The Rise of the undead

Braaains!

Zombies. Few pop culture tropes have as ardent staying power as the rotting undead. Stories of reanimation go as far back as Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and Richard Matheson's I am legend; heck, you could even argue there is a bit in Homer's Odyssey, depending on how broad your criteria is. However, is isn't until 1930's Hollywood where storytellers really became obsessed with the concept. There were a spate of earlier voodoo related films such as; 'White Zombie', 'I walked with a zombie' and 'Voodoo island'. After that, we started to see the tradition zombies of today; not those under the influence of unclear magics, but those who were once the recently deceased. I'd imagine most are familiar with these movies; George A. Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead',  'Dawn of the Dead' and 'Day of the Dead'.

Modern video game's tend to mirror that second incarnation of zombies, revelling in the creatively grotesque monstrosities that can be produced thanks to the magic of animation. And due to the absolute craze that zombies have become, and somehow remain to be, in pop culture, we have many examples to choose from when we decide to look at their fiction representations. I find zombies to be a fascinating concept given how they've managed to grow past their film horror roots into a trope that seems capable of proliferating into any genre. Films and TV may still like keeping them around for simple 'boo' moments, but video games have gone above and beyond in taking the concept as far as it will go, stretching the zombie mythos from high fantasy to the apocalyptic far future and even to space. I intend to cover as many of these permutations as possible as we dive head first into the topic today.

First lets start with the classic. Dead Rising owes a lot of it's concept to the classic Romero movie 'Dawn of the Dead', so much so that the MKR Group ltd. tried to sue them for copyright infringement. And when you compare the two stories, it is easy to see why they thought they had a case. Dead Rising takes place in the small fictional American town of Willamette in Colorado, after an outbreak of the zombie flu hits. You play as journalist Frank West (He's covered wars!) as his helicopter pilot drops him off on top of the town's jewel: The Willamette mall. What follows is a three day adventure wherein the player is tasked with either unravelling the secret behind the zombie plague or playing dress up in all the stores and figuring out the silliest way to murder a corpse. Dead Rising is silly, arcadey fun that sends up to 'Dawn to the Dead' but is devoid of all the overt social-political commentary of the Romero films. (Which, incidentally, is the reason that Capcom won the lawsuit.)

Dead Rising zombies are your a-typical Romero-esque zombies. Greyish skin, a little bit of blood on the clothes and glowing eye at night. (Okay, Capcom may have pioneered that last one.) For these games, the zombie focus was less on the fidelity of the individual model and more the amount of models that could fit on screen without the console exploding. The first game had a limit of approximately 800 (That's on Xbox of course, the Wii version that I played was certainly a lot less) and Dead Rising 2 could, reportedly, display up to 6000. By the time of Dead Rising 4, the game could display so many zombies that it stopped being an impressive marketing gimmick so they don't even brag about it anymore. The reason that Capcom were able to improve on the tech behind producing zombies and touch up their fidelity a bit along the way, is because they completely neglected to work on the AI. They completely leaned on the fact that zombies are often portrayed as dumb in order to worm out of complicated AI development. Consequently, you'll often find the fourth game to be just a challenging as the first. (Or less so considering how much more capable the main character has become since then.) "Don't hate the player" as the expression goes.

Some properties envision zombies in only the loosest form, adapting the concept but none of iconic visuals of past interpretations. In these instances we got to see some genuinely imaginative ideas. Although, it is true that Viceral's Dead Space does hold more in common with 'Alien' then your typical zombie flick. Dead Space takes place in the year 2508 aboard a planet-cracker vessel called the USG Ishimura; once manned by nearly 1500 staff, now completely crew-less. You are put in the shoes of engineer Issac Clarke as he works to perform general maintenance around the ship whilst trying to track down his girlfriend somewhere on the ship. Oh, did I mention that the whole place is infested with terrifying undead nightmare fuel? That's happening too.

