That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
Reanimated for Part Two, let’s lawnmower ahead, picking up the severed arm of my previous insert.
The zombie shooter does also include Call of Duty 5's extra zombie mode (the actual game was so god-awful it felt like the real after-thought) that lead to the improved version in the recent Black Ops (you can play as a zombie shooting JFK, what more do you want?). Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar's free-roam western also released a zombie mode, which spawned a stand-alone game in a shameless marketing gimmick. As game reviewer Yahtzee noted; “apparently everything now has to be moving towards some kind of zombie singularity by law”. I suggest the far superior, fast-paced Killing Floor on PC/Mac for serious undead bashing, a dab of survival and a whole lot of bad accent fun. Maybe Zombie Games just attract awful voice actors? Maybe the voice actors are actually zombies?
Moving on, we come to our final genre, the 'fun' Zombie game. Comedy with zombies just works, perhaps because of it being a destructible fear, the absurdity of it or their shuffling, rotting antics. These are usually sandbox affairs and the LucasArts cult hit 'Zombies Ate My Neighbours' epitomises this. The top-down sandbox which had you saving neighbours with a variety of inventive weapons, including thrown plates and throwing balls.
The Dead Rising series can be seen as the inheritor of the title. A poorly thought-out first game gave way to a great second game, where a huge number of weapons can be constructed by the player. For example, two chainsaws plus a motorbike becomes a motorbike with chainsaw on the front. And that is the best type of motorbike. The serious storyline turned hilarious when my character wore hot pants and a moose-head for the cut-scenes. The customisation and imagination behind it is superb. The 2005 Stubbs the zombie deserves an honourable mention here, as being utterly hilarious and one of the few games where you play as a zombie. Here's Stubbs in action, in a dance-off with a police officer. As you do.
Although these three are important, we can't forget that zombie games are constantly evolving and are more than just 'games about zombies'. We can see this in Dead Space, with the antagonists, the 'necromorphs', aliens that reanimate corpses, albeit with claws and scythes. It recently beat Silent Hill 2 in an online vote as 'more frightening'. I have to stop this whole thing right here and just say no. I'm sorry, but no. No. Wrong. Dead Space is like America in Iraq; it might not be pleasant, it's jumpy, but you have the advantage. Silent Hill is like Vietnam. With invincible Vietcong. And less ammo. And on more drugs. Way more drugs. Play your classics, people.
Zombie games can be 'games about zombies', but also 'games including zombies' and 'games including sort-of-zombies-I-suppose’. These include Minecraft as the classic, night-walking monsters, Half-life as the victims of head-crabs, Halo as the ultimate threat of the universe, the Flood and WoW as playable characters, enemies and even having their own, frozen realm of Northrend. I see zombies, along with terrorists and aliens, as the holy trinity of gaming adversaries. Long live the zombie! Or not live. Sort of live. Unlive?
Zombies are so good at playing the bad guy that they are threatened to being reduced to a stock enemy. Interestingly, this is how Left 4 Dead started, with the creators playing a modded game mode that had the enemies much weaker than them and only being able to attack in close combat. Zombies may even become so generic and copy-and-paste that we get sick of them. It doesn't seem like that just yet, however. Happy groaning, zombros and zombettes.
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