The Dying Light condundrum

 

You know, I think that Zombie games get a bad wrap. I know, that's quite the left-field take coming from me- guy who has played so many Zombie games he pen the write up for a fresh cast in his sleep. A year ago I was sick to death of a genre I thought had absolutely nowhere to go which had totally dried up all goodwill across it's lifetime. And whilst I still don't know how I feel about the entirety of the genre given that a lot of it is very derivative and uninspired- since then I've played Dead Island 2 and was reminded what made this concept fun. Squashing zombies can be a blast when wrapped up in a game that allows you to get creative with it. That was what made the Dead Rising games such a hit back in the day, afterall. I suppose in that light, there's still something in these here games.

Of course if you ask genre aficionados they aren't going to mention 'Dead Island', at least not at first. (I'm actually not sure how they largely feel about 2- I suspect they like it, it was a decent enough game.) They're going to tell you the name of the cult hit that has an almost 'New Vegas' style reputation amidst their ranks. You know, the kind of "Yeah, those other games are great but you should really play 'X'"- you know the type. Dying Light is the 'Game X' of this example and through that title which combined free running with zombies in a largely non-comedic setting people found themselves totally enraptured with the zombie experience all over again. Largely because of how the game managed to recontextualise player's relationships with zombies.

Before zombies were kind of like playthings you'd find on a children's playground. Malleable, unthreatening and easily disposable. Even Dead Island and Left 4 Dead had to get creative to insist on taking these monsters serious once and a while- and in doing so created the exact same dozen architypes  that every Zombie game has copied for the rest of time. Dead Island brough a very new kind of creature with the Volatile- a monster that would hunt you- and built the entire reputation of the game around the dangerous threat they posed as agile nocturnal predators that would pull up off rooftops and rip you to shreds. And it worked- people found zombies scary again and credited Dying Light for that revelation which is where the undying love started.

But just as with New Vegas- when you hit that level which fans consider a 'Masterpiece' you better bet they're going to compare everything that follows with a fine-comb of critical analysis. See where I'm going with this? Dying Light 2 does not share the same glowing praise that the first game received. In fact- it's kind of seen as a disgrace to the name. Why? Lots of reasons both big and small. Some are annoyed about the teased gun that never made it the full game, (guns were introduced much later during the extended post-release support that Techland have become renowned for) some found the story and characters to be a pale shadow of the original game's, (Can't speak to that myself, I'm still trucking through the first game myself) and lastly- they took all the danger out of the zombies. Even the volatiles. (Yeah, I can see why that would piss some people off.)

So Dying Light is a franchise of two contradicting halves. One of rampant hero worship and rapid dogging from both sides of the series and I'm fascinated which beast will take hold in the upcoming title that seems to be a full follow-up game? Only they're calling it a 'stand alone' which makes it sound like spun-off DLC for Dying Light 2? I don't really know what they're driving at, it's a confusing conundrum. But at the very least a big piece of nostalgia bait was thrown the way of Dying Light by ensuring this new game would star non other than Roger Craig Smith himself- I mean 'Kyle Crane'. Same guy in my head.

As the story goes per Techland's Gameindustry.biz interview- all of this did exist in the past as a DLC that was coming to Dying Light 2. In fact this was going to be the second DLC pack for the game all the way up until a heavy leak basically spilled all the details about it out to the fans. (Just goes to show how many data breaches we've had in recent years- I didn't even hear about this one!) Techland decided to rework what they had and commit to something they consider to be not Dying Light 3 or a DLC- but a smaller standalone title. (I just wonder if the price will reflect that approach given that these games are typically years long support projects for Technland...)

Curiously Techland took this as a moment to talk about their philopshy for Game Design a little bit- and given how intimately in step with their fandom that company is- their thoughts are always actually worth listening to above typical corporate drivel. The franchise director verbalised genuine concerns about how the industry standard is mired in "inertia" with lusting after retention time and "play hours". To his mind, the future of the industry lies in smaller titles. And I... actually really do vibe with that sentiment. I mean don't get me wrong- the occasional blockbuster rocker is a must- but you can't make every studio a non-stop blockbuster producer and I think we're really starting to see why in recent years.

These big games that take the better part of a decade to make always end up rocking to the party after everyone has gone home, missing the point and the trend in their way. Sorry Fallout 76, Survival Games went out of fashion three years ago. Too bad, Suicide Squad- Live Services' are cringe now. Uh oh, Concord- we've seen enough hero shooters to last a life time. And those others were free-to-play. Dying Light is choosing the direction of quicker turn around shooter games that can easier stay at the pulse of the industry and I have to be honest- that makes a lot of sense. Maybe trendsetting should be left to the trendsetters?

