Editor's note: Rob either has a fascination with the living dead or is preparing for the zombie apocalypse. Here's his take on his favorite zombie games. -Jason
Surprisingly, my previous post on DoubleBear’s Zombie-RPG garnered a lot of interest -- I’ve never seen so many hits so quickly! So as a way of saying thanks, I’ve decided to write a little something about zombies in video games by highlighting a few of my favorite games that feature zombies in some way.
I’ll begin by going way back to 1993, when LucasArts developed Zombies Ate My Neighbors for Sega Genesis and SNES. The game was an isometric run-and-gun shooter where the player controlled either Zeke or Julie. The object for each level was to rescue your neighbors before the undead reached them; upon completion of this objective, an exit door would appear to take the player to the next level.
In addition to the fun gameplay, what I loved about this game were all the little nods to horror films. Zeke wears retro 3D glasses, which were very popular in American theaters in the 1950s and are still somewhat popular in cheesy, direct-to-DVD horror films (see Night of the Living Dead 3D remake from 2006.) All the classic monsters are there -- werewolves, vampires, bats, mad scientists, mummies, giant insects, and, of course, zombies. You could even drink some mad-scientist brew straight out of the beaker and transform into an unstoppable beast!
Another favorite of mine was Capcom’s original Resident Evil, released in 1996 for the PlayStation. What can I say about this game that hasn’t already been said? The basics -- while it's not the first, Resident Evil is generally considered to be the game that jump-started the survival/horror genre. The player was trapped in a mysterious mansion filled with unsuspecting horror at any given turn. The only way out was to figure out the puzzles of the mansion and make an escape.
Back then, Resident Evil games featured the classic slow, unrelenting zombie horde instead of the modern fast zombies. While I love a good match with some fast zombies
The slow zombie represents the creeping, unrelenting march of Death itself. You can run from it, and you can evade its grasp if you’re careful, but eventually, it’ll catch up to you when your guard's down. In other words, our pistols and shotguns are the equivalent of eating right and exercising regularly, but eventually, the zombie horde will be too great in number, and you’ll succumb to death by a thousand bites.
I really enjoyed how Resident Evil related the story to the player through notebooks and other documents found throughout the mansion. In particular was the harrowing dairy of a scientist as he slowly transformed into one of the walking undead.
In 1997 PC gamers saw the release of the original Diablo by Blizzard North. It's another title I’m sure that most readers will have intimate knowledge of, but I’ll nonetheless provide a basic recap. Diablo was and isometric action-RPG that drew inspiration from roguelikes.
Although its sequel, Diablo 2, is more widely beloved by gamers than the original, I’ll always like the original best. I enjoyed how the game was focused specifically on the town of Tristram and the dark horrors coming from the church at the edge of town. Exploring deeper and deeper into the bowels of the church gave a great feeling of progression and attachment to the story that Diablo 2 just didn’t provide. And the resolution drop from Diablo’s 800x600 to Diablo 2's 640x480 was just torture on the eyes.
The zombies in Diablo weren’t that prominent at all; in fact, I believe they’re mostly relegated to the beginning levels of the church. These are again the slow zombies, and their design really evokes that image of death and decay -- perfectly adding to the dark-fantasy atmosphere of the game.
In the year after Diablo, gamers got the PC masterpiece Fallout by Black Isle Studios, which is perhaps one of the best RPGs that I’ve ever played. Fallout was also isometric (am I really showing my age with all these isometric games?), but combat played out in turns rather than in real time. The game's set in a postapocalyptic Western United States in the far-off future. As many of you likely know from Fallout 3, the original also had the player emerging from an underground vault and getting exposed to the harsh wasteland for the first time.
Fallout offered nonlinear gameplay with interesting character interaction, adventures to explore, and puzzles to solve. The player scavenges whatever they can find to get by, and death is, well, the end. There are no retries (unless you remembered to save your game!). Players can recruit NPCs to help out, including fan-loved Dogmeat, the player’s only best friend in the wasteland.
While Fallout doesn’t exactly have zombies, it has ghouls, which are pretty much the same thing as far as I’m concerned. The ghouls have their own city, Necropolis, which was built on top of Vault 12. The vault’s purpose was to have malfunctioning doors, thus keeping them open. The occupants of Vault 12 were affected by the radiation of the nuclear holocaust and became flesh-rotting ghouls. Most of these ghouls are intelligent and will slowly move toward the player in an unrelenting death march. Classic zombies.
I’m going to end with a newer title, Burn Zombie, Burn!, which Doublesix released this year for PS3. Burn Zombie, Burn! is an arcade-styled run-and-gun shooter where the player must fight off a never-ending horde of zombies on a single map for as long as possible. The game plays from an isometric view and, like Zombies Ate My Neighbors, relates many horror genre hallmarks.
The game has a very 1950s aesthetic -- our protagonist is a greaser, complete with pompadour and tight, ripped jeans. There’s a game mode that charges the player with protecting Daisy for as long as possible while she sits in a souped-up '50s Cadillac.
Burn Zombie Burn! offers addictive and compelling gameplay. The player must continually kill wave after wave of zombies; however, doing just that won't get one a high score.
As the title suggests, setting zombies on fire is a key game mechanic. By doing so, players increase the score multiplier for each kill as long as those burning zombies keep running around the map. The tradeoff is that burning zombies are a lot faster than regular zombies, so the player must be careful not to get overwhelmed. Burning zombies also provide better weapon and item drops than regular zombies and give bigger bonuses when blown up with TNT.
There are a lot of video games with zombies in them, and there’s no way that I’d be able to cover them all in one post. The above are just some of my favorite games to feature the most classic of the undead monsters.
What are some of your favorite games that feature zombies?
