This week on Slightly Something Else, Yahtzee and Marty discuss whether or not zombie games will ever be interesting again.
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Feel like zombies are just thrown in for the search tags now. TLOU seems to only have zombies so we have something to do between the cutscenes
One of my faverate zombie games that I think has died out now was Contagion, really good PVP and really Co-op modes, both modes had it so all the players all being humans to start with, but as you died off you'd get to become an alpha zombie who'd go after any remaining humans. In PVP you'd aim to be the last human standing so you'd gun down one and other, but the more you killed the more Alpha zombies there would be, in co-op you just had to try and keep your team alive or things got harder and harder.
That game was a lot of fun and I miss it, I think the co-op went up to like eight people as well.
The question of "is dead space a zombie game" makes no sense to me. It is one of the best examples of zombie game I can think of.
30:42 Was the game Yahtzee was trying to think of, Death Road to Canada?
Noooooooooo wrooooonnggg
Night of the living dead had ZERO context or subtext or anything about anything. Romero said he hired the actor because he was the best actor, the ending has nothing to do with race or racism
There's not enough horny zombie apocalypses. Akiba'sTrip and Lollipop Chainsaw got pretty close, though.
Zombie romance is already a thing
We haven't had any media that has explored this concept: An alien invasion has devasted the planet. They are seemingly here to harvest all the water on our planet and have systematically destroyed most of humanity,. In our last efforts to survive we create the ultimate soldier: one that gets back up after dying. We start bringing back dead humans to fight in our war against the alien invaders. Now, we finally have the ability to overcome the aliens superior technology. You are one such human who has been brought back from the dead. It's time to win back our planet.
THANK YOU YATHZEE! I've been saying for literal YEARS that the Doctor AND the Monster are both named Frankenstein!
Zombie grand turismo
Left 4 Dead doesn't actually have zombies that can call other zombies. It was in the development, but got scrapped because players would often shoot these zombies and not knowing what triggered the horde. The role was given to car alarms instead.
Don't forget about 'My Boyfriend's Back' (1993)
A game where you are the scientist(s) that must catch zombies, contain them, and run experiments to find the cure. Even surgery-type stuff a la Mortuary Assistant.
The monster's name was Adam.
The monsters type is called 'Promethean', from the full title of the book, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)
@28:10 'Fuckin' A Few Good Men'…can't find an IMDb page for that movie…some sorta indie art film?
The racial aspect of Night of the Living Dead was actually famously accidental. The character being black was just an instance of racially blind casting, the implications didn't occur to Romero until MLK's death was announced right after they'd finished post-production.
1:02:22 Are we ever going to hear a retro review of Carmageddon from Yahtzee? I'm sure that will get the mega-clicks…
1:07:40 "A little song, a little dance, a little ammo down your pants." As he hooks a finger into a guy's waistband, inserts a Mac10 machine pistol therein, and empties the clip. Referencing an old vaudeville shtick involving a seltzer bottle – haven't read it in decades, but some scenes stick with you. Also, maybe it was an Uzi.
I'm surprised no one brought up Graveyard Keeper. It's easily my favorite "cozy game". The morbid theme is icing on the proverbial cake.
Resident Evil kind of has it both ways with herbs. In RE5 the herb is used by spraying it like a first aid spray, while in RE6 the herb can be turned into pills to be taken orally. Although they might be different herbs, so who knows.
The short answer for me is that the zombie is an archetype and will have it's time once again sooner or later. It's just a question of finding a new way of incorporating it. Attack on Titan is pretty much a zombie anime only the zombies are between four and 60 meters tall and I would venture to say that that was a fairly unique take on the trope.
With respect to the zombie apocalypse genre, I think we're more ripe for it than ever because a key facet of the zombie fantasy is the fear of mass consciousness. That is to say, mass unconsciousness; herd mentality. And in that sense we are already living through multiple zombie apocalypses simultaneously — our society churns them out unremittingly and an ever accelerating rate.
Twitter is a zombie apocalypse. Tik Tok is a zombie apocalypse. The voting system is a zombie apocalypse. The games industry itself is a zombie apocalypse of unthinking repetition. You get the picture.
Every politically active person accuses his opponents of being mindless slaves to ideology. "How could the liberals ever think such a thing unless they had never actually thought about it at all and are just repeating what everyone else around them is saying?" But then go on to sweep any awareness of their own hackneyed regurgitations of rhetoric under the rug.
There is a fear, or at the very least an aversion, to the fact of just how little we think for ourselves; how zombie-like the project of modernity already is in it's unblemished pre-apocalypse state.
I don't think the zombie has ever really been speculation on what could happen but a reflection of what is happening.
I played the hell out of Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, some of my favorite multiplayer moments. Shame Back 4 Blood was so disappointing
Everyone seems to forget about Zombi (1986), for Commodore 64, Spectrum etc. It was quite groundbreaking for it's time and was Ubisoft's first ever release.
I don't think I've finished either Opposing Force or Blue Shift.