Dying Light 2 is alive!

 Don't count me out yet!

Zombies are shaping up as something of a dying art in today's age, at least on the AAA gaming stage, because just like Hollywood they went and oversaturated the trend and now no one gets to have the undead fun they once wanted to because it's haplessly pastiche at this point. Things have become so overplayed that now even Resident Evil can't be bothered to do Zombies anymore; RE8 was about vampires and werewolves and Resident Evil 4 Remake is about that most terrifying of Lovercraftian horrors: eastern Europeans. But somewhere out there are those lone heroes that never gave up on the zombie horror genre, even when they themselves are partially responsible for that oversaturation problem I mentioned earlier. Those who have been pumping the world with their special brand of zombie game all along and were just about getting somewhere interesting before the world did a sickie for a year. Well guess what- they're back and they bought their game with them. Yes, I'm referring to Techland's Dying Light.

You see, a long time ago Techland were famous for an entirely different zombie game in Dead Island, the campy survival-esque romp where you trounced around an island resort and stomped on zombies with glee for the first two hours and then sort of glided through the rest of the game growing increasingly frustrated with the mechanics and setting being just inadequate enough to keep you unsatisfied. I swear I was so close to liking Dead Island for it's entire runtime, but I just kept getting dragged down again and again by the ceaseless backtracking through narrow streets, hordes that respawned with every area change, boring NPC's that always bog down these zombie games, and just the raw gameplay that grew stale way too quick. Maybe I was just ruined by Dead Rising and it's seemingly endless zombie murdering fun, but Dead Island just didn't do it for me. And then came Dying Light.

Dying Light took Dead Island and did what everyone wanted that game to do, it opened up the world into being something wholly more engaging to explore. Now a true open world, Dying Light let players parkour over buildings, objects and even zombies themselves as they raced around an open world characterized by speed and mobility. Improving the flow of traversal naturally lead into improvements to combat, which made the entire loop feel fresher and ended up propelling Dying Light into one of the longest-living Zombie titles of all time. I mean that to say I know people who, even years after the fact, will keep that game on their hard drives because they just like to stomp zombies every now and then. Techland have nurtured that love with a well-received DLC story cap, patches and updates, a separate battle royale spin-off for some reason, and the constant promises of Dying Light 2; oh Dying Light 2...

For a long time it looked as though this mythical sequel was going of the way of all long awaited sequels; nowhere. Just like Beyond Good and Evil 2, or even Deep Silver's sequel to Techland's own zombie game, Dead Island 2, this was just a game that kept getting the pause button thrown onto it. Either that meant good things and that the game was being cooked until it was good and done, or terrible things in that the game was going through development hell and would be lucky to make it out alive. I'll be honest, years of seeing this has tainted me into a bit of pessimist, so I personally did not believe this game was coming out. Even after seeing the 2019 reveal (which was alright) that 2020 of complete silence just sealed my opinion. "It's been dropped, nothing to see here." But seems I was a little too early, and a lot too presumptive, because whatever kinks the year of plague introduced to development has been worked off and Dead Island 2 is back, baby! ('Stay Human' is it now? Kind of cliche and forgettable, but I guess I can dig it)

I wasn't a believer, but with the recent Dead Island 2 features trailer that has been released even I have to admit that I'm a little bit tempted. Originally (In 2019) the promise of a supped up gameplay loop alongside that ever meaningless marketing buzz point of "Meaningful choices" turned me right off. Hearing them talk about how your choices would change the city, and then just showing how different colour banners fly from some fort somewhere, gave me flashbacks to the whole "change the skyline" pitch for Saints Row 3 which amounted to three or four Fleur De Lis' getting stamped onto nowhere buildings. But this time around we're seeing things that actually look interesting, switch ups that even look comparable to the impressive leveloutions that Battlefield pioneered and then mysteriously abandoned. (I get that it must have taken a lot of development time and effort; but it was so cool! Go back to that!) However it ends up, I must say that this is the way that you handle visual world shifting consequence: show giant swathes of the city be levelled by some falling tower, make me care and remember!

