Zombies. Zombies everywhere.

Zombies. They're pretty much their own genre at this point. If a game features zombies then it's fairly safe to say zombies are the main focus with familiar themes and tropes. If a game doesn't have zombies, they'll be added as downloadable content. There have been some truly phenomenal zombie games, some of which have shaped other games: Left 4 Dead's objective based cooperative gameplay has inspired games like Payday: The Heist. DayZ has spawned WarZ and likely many more on their way. Zombies aren't for everyone, as my brother will attest, but I often find myself craving some cooperative survival goodness. I just wish that zombies would stay in zombie games and not infect other genres. Fair warning, what I'm about to say might ruin several games you currently like as you sit blissfully unawares. Zombies are in so many games at the moment it's driving me crazy; they're just not called 'zombies'.

Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains

Halo: Combat Evolved was released in 2001 after being ripped away from Steve Job's cold, clammy hands (by some accounts Jobs was not pleased) and placed with Microsoft who then prompted a large change of direction and appending ': Combat Evolved' to the title. From the earlier trailers Halo looked like it was a large, sandbox-y third person shooter pitting you against fanatical aliens on an artificial world. What we got was half of that and the rest was a zombie hunt. The Flood. Perhaps the worst betrayal I ever experienced as a young teenager was having my dreams and expectations dashed by being plunged into a zombie shooter when I wanted a sci-fi shooter. The Flood are boring to fight. They look generic, they're tedious and repetitive. They're zombies under a different name, and that makes all the difference.

See, when you buy a game with a zombie on the box you're expecting a game about zombies. When I buy a regular Pepsi and it tastes like choc-banana instead of cola I'm going to be mad as hell. Under different circumstances I love choc-banana but when I have my taste buds all set up for that sweet fizzy cola goodness and Pepsi takes a choc-banana flavoured shit in my mouth I'm going to be wondering why you didn't put the right label on the can.

Nary a zombie nor Flood in sight

Halo is not the only offender, but it's one of the first bait and switches I can remember. Another guilty party is Mass Effect. The first game blew my mind because I went into it completely blind having not seen or read anything about it. I got the game free one day and fired it up and I was left wanting more. The one bothersome aspect of the game was meeting the Husks, ex-humans who have been put on spikes and had their gooey organic insides replaced with machine stuff. How do they attack? By shambling towards you in great numbers. 'Oh,' I thought with the look of someone who has just trodden in dog shit, 'they're zombies.' Husks saw a return in both of the sequels but in Mass Effect 3 they expanded the Husk treatment to other races and some of them have guns and other methods of attack. I don't care if they're zombies with guns, magic, or any other form of hurt; they're still flipping zombies in my space game about space stuff.

Guild Wars 2? You betcha. This time they're called Risen and they're just as bland, boring and frustrating as the Flood and Husks. As with Halo you're pitted against these faux zombies towards the latter half of the game and that's almost all you face until you stop. Most Risen move super quick meaning if you're a ranged class they're all up in your grill before you can finish saying 'Aw, fark not zombies again.' Even more annoying is that entire zones are covered with these shits, even the ones with large water sections which I thought would dissuade the zombie bastards from chasing you (like every zombie movie) but instead they out-swim fucking sharks. The Risen were a large part of me putting Guild Wars 2 down. I was having a ball exploring vistas, gawking at the visuals, working my way through areas and choosing my little Asuran's story arc. Then I hit a mission with Risen and was overcome with a sense of dread and anxiety as I hoped to Christ they were just a little blip. But they weren't. They were the whole damn game and they killed it for me.

Blaaargh stop having fuuuun....

I dislike zombies in non-zombie games because it smacks of laziness. For developers including zombies is great: you can reuse assets ad nauseum, they explain infinite enemies story-wise, the AI is mostly simple pathfinding, etc. A game about zombies has to do more than just have an enemy that runs at you until you're sick of it. Left 4 Dead introduced four player cooperative play with objectives and unique zombie classes and multiplayer modes. DayZ introduced the idea of real survival in an open persistent game world. Dead Island had a mix of the open world and cooperative play of Left 4 Dead and DayZ but with weapon crafting and roleplaying elements. Hiding in a barn hoping a zombie doesn't notice you, fleeing a bloody horde and making a last desperate stand are unique experiences in zombie games.

The problem is this: when developers include zombies in their game without any of the things that make zombies fun (post-apocalyptic setting, scavenging, fear, team work, and so on) it's like putting jalapenos on cereal. You've taken something that's great with other savoury things and put it on something sweet and made both taste like shit. Zombie games aren't really about zombies they're about survival, fear, tension and working with others to get out of a shit situation. Zombies are a driving force that make you feel empowered. You're special because you aren't a zombie yet and you have an opportunity to escape and live again. A game that includes zombies without the unique 'zombie context' have completely missed the point about why people enjoy them. Now, a game that replaces zombies with raptors would still work great. If you really want to have a zombie-esque enemy why not include raptors? They both instill the same survival instinct only the way you are found and eaten changes slightly. Could that become a thing? Every game having raptors in it? The closest we have to zombie raptors is Aliens, but I'd really like literal raptors chasing me. Make it so.

This is a non-zombie game with zombies.

Images taken from:
http://www.zug.com/live/86306/The-Insane-Cereal-Experiment-Part-3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org
Assorted game wikis

I mention 'zombies' 46 times