There are No Good Zombie Games
Zombies are the new World War II of gaming. You have the juggernaut that is Valve’s Left 4 Dead 2, indie titles such as Zombie Apocalypse among others, re-releases, and even DLC for other titles that have little or no reason to include zombies in their game world. I could go on but suffice to say there is alot on offer for fans of the walking dead. Amongst all these titles there are definitely some great games worthy of attention, but thus far there has not been a good zombie game. Across all these titles the zombies merely serve as the AI opponent, the antagonistic force to be overcome, they hint at the horror of the cinematic source material only through the blood splatters and flying limbs. Zombie games draw heavily from film but do so without ever replicating what it is that makes the movies horrific.
Anyone well versed in this particular film subgenre would be aware that it is not the zombies that are the greatest horror. Zombies may produce the most ’shocking’ moments, but it is the degenerative humanity in the survivors that is most horrific. Sure, there are moments of cooperation but invariably it is the selfishness or inhumanity of a survivor that leads to the groups eventual downfall. I cannot recall any game in recent years that has successfully replicated this. The Survivors in all these games are players or npc’s that are alligned with the you from the start, they never betray you to save their own skin.
As gamers we are not exposed to what makes Zombie films so interesting. The Boss Battles in Dead Rising show that people can abandon humanity in the event of a zombie apocalypse but it doesn’t go far enough. The ‘bosses’ are always antagonistic, there is never a suggestion that they might work with the player. Left 4 Dead is designed carefully to reward cooperation and survival, it wants the players to win and to feel like a team. If you have seen George A. Romero’s “…of the Dead” films then you might be aware that Cooperation and Survival are themes presented alongside Selfishness and Heartlessness. I would love to see betrayal as a realistic option for particular moments in Left 4 Dead games but that is not the direction Valve is going.
These titles can be great action games, but they represent a missed opportunity. Zombies have become the World War II of gaming because they are the thematic filter that allows for the action genre to advance in mechanics and design. All I can do is hope that game designers recognize the full range of experiences possible in the material they are using.
The connection between WWII games and zombie games is an interesting one. Nazis and zombies share the property that they offer guilt-free fragging — one because they are a popular instance of personified evil, the other because they’re already dead. Zombies offer the additional advantage that they do not need to act like intelligent human beings, allowing the developer to use greatly simplified AI without affecting the player’s suspension of disbelief (if they so choose). Developers can therefore advance their design and presentation using a fiction that allows them to avoid thoughtfully considering the implications of a game’s power fantasy.
Very insightful post.
One of my favorite zombie movies is 28 Days Later. It does a great job of asking “who are the real monsters?”
I’d be interested to see if this could be implemented in a game. L4D is almost there, seeing as how one rogue person can really bring down a team. In a way, I guess the times you lose in L4D are more faithful to filmic interpretations of zombie movies.
Perhaps if a player got a bonus for being the last one standing it would inspire more selfish play?
@Scott
It would be interesting to see if they could implement a bonus system without making the game overly competitive. I had the idea of giving some players hidden objectives that would net them unique weapons / items but would involve going to places away from the main path of a level, trying to encourage the team to go somewhere for a single player’s selfish gain.
I totally agree. Hopefully DoubleBear’s ZRPG finally gets it right.
http://www.doublebearproductions.com/?page_id=7
Came here after reading Scott Juster’s response to your post. He nominates Dead Space as the closest answer to your question, and i agree.
However, i want to re-animate a dead horse (heh) and offer RE4 and RE5 for consideration as being faithful to the horror of zombiedom. The Ganados in particular are horrifying because there is little to distinguish them from being human, so the effect (at least in the early levels up to the house defense with Luis and Ashley) is of killing victims, rather than enemies. Even tho Capcom works to ‘other’ the Ganados by shading them darker (visually) and not translating their dialogue, the fact that the Ganados work together and communicate with one another – much less evading weapons – makes them unnervingly human.
The Majini, however, represent a step backwards. The Capcom developers chose poorly by setting RE5 in Africa and compounded the mistake by employing all the negative stereotypes of Blacks they could find. The Wetlands level in particular is egregiously racist, as the Majini are dressed in bones and loincloths. The net effect of employing Black bodies as zombies results in a decrease of horror/tension but on the other hand effectively and entertainingly re-enacts historical narratives of indigenous genocide in the service of imperalism/corporatism. As a gamer of color and a games scholar, this last point helps to explain RE5’s tremendous popularity. It’s certainly not better than RE4; the co-op AI is unhelpful (to be polite) and the narrative is less than compelling…but the game has sold more than 5 million copies.
/soapbox
Keep up the good writing! I enjoyed your post and will be subscribing to hear more from you.
Some very valid points present. Few games with zombies present think anything at all of plot development or character development, instead simply tossing the player into a situation where they must fight off hordes of the undead. It fails to capture the fear and trauma people would feel after fending off massive hordes of once innocent people, the feeling of shooting a large, powerful and ominous black instrument of death after having never shot a gun before in one’s life- the anxiety of becoming lost in a city, where at any moment you could run out of ammo and be swarmed by the undead.