As for the raw gameplay, it's hard to judge from looking alone but everything has been tweaked to look very good. Suspiciously good. As in, "I kind of don't believe that all the 'gameplay' sections are actually gameplay". I mean there's some interactions where it's obviously gameplay, but that shot of the protagonist leaping all over the place and jumping up using a zombie looked a little staged. (or if not staged, just incredibly unlikely to actually pull of oneself) There's just this visual fluidity that rings untrue to my eye, but maybe that's just because they've nailed it so well, I can't say. On a much more positive note, I love how it seems the amount of gore and dismemberment enjoyed by the zombies is being extended to human enemies, as traditionally human enemies are the weakest parts of any self-respecting zombie game. These human enemies, though we've seen but glimpses, somehow still give off the impression of being as dumb as rocks, but maybe being allowed to brutally slaughter them will improve my general opinion on them.

Finally there's the factions and the world that Dying Light 2 wants to build, essentially the reason why you're going to have multiple choices in the first place. This is a highlight video and one that clearly didn't focus on them, but even then I have to say that they look bad. Really uninspired, confusingly so. With the amount of detail thrown into the environment, the animation, the glorious models of the zombie themselves, it's actually quite head scratching how the 'distinct' two factions the game has managed to dream up are rigidly brutal authoritarians versus anarchistic bandit-types. (There's also the nightrunners but I suspect their role will be ultimately inconsequential for taking control of the world space) Even Fallout 76 managed to inject more colour into their binary faction system. (A little more; they made the cops 'builders') maybe this is just the simple veneer and there's some deeper colourful story that fleshes out these people and what they represent beyond the bleedingly obvious, but if so then the writing will be doing the supreme heavy lifting because the visuals aren't selling it. (And even if that is the case; that makes for poor visual storytelling.)

So overall I'd say that Dying Light 2 honestly looks exciting, which is saying something for someone who wasn't excited for Dying Light 1, wrote off 2 ages ago, and thought he was done with zombies for at least another four years. State of Decay overdosed me on zombies to the point where I get nauseous even thinking about another rotten-flesh expedition; but if it's wrapped up in gameplay this cool looking, I think I can get through it relatively unscathed. If Techland remains half the team they were before Dying Light 2 entered full development, then theirs are hands fully safe to entrust this project into and I'll remain genuinely excited for tomorrow. Call the team 'necromancers' because they're bringing the undead trend back to life singlehandedly. (Oh, I guess Zach Snyder has a part to play too. Kinda.)

Dying Light 2 dies it's final death?

Wait, is that more of a Vampire thing?

Zombies; a mainstay of video games, and popculure, since the dawn of time. (Or so it seems.) Unlike most pop fads, it seems that the zombie craze never dies and we always have a least one game about those flesh eaters on the horizon. Perhaps that's because we can never get enough of stories that recount the unquenchable thirst of death and it's unfaltering march ever onwards; or maybe we like reminders of how society may be the one thing separating us from animals; whatever the case, we can't get enough of zombie-mania. Which is why it's such a shame that one company who made their name on two successful zombie titles, Techland, seems to have been struck with the Valve curse as they are unable to bring out any sequels. And the latest news from their studio is not too encouraging on that behalf.

On Twitter, not so long ago, it was revealed to us all that Dying Light 2 was pushed back for a second time, only this time it was 'indefinately'. Personally, I can't actually remember the last time that has happened, so I can't be sure whether or not this news is extremely reassuring or incredibly disconcerting. (Although, judging from my title, you can probably see where my feelings ultimate settled.) Don't get me wrong, it's by no means irregular for games to find themselves launched into a pit of development hell, that happens all the time. Just look at 'The Last Gaurdian', 'Duke Nukem: Forever', 'Final Fantasy XV' or, to touch close to home, 'Dead Island 2'. All of those games got caught up in a whirlwind of 'behind the scenes' issues which ballooned development time out of control, and half of those examples turned out pretty all right games in the end. However, when a release date is announced, or even just a window, it's supposed to be a sign that the approaching seas are relatively calm and turbulence will be minimal. (relatively, at least.) But things haven't seemed to play out this way for poor 'Techland'.

Let me try to establish just how monumental this development is. Originally, Dying Light 2 was slated for a Spring 2020 release date. When Techland made that announcement, it wasn't just so that fans could start their hype trains to arrive at the station on time, it was also for Investors and analysts to start making their projections. That is why when such a date is moved, it's important for a new release window to be selected, else everyone ends up in the lurch. Now it would have been easy for Techland to push the game back to later in the year, citing 'difficulties' like CDPR did, but to push that window even further into oblivion speaks to a lack of confidence on behalf of the leadership. Will this game even make it out before the end of this console generation? At this point that seems unlikely, which has the potential to push the game back even further as they are forced to work on next-gen ports. (It would be positively foolish not to at that point.)

