuring zombies also features the same damn gameplay in the form of "Fight your way through!" There's always some goal beyond just suriving the damn things: you're trying to reach a rescue vehicle/extration point, or you're trying to find the cause of the outbreak, or the zombies are being used as cover for something else, etc. And you know what? I think that's the problem. Zombies are boring to me simply because you flatten untold thousands of them in every game they're in on your way to some goal.That reminded me very much of this real life Humans vs. Zombies game that goes on at a college every quarter.
Why can't survival itself be the goal? Picture this: The outbreak occurs and you + your group of friends decide to hunker down and make the best of it. During the day it's a mad dash for supplies; you raid supermarkets, hardware stores, gun shops, even an army depot left standing after the military pulled back in the chaos. You have to move quick, because the undead are out in full force at night and you're screwed if you get caught in the open. The risk/reward system keeps the tension up; better items and locations such as the depot are farther off in the distance, leaving you less time to grab what you need and set up your defenses. During the day you may have running gun battles with looters or you might run into other survivors who might trade the location of a supply cache for leaving one person behind for a night to help his depleted group survive. To stop players from building too impentrible of a base, have the millitary plan to nuke the city; you discover the plan with only a few hours remaining and have to make a mad dash into the countryside to avoid being atomised.
I could go on, but the point is: it's not the zombies that are boring, it's what's done with them. Left4Dead is fun because it encourages teamwork, but the loss of progress over each campaign (you always reach "the end" only to be right back where you start) kinda kills it for me. Just do something, anything, different with them! "
Over-saturation aside, I've never cared for zombies. They're fodder characters, which, okay, that's cool when you need hordes of stupid enemies to slay mindlessly (which in itself has never been a concept that's interested me very much), but making them the primary antagonist of a story or a game has never appealed to me.
If it's a story that has a zombie with a brain, I'm all for that... but usually when that happens, they're not even called a zombie any more, they become a lich or a vampire or some other form of undead created by some nasty corporation or government or strange obelisk.
Also, why don't more games/movies/etc mix it up a bit when they feel the need to throw mindless hordes at the heroes -- toss in some skeletons from time to time. I'm sure they can dig up some of the further decomposed corpses and create some nice skeleton hordes to go along with their zombie brethren. But for the most part, creators seem to think that "mixing it up" means adding a few bloated zombie types or zombie dogs.
On the bright side, there are some cool "zombies" out there that I like. For example, necromorphs in Dead Space could be considered a zombie-type of creature, but they're intelligent and not just lumbering corpses slowly walking towards Isaac going, "Braaaaaaains".
I really really enjoy zombie type stuff, but I have gotten bored too. I want to see a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game with all kinds of villans and monsters. Maybe open world, like a mix of Red Dead and Persona. You could built relationships and train and just wander around town hunting for vampires at night.
Or a Werewolf game! Yeah! And you are a regular guy who has to keep people from knowing you are a werewolf.
Zombies are pretty tedious these days but retards keep buying into it; Just look at the success of The Walking Dead. As interesting as Undead Nightmare is, it's pretty much entirely still because of John Marston's character and the whole thing acting as a subversion of what we came to know over the course of the main game. Had it been done with any other kind of monster, or even something like time travel or something, it probably would have been a better experience.
Please Log In to post.
This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:
Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.Comment and Save
Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved.
Log in to comment