I also played Half-Life Source on steam instead of the original Half Life, kinda since it all came together when I got it.
Signalis ticks a lot of boxes but I don't know if it actually counts
The story is about a romance but you spend 90% of it doing the same gameplay as Resident Evil, so it's less of a romance that has zombies in it and more of a zombie survival horror with a romance in it, at least from that perspective. However it does use strong psychological elements as well and there's plenty going on thematically that it would be disingenuous to say the game is really "about zombies." They're in you're way and you spent a lot of time fighting and running away from them but what the game is really about is memory, sacrifice, identity (or the deterioration thereof) what happens when you look into the abyss etc. Dark horror stuff that is far too abstract and dramatic to fit the mold of "zombie fun time."
It is not campy like RE4 but is not explicitly a manifestation of the protagonist's interior psychology although it very well could be, if only because what actually creates the zombies is the unholy alliance of biotechnology used for purposes of fascist indoctrination and the protagonists memories finding their way into the wrong body.
This brings me to where things get into technicalities with this example. Functionally, the enemies do everything zombies do. Thy shamble around, eat flash, loose blood curdling screams, they get back up sometimes after you kill them and are devoid of any consciousness, personality, or higher brain functions.
Bu —- t none of them were actually human in the first place because they are synthetic humanoids can replikas (think the reploids from Megaman X) nor are they undead or infected. They have specifically been corrupted by the aforementioned technology known as bio-resonance, which is basically psionics.
The final boss stares into the abyss and catches such a bad case of Lovecraftian despondency that it turns everyone into cannibalistic abominations. She is in this state because replikas are produced by installing the memories of a human operative into a synthetic body that has both mechanical and biological components. Their functioning is dependent on reinforcing this constructed persona with fetish objects and rituals relevant to who they were as a human, otherwise they go berserk. The reason the antagonist is flipping out is specifically because the abyss struck her with the psionic equivalent of ionizing radiation and now her memories have been displaced with those of the protagonist — specifically the ones pertaining to the time she spent with her now lost lover — making it understandably difficult to maintain her persona and her psionic powers make her persona degradation contagious.
So the final battle will determine who gets the memories and thereby becomes, in some sense, the one who has psychological continuity with the person who fell in love with this other girl.
This is were it starts too look like the game might be a Silent Hill 2 because the past life of the protagonist replika you play as was a war veteran and the zombies you fight are mostly soldiers and servicewomen running maintenance.
This would make the enter story a psychological descent into Inferno to overcome her past trauma so she can live as who she chooses to be: the individuation process as opposed to Jame's repressed sexuality.
Ohh have Frost play In Verbus Vertis.
We don't need Zombie games, we've got Zombie studios and Zombie franchise. "DIE. DIE! WHY WON'T YOU DIE?! why won't you die???"
-woops sorry thats a V for Vendetta quote not a zombie media quote… still relevant though…
A twisted idea I had for a zombie scenario is where the zombies are still mentally human, but are still ravenous and like, when they jump at you they beg for just a nibble or something.
YOOOO Marty knows zombies ate my neighbors! I have great memories of that one. thumbs up
Honestly all the best things I've seen outside of ganes recently have been zombie movies and shows, and now that I think about it they're all super Asian.
Between the Sadness, Train to Busan, and All Of Us Are Dead I can happily ignore the comic book garbage Hollywood keeps hacking out, but in video games all I've seen in the last few years of zombie games has been uninspired mediocrity like the last of us series and years overdue bland sequels like Dying Light 2.
Was the global pandemic and totalitarian government responses not inspiring enough for this soulless goddamn industry?
I think the closest I've found to a proper zombie strategy game where you're actually controlling the zombies is playing as the necrons in Dawn of War Dark Crusade which you can basically play as sci fi undead that you can raise from the dead if you focus on infantry and keeping your commander alive
I feel like you guys feel like starting every sentence with I feel like or it feels like. I feel like downloading the podcast and editing out every I feel like so I can enjoy the thing. But that's just how I feel.
I would love to see a zombie game where you join a squad of, like, 18 people and just have to push through a massive wave of undead. Maybe there could be varying objectives that encourage you to split you forces into multiple teams to accomplish them faster.
That said, I think 4 is such a common number because it's good for having specific roles that can be diverse without stepping over each other. Warrior, Rogue, Mage, Healer; the DRG dwarves with Driller, Gunner, Scout, and Engineer; etc.
JJ MACKFIELD AND THE NIBBLE NOBBLE NU NU
Maybe a zombie game that might work,
Where you play as a zombie "hoard"
Could be where the player skips between zombies as fast as a push of a button.
Or a "highlight then warp" feature.
All while using skill sets that stubbs had.
And whatever that zombie was in a previous life…?
Eg: undead swat member has kevlar & a helmet.
Ex-dancer zombies can mantle higher ledges.
?
Could have all the gore, action, etc… but this gameplay mechanic might have a good strategic addiction and potentially infinite replay.
Because how the player controlled hoard achieve goals can be different each playthrough.
Id give it a go.