Now, it's possible that we as fans are the only one's currently in the dark at this point. Perhaps the team and investors have a 'goal date' in mind that they intend to hit and just don't want to make any promises just in case they have to break another; but that skepticism brewing around this title is sure to effect the mood towards the game and investor trust in the brand. (I hate getting all 'corprate' but I feel it's an important aspect of this story.) Say this title does get a Christmas release date suddenly, so we can expect to see it on shelves comes September, would you believe it? Would you wonder about just what corners had to be cut to meet this new release window? Even if you were a diehard fan of the original, aren't you, as a responsible consumer, going to have this sudden delay gnawing at the back of your mind like an annoying Walker? Maybe enough fans will feel that way to actually hurt those all-important week one sales, which will in turn hurt Techland. Now, that's a worst-case scenario that I just hypothesized there, but it's a possibility that Techland have opened themselves up to.

The key question on everyone's minds right now is probably the same one that raced to your head when you first heard of this delay; why? And for that, I'm afraid, there is no easily citable catch-all answer for us to digest and feel ultimately good about. If we refer back to the original delay tweet there is some fluff about 'needing additional development time to fulfill their vision', but that's so canned they may as well have said absolutely nothing for as much as it explained. (At least CDPR explained that it came down to an issue of bug fixing.) Once again, this maw of reasoning has left room for rampant speculation from folk with no first-hand knowledge of the issue, but what else are we to do?

For my wild speculation, I believe that this delay might have something to do with a vast restructuring of the game's framework, which would explain why this title hasn't been given a release date because they're still putting together what the final vision of the product will look like. When the original Dying Light came out in 2015, it was applauded for being everybit the original vision of the 'Dead Island' project. People couldn't get enough of the mobility of the game and, therefore, forgave the title for some of it's weaker moments. (such as in it's story.) Personally, despite being a lifelong zombie fan myself, I found 'Dying Light' to be largely underwhelming. (Much like Dead Island, for that matter.) Don't get me wrong, the parkour was fun, but in the same way that the newest Ubisoft game's gimmicks are fun, you enjoy them now but you're really waiting for the next game where they get implemented properly. (I just wished that there was more integration between mobility and combat in Dying Light.)

Dying Light 2 seemed to fix my concerns, in that department at least, judging from the reveal trailer; but I felt a whole slew of new concerns rising from the rest that they showed off. Now, these concerns were mostly just my own at this time (the fans practically ate all this up.) but perhaps with the changing attitude towards certain kinds of games, Techland started to see what I was seeing. To be clear, my issue was with the main focus of the game being on the idea of a 'faction dispute' wherein the actions of the player will have consequence. Now, this sort of marketing gimmick has become a stable in modern gaming, so 'no harm no foul', but Techland decided to take it one step further by insisting that the choices of the player would drastically effect the world around them. (Something which flashed me back to 'Saints Row 3' wherein your progress through the story would determine which colour drapes 4 of the city's building wore. Truly a gamechanger.) True to their word, Techland showed off a bunch of 'before and after' shots of districts whose faction flags switched depending on your quest choice, and folk like me were just left wondering. "Is that the best you've got?"

Now, one weak 'consequnce' system isn't enough to sink a game; but when it seemed to be the core mechanic that was leading marketing, it does make someone worry that this game had literally no over surprises up it's sleeves. In all honesty, this felt like one of those 'copy and paste' jobs that Ubisoft would do with their mechanics, and, as I mentioned recently, things have reached the point where even Ubisoft can't defend their own laziness in that department anymore. So what do you do when the people who you used be inspired by change course? You either double down and start a daily blog about the source of you loneliness, cut off all ties and shrivel into a loathsome shrew of a human who's only respite is the sham comfort of unconscious dreams; or just follow suit and pray you're making the right choice. (I'm being hyperbolic for effect.)

Does this mean that the Dying Light 2 game is dead in the water? Not exactly, but this could be a signal for development troubles, or even marketing troubles. As much as there are a loyal contingent of 'superfans' who bated their collective breath for this game, there are a larger public who seemed indifferent and totally forgot this title existed until it was delayed. (A group of which I am a member.) I mean, just look at how their 'Dying Light' Battle Royale: 'Bad Blood', from 2018, practically disappeared from the limelight a couple months after it's debut. This franchise lacks the staying power that the studio need for a successful sequel and I feel like that could have something to do with the choice to delay. (Maybe Techland want to mount a stronger marketing campaign. In their shoes, I would want to.) At the end of the day this is all just guess-work. The real reasons behind this are known by Techland and only them. We can only hope they know what they're doing and that the final game, if it ever releases, is worth the wait.

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.