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Comments
It is. But my point is that that situation being frightening doesn't really say anything about zombies. Hence what I said about 700 kittens accomplishing the same thing.
Unless the kittens look really scary, I don't think they achieve the same thing at all.
Maybe lions.
Besides, wouldn't the mark of a good zombie game be one that would feel just as much like a zombie game if they were replaced by kittens?
God damn it. There is $16.25 worth of rpg games I want on sale right now, but I don't have the money for them.
But the entire point of zombies is that they are a swarm and a plague, though.
^^^It's a mark of a good horror game. But if the zombies aren't adding anything to the experience, why are they zombies?
^I thought the entire point of zombies was that they looked human?
This is a stupid argument and you know it. Sometimes, the specifics of a particular game element don't really matter, but you still need to go with something or you wouldn't have a game.
Not that that's necessarily what's happening here but whatever.
Absolutely true; my point is more that I'm not sure zombies actually add anything to a good horror experience.
There are certain types of horror games, and certain types of zombie media, and zombie video games usually focus on the same aspect. It's the same reason Left 4 Dead would be the same with kittens or anything else replacing the zombies (please, noone be a smartass and try to use Payday: The Heist as a counterpoint to this).
Well, the ones that are actually horror games, and not just action games with enemies it's morally okay to kill.
And I'm not sure I buy the Left 4 Dead thing. The regular zombies in that game are utterly inconsequential; they're mostly just something for you to shoot at so you can't constantly be on the lookout for the special ones, which are the actual source of tension.
That's part of it, yeah. But the point is that they are a pretty pessimistic way of looking at humanity and one of the core "features" of this interpretation of humanity is that we are a plague.
And the idea of some rotten body shambling towards you, blood dripping from its mouth, is pretty scary.
It's like, the way they move, the way they hold themselves, the way they act- it's often designed to hit the uncanny valley. And it's often gorey, which is another level of fear.
^^Yeah, but while I see that there's a lot you can do with that, that still doesn't convince me that they improve, or are even best suited to, horror. Especially when it comes to video games.
Basically, my overall thesis is that the tendency for zombie games recently to be more action than horror is less because of any watering-down than because that, not horror, is the only videogame genre that can be improved by their presence.
^True, but in a videogame, you're not watching one rotten body shamble towards you. You're either blowing its head off with a shotgun or charging it with a sword.
You have to notice it before you can kill it.
Individually, they may not be much of a challenge to kill in video games, but there are other ways to provoke horror.
You have to very briefly notice it.
Yes, there are other ways to provoke horror in videogames...but none of them are inherent to zombies.
Yeah but the thing is, video games are normally about empowering the player in one way or another. That is not to say that there aren't games where the player is depowered and put in a desperate situation but simply that such games are the minorities.
With that said, I am curious about your thoughts on Resident Evil 1-3 now.
I haven't played any RE games. The series seems kinda silly.
Well yeah, it's pretty much a Romero movie. And as the sci-fu soap opera antics become more common place, it loses more of the horror feel.
But the thing is that the games were pretty scary due to clever game design, in my opinion. Characters like Nemesis preyed on player preconceptions about what an AI could or could not do and the general ambientation was pretty neat, I think.
Nothing is, really.
I mean, it's not like the idea of humanoid enemies that can be killed without forcing the player into moral quandaries is unique to zombies. You can substitute many things in for zombies in action games without losing anything just as easily as you can substitute many things in for zombies in horror games.
That said, zombies do have a few things about them that are good for horror. They are enemies that look human, but their designs can be animated to produce an uncanny valley effect. They look like humans, but they're also... well, dead, which can lend pretty much anything to their design, from being awkwardly moving human bodies, to being decayed corpses, to being humans with half the skin on their face ripped off and bone protruding from their arms.
They can be everywhere, constantly spawning to simulate the effects of a plague- or they can be continuously respawning, mimicking the undead concept of a zombie, such as they can't be killed.
They can carry disease, infecting you with a variety of things if they damage you. They could potentially force you into a game over with a single bite, if that's how infection is passed on in the story.
They can be children, which would horrify most players.
I mean, imagine the situation. The game requires you to go into a supermarket, looking for supplies. Only, there's zombies in there; people with perhaps a couple of broken arms or legs, lending them a really unnatural gait. They have blood on their faces from feeding on the corpses of their dead families and friends.
They're easy to kill, but the longer you spend in the store, the more zombies spawn. And every time you kill one, it only stays dead for maybe half a minute- and then it rises, bearing new injuries; shattered skulls, imploded ribcages, from where you struck them. And you have to see them, every time they come after you. A single attack from the zombies could result in you getting infected, causing an automatic game over- or perhaps it's not even automatic; perhaps the game simply registers you were infected, and you receive a Bad End once you finish the game. And the longer you spend in the centre, looking for food, the more zombies spawn. Spend too long in there, and you could be facing hundreds of enemies which just don't. stay. down.
REmake for the Gamecube was glorious and now jill is mai waifu
It worked for a number of reasons, but the graphical power and aesthetic certainly helped. The zombies themselves had lots of HP and the environments were confined, so their lack of speed didn't so much hamper them as it hampered your ability to avoid them -- your just had longer to consider the incoming threat.
And then there were times when you knew shit was going to hit the fan and it was going to be your fault. There's a particular thing you have to do which is obviously going to put another obstacle in your path, but it's the only way to progress -- there's this sense of contributing to your own downfall that's pretty nailbiting.
RE has always been a certain degree of silly, but REmake was about as serious as it got, and it worked really well there. Probably because it was a remake of the original game rather than the sort of B-grade film continuity stuff.
There might be something to this, but sometimes I feel like modern culture is just so used to them that they're losing their effect.
True, though a lot of games do that with human enemies already, ignoring unrealism.
Good point. Though I'm not sure any games would actually do that.
Also a good point, though I think that would get a game an AO rating and thus get cut; the closest I've seen are the fetus necromorphs from Dead Space, and those weren't particularly scary...
Now this is actually something that has me convinced. I'm not sure a game has ever done that before, but it would work really well.
REmake does it, actually. If you don't get rid of the zombie corpses properly, they rise again, faster and stronger.
Huh.
I will have to play this game. Evenetually.
I'm pretty sure at least a couple zombie games have played on the whole "inconspicuous little girl zombie flips her shit and eviscerates you" thing, so children aren't off the table.
That's not scary, that's just really cheesy.
It's not horror, but it's definitely something that would make players hesitant.
Or not, I guess, but I'd like to think people would hesitate at shooting a little kid's corpse.
Nobody is ever going to be hesitant about shooting a zombie in a video game. Ever.
Well, unless there's some kind of game mechanic reason, but there usually isn't.
Gah, I added that for a reason, I'm fairly sure, but I can't remember what the reason is. Ask me later.
Is Skyrim 75% off yet
^Nope, it was 50% off a bunch of times. That'll probably happen in Black Friday/Christmas sales.