Majestic Twelve - The Zombie Games

Brains? BRAINS! Brains? Zombies are, unfortunately, one of the most popular things in pop-fiction at the moment. I understand why, but when are things going to loop back to dinosaurs again? Velociraptors seem way more threatening than zombies. Hell, T-Rexes would be nightmare-fuel. Regardless, the new season (of the TV show) Walking Dead just dropped on AMC. So let’s discuss the 12 best zombie-games. Note this is games with zombies as the main enemy. Not just games with zombies added in. So no Saints Row, Yakuza, or Red Dead. 

#12 – Resident Evil – Films and games, Resident Evil is really Capcom’s biggest franchise at the moment next to Street Fighter, but we all know that’s because they’ve put Mega Man in their IP dungeon for reasons we still don’t fully understand. That being said, the RE franchise is still loved, even after some recent atrocious attempts to keep the series “alive” with RE6, which was mostly received as steaming hot garbage. But it’s not over for the series as ANOTHER HD remake of the first game is coming to the current-gen systems (for some reason). But I will say this much… never really found the zombies in this game all that scary. The zombie dogs, sure, but that’s because I love dogs and seeing an evil one just gives me the willies.

#11 – House of the Dead – Be it the arcade or the gimmicky Wii-port, this game is always fun to play, especially with friends as you fight off waves of zombie-like monsters and zombies alike. It’s also fun to mess up the rescue-prompts and shoot people trying to escape the zombies. There’s not much plot and the game isn’t really scary because it’s an on-rails shooter. But that doesn’t mean the game isn’t fun or worth a try if you haven’t played it already.

#10 – Killing Floor – A good little co-op zombie-shooter title, Killing Floor is one of the big fun indie games you can pick up on steam loaded with lots of maps, mods, weapons, and fun time with friends. But it does have some issues I’m not a fan of. Its final-wave boss is hair-pulling levels of frustratingly difficult. Good teamwork doesn’t always guarantee victory as you could just get and unlucky bad wave and be down in the whole. Plus, to me, the heads up display and menu layouts just aren’t as clean and streamlined as my other favorite zombie co-op shooter. More on that later. Not a bad game though.

#09 – DayZ – One of the first in a long line of big open-world survival games where you’re dumped on a server with 49 other assholes with the sole goal of getting good loot and surviving. While met with general positivity at first, being a rather unique idea at the time, interest began to dwindle in the time between the Arma II mod’s initial creation and the standalone DayZ game. And once the standalone game was released, it lacked a lot of things people had been expecting from the mod. Of course, to me, it just lacked a fundamental goal. I’m all for trying to survive. But once you’ve done the bare essentials, you kind of need stuff to do in-between getting killed by zombies and getting killed by underpants banditos.

#08 – Minecraft – This is kind of a cheat since Minecraft isn’t focused on the zombies. But the mechanics of the zombies are very interesting and make them vastly more entertaining than in the previous titles we’ve mentioned. They drop zombie flesh which can be consumed in desperation, but they’ll sometimes drop rare loot like gold, iron, tools, or even something they picked up before coming to you. They can also spawn in with armor or weapons if you’re unlucky enough. The most interesting mechanic is how they affect villagers and how zombification of a villager can be cured. I’ve seen few games show these mechanics all that well and it’s cool to see them in action… even if it does ruin a village you’re trying to protect.

#07 – Deadlight – This indie wonder is by Tequila Works under Microsoft. It’s a platformer where you play a father/husband looking for his family. You have to avoid waves of zombies, traverse the sewers and befriend a hobo, fight off a militaristic gang, and overcome the nightmares that haunt you throughout the game. While not the best zombie game, it’s unique in that it’s a zombie-platformer game. In a world full of zombie-shooters, it’s VERY pleasant to see someone doing something a little different. And of course I'm a sucker for motion-comic cinematics. 

#06 – ZombieU – One of the few unique gems on the WiiU to date. One of the few good console exclusive horror games. One of the few fun Ubisoft games in recent memory. And one of the rare launch title games that didn’t suck, ZombiU is almost everything we could have asked for in a launch title video game (online could have been more robust). Regardless, this is the one and only title Ubisoft will be releasing for the WiiU that I’ll give a shit about since they won’t release any more M-rated content and they have some secret game they won’t talk about until the WiiU sells enough consoles. But did they say how many consoles? Nope. So I’m guessing it was a bluff. Just like with Beyond Good & Evil 2.

#05 – Lollipop Chainsaw – It’s funny, it’s got zombies, it’s got a hot main character who is also a bad ass, and I love all of it. Lollipop Chainsaw is a game about a young high school cheerleader who is also part of a zombie-hunting family. When her school is over taken by zombies, she rises to the occasion fighting waves of zombies in colorful chainsaw battles to save her school and headless boyfriend. There are lots of innuendos and fun times to be had with this quirky Suda51 trip.

#04 – Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem – Do these count as zombies? Throughout your adventure in Eternal Darkness, you encounter zombie-like monsters. What I like about them is they have variety in sizes and strength, which isn’t all too common in zombie games. But what’s even more fun is they all have different magical alignments, meaning that certain types of spells will hurt them more than others and some will heal them. You can also hack off their limbs with the weapons you collect. Cool stuff. Great game. Also, they drive you CRAZY!

#03 – Dead Rising – The Dead Rising series is unique for plenty of reasons. The first game had an aggressively steep difficulty curve. The second gave us some of the most insane weapon options I’ve ever seen in games and a tiger. The third game… dunked itself in dirty dishwater and just threw in more zombies than ever necessary in a zombie game. All that said, these games are fun, ridiculous, and you’ll never run out of things to do with the experimental weapon combinations that exist… until you make a sledge-hammer taped to an axe. Don’t need much beyond that.

#02 – Left 4 Dead – Many like to poo-poo on this game because it isn’t Half-Life 3. But I don’t really care about Half-Life or if that series ever continues. For me, Left 4 Dead is probably the best online experience in gaming I’ve ever had and I rarely enjoy online games ever. It’s also one of the few games where co-op feels necessary and you need your teammates in order to survive even getting through a single map, let alone the campaign. While light on plot, you can find various hints to what’s happened and happening to the world with the writings on the walls and some of the dialogue between the characters. While not a perfect game, when it comes to zombies, there aren’t many better than Left 4 Dead.

#01 – Walking Dead – Barring ONE game done by Activision and maybe a season and a half of the TV show, Walking Dead is really kind of an unstoppable juggernaut in the zombie market right now. They have the biggest zombie-based comic and I believe it’s still ongoing. They have one of the biggest shows on TV with a spin-off in the near future to boot. But more than that, they also have one of the best video games ever made. Not just best zombie-game, but BEST VIDOE GAME. It doesn’t have all the action you’ve come to expect from traditional zombie games, but it has a better story than almost any game and most works of fiction with some of the BEST characters to follow and interact with. It shouldn’t be a surprise, just based off the TellTale game alone, Walking Dead easily takes the number one spot.