Dead Space's undead monsters, known as Necromorphs, are a disturbing amalgam of human bodies twisted with rapid alien genetic engineering to create something as ugly as it is deadly. Head's pop, extra limbs grow and fairly normal office staff become hulking death monsters with extra claws sticking out of their shoulder blades. They make for a very striking visual which very much fits in line with Dead Space's atmosphere as primarily a horror game. Viceral used every trick in the book to set the mood for space horror, creepy sound ques, lighting tricks, red herring noises and later down the line they start delving into psychological horror too. As players progress deeper into madness they start seeing even more gruesome monsters until they end up face to face with one so big that I honestly wonder how we didn't see it hanging off the ship when we came in to dock. I would argue that it is the strength of the core Necromorph design, alongside the expertly placed atmosphere, that made Dead Space the horror titan that is was before EA shut down Viceral. Since then nothing has come close in terms of creeping space horror save for 'Alien: Isolation' itself.

Sometimes we get a unique look into how supernatural entities are portrayed in other cultures, just look the horror-themed DLC for Sleeping Dogs; Nightmare in Northpoint. Okay, Horror-themed is perhaps a bit too strong, more like Halloween-themed; as a lot of the aesthetic focuses on the cheesier aspects of horror.As one would expect from the stereotypical action movie turned video game called Sleeping Dogs. In Nightmare in Northpoint, the protagonist Wei Shen is thrust into supernatural action after an the undead villian: Smiley Cat, raises Chinese zombies from the dead and kidnaps his girlfriend that he only knows as 'Not Ping'. (Look, Sleeping Dogs is a weird game, okay. I can't make it make sense.) Wei Shen then drinks some mystical tea or something and then becomes the ultimate undead-sealing hero who must save the world.


The real star of this DLC was not it's silly premise but rather United Front Games' dedication to bringing their Chinese zombies to life. The Jiang Shi or "Stiff Corpse", look pretty distinct from any other video game zombies given the fact that they walk around dressed like traditional Manchurian officials with their long robes and cone hats. Their movement is even noteworthy, the Jiang Shi have to conduct a strange hopping motion in order to move because of their rigor-mortis; a hopping accompanied with a little ringing noise as though they have bells attached to their head. Needless to say, these are not zombies as you or I know them. Wei Shen doesn't even need to decapitate them in order to end them either, he merely needs to place an amulet on their head and watch them dissolve. This portrayal of Jiang Shi lends heavily from Hong Kong cinema as elements of the main game did, honoring the games' setting whilst delivering something wholly unique to their gaming audience. They may not have been particularly scary but they were an interesting bunch.

Now we move back to more traditional zombies with Techland's zombies-in-paradise simulator Dead Island. In this game, players are put in shoes of one of four guests to the fictional island resort of Banoi. There players are met with everything they would expect from a luxury resort; sun, Palm tress, expensive hotel rooms and flesh eating monsters. As you have likely assumed, one day a zombie virus breaks out and absolutely decimates the local populace. (Rather quickly, I might add. The entire island went from living to undead over the space of one night.) Players are then tasked with going on a co-op RPG-light adventure from the beaches to the heart of the jungle in order to get a helicopter ride out of there. No saving the world from the zombie outbreak in this game, just pure self preservation. (Finally, video game protagonists I can relate to!)

Techland had a task ahead of themselves when it came to designing their zombies. Whereas Dead Rising and other games had their players take on a third person perspective, Techland intended for Dead Island to be entirely first person. This meant that the Zombie models had to look incredibly good up-close. A lot of care and work went into making the resort zombies look like folk recent killed by a viral outbreak. You see zombies sporting boils and rashes as well as blood and cuts. Then there are the special variants that all appeal to different styles of zombies. There are the big hulking ram that are dressed in straight jackets, the gross wrestlers who have half their intestines hanging out and the forearm-less butchers who look like something out of silent hill. Where Dead Island was lacking in character and charm they made up for in zombie diversity.

Not all zombie games focus on the act of decimating zombies, just look at Undead labs' State of Decay. Besides having one of the more clever names in the zombie genre, Undead Labs sought to differentiate themselves from the competition by focusing on the act of surviving a zombie filled world rather then fixing or escaping it. Players find themselves dumped into a random fictional town somewhere in middle America in the shoes of randomly generated survivors. They are tasked with founding a community and persisting as long as possible with them even as resources grow increasingly scarce and the looming threat of the zombies grows. In the sequel, players even have to start worrying about the threat of opportunistic survivors and disease in the form of 'blood plague'. State of Decay ultimately provides management style gameplay in a post-apocalyptic zombie setting. A surprisingly unprecedented offering.

