As I was writing up a news piece about Dead Island Riptide, it became painfully clear to me that it might be time to retire the zombie for a while as we have been beaten over the head with them for years now. The basics of zombies are fascinating, really. They can be used to represent a lot of things; unrelenting evil, sociopolitical struggles or just things that are damned scary. The question that I ask now is; are they really that scary, or have they been a bit overdone in society, especially in gaming?
When it comes to major releases, within the span of a year we’ll see Lolipop Chainsaw, Resident Evil 6, War Z, ZombiU, Dead Island Riptide and a few others, and we’ll also see games like Call of Duty: Black Ops II that will not only feature the “Zombies” mode like past Treyarch CoD games, but Zombies will see its own special campaign. Basically, there is no shortage of zombie games, with 2011 seeing the release of over 12 major games featuring zombies and this year seeing yet more with more scheduled for next year.
Enough, already. We here in the states are just coming down from Halloween where we have been inundated with photos of girls dressed as slutty zombies, of friends inviting us to “zombie walks,” movies featuring zombies, television shows featuring zombies and yes, those games as well. In a way it is a welcome change from the sparkly vampire craze that we saw from the Twilight books and films, but for now, the zombie has run its course. There is not much left to the imagination anymore. We all understand zombies, the threat they present and why they can be so scary, but in gaming especially it is becoming a cheap scare tactic or a cheap way to attract attention.
Imagine if we gave the walking dead a rest for a while and bring them back in a few years when they’d feel fresh again?
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