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Total Members Voted: 154

[Andir]

A friend of mine recently sent out an email asking our whole group if anyone wanted to go in on a four pack of Dead Island.

I thought, great.  Another game where devs are so lazy that they dumbed the enemy down so people can't complain about the poor AI.  I never got into zombie games.  I played L4D.  I enjoyed it.  Now I'm ready for something new.  Sure, you can have your zombie game genre.  I have no problem with that...

But why do games that have absolutely nothing to do with zombies all of the sudden start coming out with add-ons to kill Zombies?  (Borderlands, Black Ops... what's next Dwarf Fortress: Zombie Invasion?)  Are we, the gamer community so gullible that we'll be satiated by dumb AI, and come back for more?

[Stworca]

It's not that there are THAT many more zombie games, than any other genre. It's Bay12 that has a hard on for Zombie games and we discuss every one of them

[timferius]

I dable in most, but haven't found the Zombie killer app yet. Once I find my perfect zombie game they can stop making them, until then, keept trying. On that note, I keep forgetting to try project zomboid. Thanks for reminding me!

[GlyphGryph]

Because a lot of zombie games are just skins to cover over some REALLY interesting mechanics!

Like the L4D multiplayer versus mode. Or Cataclysm's survival/crafting game (See this very forum, best zombie game out there).

And, yes, zombies can be useful as filler. In essence, they are a very basic blank slate developers can write whatever they want on to - human enough to relate to when needed, but inhuman enough players don't question when things are quite right, don't feel guilt about killing them by the hundreds, and aren't inclined to put human limitations on them with an actual reason to.

Zombies are easy, versatile, and potentially powerful tools - of COURSE they are popular!

[Andir]

It's Bay12 that has a hard on for Zombie games and we discuss every one of them

I personally don't follow any of the discussions here on that many games so I wasn't judging by this community.  I was mainly judging based on the percentages (rising) of games that include zombies, zombie modes, and zombie add-ons.

[Deon]

Zombies are not worse than aliens or monsters. I like them because they are fantasy AND related to the modern world at the same time. Note that I don't want to play a medieval or prehistoric (or futuristic) zombie game, I want a modern setting. There's something in people turning into animals and apocalypse atmosphere which makes me interested.

Also considering how I spend most of my free time modding that awesome  Cataclysm roguelike... No, I am not tired of zombie games.

Actually I am much more tired of "another modern warfare shooter" or "elves with swords" games.

[chaosavy]

There seems to be a huge zombie push by indies (judging by reddit.com/r/indiegaming and my own searchanings)

I gave Project Zomboid (the tech demo) a shot and I must say I'm impressed by their presentation and story telling. When Project Zomboid got the huge amounts of attention a lot of other indies sprung up. It is a very popular genre so why not cater to it?

Zombie AI should be pretty equal to most AI's. You need path finding, you need some sort of a "zombie detects enemy" by sound or sight or other zombies or whatever. The only thing missing is self preservation.

Zombies have been one of my favorite enemy types for a while, its neat because even as a weaker level player (say for an RPG) you could hack away at a slow moving zombie then move back before it attacks, giving you a chance that a fast moving enemy wouldn't give you.

[Zangi]

Blasphemy!  You can never be sick of zombies!

I'm more sick of generic first person shooters with the same old gameplay each and every time.

[Flying Carcass]

Yes, there are too many zombie games being made, and they just keep coming. Its almost as if the inclination to make such tripe is spreading... 

Edit: It seems that adding the word "dead" to the title of one's game and a picture of a horribly disfigured person to the cover guarantees a game will be a best seller.

[Ringmaster]

Dwarf Fortress: Zombie Invasion?

Dwarf Fortress already has zombies.

[RedKing]

what's next Dwarf Fortress: Zombie Invasion?

You obviously haven't been reading the devlogs lately. 

It's partly a pop culture thing -- it's not just games, zombies are hip right now (although I think the craze has hit its peak and is probably waning).
And it's partly because when you want to allow players to commit carnage on epic scales without issues of conscience, you have three choices of enemy: aliens, Nazis and zombies. To me, zombies are the perfect enemy for indulging our inner sociopaths, because they're more human than aliens, but not actual humans like Nazis which allows you to use a greater variety of horribly mutilating attacks and have a greater variety of gibs and shredded carcasses, without quite so much squick factor. Notice how in most WWII-themed FPS's, when you kill a German soldier at point-blank range with a large caliber weapon, they still just drop to the ground in a mostly intact heap.

Do the same in a zombie FPS, and you get a satisfying red spray. The same red spray (although accurate) in the WWII FPS would be...unsettling.

I recently started playing the Borderlands DLC with all the zombies, and I've enjoyed it. I think there's also a certain level of refreshing familiarity with the tropes involved. You know that a shotgun is going to be your best friend, and you automatically expect to be swarmed. A lot. It's like comfort food for gamers.

[Andir]

Dwarf Fortress: Zombie Invasion?

Dwarf Fortress already has zombies.

Sure, but there's not a mode dedicated to zombies mindlessly attacking in waves while you try to fend them off... obviously, that's the next step.

[RedKing]

Dwarf Fortress: Zombie Invasion?

Dwarf Fortress already has zombies.

Sure, but there's not a mode dedicated to zombies mindlessly attacking in waves while you try to fend them off... obviously, that's the next step.

5/14/2011: [...]Still, wait till you see a hundred Ńs slowly trudging toward your fort. Exciting times!

[Virtz]

Trends do tend to get tiring after a while. At first it was WW2. Now it's modern warfare and zombies.

There's this strange thing about zombie games though, that they're essentially straying from being purely about zombies anymore. We're now constantly getting some super-natural entities among zombies that just don't work like zombies anymore (glaring at L4D here). Even Resident Evil jumped from the mostly slow lumbering zombies to charging foreigners wielding weapons who's heads turn into aggressive tentacles... does this sound like zombies to anyone anymore?

They were just supposed to be living dead that hunger for flesh and overwhelm the living with their numbers. How does an exploding fat man or a chainsaw wielding giant with a bag over his head fit into this? Are these really "zombie" games anymore? To me they sound more like some other horror trope. You know. Mutants?

That and there's also games that move the focus from fighting zombies to how humans cope with the situation and cooperate (like Dead State). Hell, even the new Resident Evil game is supposed to focus on human-human conflict apparently (although at least this is Raccoon City again, so there's actual zombies in it).

[Trapezohedron]

I am more annoyed by the ton of zombie add-ons or L4D clones than the genre itself.

First, there's L4D, which is pretty okay, considering that human-shaped fast zombies, boomers, and some acrobatic zombies are new to the genre.

But then comes the clones and the DLCs. Borderland's Zombie Island of Doctor Ned was very lame, and I only trudged through it because I bought the GOTY version. Then there's Red Dead Redemption's zombie dlc, which is in my opinion, pretty lame, in terms of the dev team's direction.

What really boggles me is that they use L4D's new innovations, like boomer zombies, fast running zombies, spitting zombies and acrobatic zombies. Couldn't they think of new and possibly better innovations to the zombie genre instead of recycling the old? Not that I have anything against those L4D type zombies, but most zombie games don't add anything new to the table, with the zombies. They just reuse and reuse...

It's like they're running out of ideas. And they probably are.