Despite not being the central focus, Undead Labs didn't skimp when it came to envisioning their zombies either. These zombies have a much more feral look and movement to them than zombie fans might be used to. They walk around all hunched over and tear into their food like animals as they prowl around looking for fresh meat. Despite that, most of them still stick to zombie tradition of moving at a walking pace or something resembling it. A few occasionally break the ranks and go into a sprint, but they usually end up falling flat on their face a few seconds later, so they end up their own worst enemies. When the blood plague comes into the equation we start to see the virus-like aesthetic take hold of the zombies. Plague zombies are usually covered in red and sport bubbling pustules. (Lovely.) They may not be the most graphically intense zombies in gaming, but their design conveys the 'de-evolution' approach appropriately enough.

Now let me focus on a game who's zombies started out as an Easter egg and are now an expected feature for every release. I am of course referring to Treyarch's Call of Duty: Zombies. Few expected Call of Duty: World at War, a game that was ostensibly about portraying the 1942 battles in the pacific, to feature a mode dedicated to Nazi Zombies, but they ate it up all the same. In said mode, players were put in the shoes of four oddballs as they fortified a position against waves of undead Nazi soldiers. As they killed zombies and built barriers, they amassed points which were then used to expand the play area, improve their arsenal and utilize traps as they tried to hold off against the endless, relentless onslaught of the undead. As the games went on the scenarios grew more ridiculous and surreal (Even having one game where the player fought a zombified George A. Romero as Sarah Michelle Gellar and Danny Trejo.) At some point, the mini games introduced a whole storyline  surrounding a little girl called Samantha Maxis, that was a trip. Now they've gone into ancient roman zombies and undead on the Titanic. (Something tells me that the Zombie mode is Treyarch's only opportunity to be imaginative.)

The Call of Duty: Zombies mode has persisted for eleven years now, but the zombies themselves haven't changed much beside the clothes they wear. Zombies have grey skin, yellow eyes and bruises and scratches everywhere. They do boast a lot more fidelity than Dead Risings offering but this is as much out of necessity as pride, because Call of Duty is a first-person franchise. The inspiration of classic Hollywood zombies also shines through in the slow, dragging way that they move; they prefer to overwhelm the player through shear numbers rather then aggressive force. These were also some of the first game interpretations to demonstrate characteristic zombie persistence, if you blew off a Walker's legs they would continue to pursue you by crawling across the ground.

At some point it became apparent that there was little innovation in the traditional zombie design. Despite the freedom of animation, most zombies stuck to the formula of discoloured skin and glowing eyes. It wouldn't be until Techland came back to zombies with Dying Light, that we got to see traditional zombies revolutionized. Dying Light introduced players to an unnamed city in a unnamed country. (implied to be Turkey.) Their player's had the opportunity to the see the effects of total societal collapse in new, middle eastern setting. With the much more cramped and vertical setting, came a robust free running system which made navigation some much more fun. Now saving the world from widespread zombie contagion could be conducted with parkour style.

But it is in the design of Dying Light's Zombies that Techland really impressed the masses. As though directly improved from Dead Island's models (Which they likely were.) Zombies had the boils from the previous game but also actual structural damage to the face and body, as though these bodies once belonged to people who suffered a seriously brutal death. Then there were the Volatile variant of zombie. These nocturnal monstrosities appeared at night sporting the same split face syndrome that Blade 2's vampires featured. This grotesque mutilation really highlights some of the body horror that one expects from the horror genre.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of video game zombies but it does cover so of the most notable ones through the evolution of the genre. Some gamers out there might have spotted a few notable omissions and to that I say, rest assured, I fully intend to finish the list in my next blog. I just felt that one of the games in particular deserves a full day's worth of dedication and focus. So until tomorrow when we dive into one of the biggest Zombie franchises of all time, I hope you're as ready as I am.