Why I Love Zombie Games

I love zombie games, plain and simple.

I'm sure that in a 'real' zombie apocalypse things would be chaotic, treacherous and down right nasty but that's not what this piece is about. This is about why I love zombie games and where my fascination in them began.

Much like others in my generation, I've had a gamepad or keyboard in my hand from a very young age and so have slowly made my way across various platforms and genres until I found what tickles my gaming fancy and what doesn't.

I used to really love the Dynasty Warriors franchise. I didn't care for the story, skipping all the cutscenes, ignoring the pathetic attempt at voice acting and lip syncing. All I cared for was the mindless slaughter of hundreds upon thousands of nameless soldiers. I cared not for their backstory, for their struggle, their reason for attacking me or their virtual families. All I wanted to do was hit them over the head with the staff and be done with it. A psychologist could look into that. I'd prefer they didn't.

Anyway, the point is that I loved to kill 'easy' enemies, but lots of them. Time passes and I end up on the Xbox 360 on a CRT TV in my room and my dad lovingly buys me a copy of Left 4 Dead. My brother and I stayed up all weekend shooting the heads, arms, legs and toes off the infected, single handedly saving the universe - or so we thought.

Fast forward a little bit further and I land on my very first PC. The thing with a PC is that you can use Steam, which contains an unmarked number of ever expanding titles for you to download and play. I have a 60MB/s connection. I downloaded a lot. Racing games, first person shooters, platformers, puzzlers, RPGs, to name a few.

I stayed away from Left 4 Dead on the PC, as I already owned it on Xbox but I did find a fancy in Nation Red, Left 4 Dead 2, Killing Floor, Call of Duty zombie modes and DayZ. These are some of the titles that I played religiously with a few friends hacking, sawing, burning, exploding, impaling, shooting and feeding to the fishes the never ending torrent of infected after my precious, precious brain. Should they ever get to the brain, I'm sure they'd realise just how unfortunate they are that they picked a battle with me, but hey ho, brain's a brain, right?

The thing that I really enjoyed about DayZ was the suspense. Never has a game made me shake with nervous adrenaline before and it's something I loved. I would crawl through the grass with a few comrades, the groaning of the zombies all around, and when I'd think I was in the clear, the panic sets in because I've heard a sniper shot half a click away from my position. It's about finding order in a chaotic world - I think that's the key, that's what I love most about zombie games.

The aforementioned PC titles are still some of my favorites today however, I've added the newer Call of Duty titles to my list (purely for their zombifications), The War Z, Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army and the newly announced Onslaught mode from Blacklight: Retribution. If there's zombies to be culled, you'll find it in my Steam library.