Favorite/Best Zombie Video Game?

[Owlslayer]

Playing Expert mode on L4D with my friends was a lot of fun, definitely the most fun I had with the game but the appeal went away too quickly (also two of my friends suck so it made the game way too hard, haha)

Totally agree with ya there, it truly is loads of fun when played with friends. And i agree, you need all 4 people to be good enough to handle expert, it`s so damn easy to ruin a game.
Also, another problem i had was, well, one of my friends was an awful griefer, and it really got annoying to play with him. Tho the appeal of the game didn`t really go away for me because of the AI director and all, every game you never knew when a tank will come, or what would happen next, only that most likely, it`ll involve zombies.

Wow, no love for Killing Floor? That's definitely my favorite.

God dammit, i totally forgot to add that. It`s a great game in my opinion, tho again, the difficulty is pretty damn high. I´ve only completed a few maps on hard difficulty, but with some, i have no idea how I´d be able to do it...
Still, a great game, love it.

 

[Aprilgold]

I don't really play a lot of zombie games as I do game with zombies in them, but since I don't really play a lot of those either, I have to give this one to Plants vs. Zombies. It's fun, takes up a fair amount of my time, and I actually enjoy the zombies that I'm fighting.

Trust me, we could very easily replace zombies with trolls or weird space aliens and it would still be the same exact concept, programming wise. Zombies exist because they are great cannon fodder in a game.*
[small]*I meant in a game, continue reading before your kneejerk and quote me.[/small]

Idk, I guess I'm crazy for associating zombies with horror.

Well yeah. Zombies are not scary at all. Ever.

They can make for tense as shit games if used right but they have NEVER been actually scary.

Also Left 4 dead 2 is far better then any call of duty and dead rising 1 isboth challenging and funny as hell.

Wow. Way to misunderstand. When did I say scary ? I said HORROR. And I said Left for Dead LOOKED like COD. (obviously it has zombies instead of ppl though)

Left 4 Dead doesn't look like CoD at all, or even has a likeness of it. And the zombies don't shoot you, you have a health bar, your gun has a flashlight which is necessary, the maps take place at night, and has a health collection system with inventory management and squad gameplay. CoD hasn't done inventory management or squad of 4 gameplay yet. I'm just saying that this is kinda incorrect since most of the points are all visual points, which you can see in seconds of a gameplay trailer. If you do so for CoD you see there is no health bar, enemies shoot at you, your in a group of people bigger then four, your gun has ammo and you carry around a machine gun and a shotgun if you wish, theres a radar, no enemy type is special and there is no inventory management with items.

Killing floor, it's the good parts of left for dead and zombies combined.

Technically monsters and not zombies. The enemies are very much alive and are just test experiments, their not exactly 'dead' but your still correct because they obviously got inspiration from L4D and the common enemy is basically a zombie.

Dead Rising, very fun combat and its made by capcom, took the best bit of Resident Evil 4, sillied it up a bit and made it's combat more interesting, once again. YOU CAN'T TOP THAT!*[small] in my opinion[/small]

 

[Burntpopcarn]

Left 4 dead 2
Halo combat evolved (the flood are basically zombies, right?)
CoD zombies

 

[Scarim Coral]

To me it's either Resident Evil 4 or House of the Dead: Overkill. Resi 4 was more enjoyable due to the better control while Overkill was just good olde arcade like fun (I love the "Relord" voice in that game").

 

[As Seen On 360]

Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse.

When it comes to zombie games it's the only one I've played with an original concept. Everything else wants to see how long you can survive while Stubbs wanted to see how many people you could infect. Add to that a mob of your own minions that you can increase through methods other than biting such as gaseous AoE attacks.

Also the fact that it was a game set in a 1950's alternate universe where we already had hover cars and all sorts of technological wonder. The period allowed for some unusual humor to slip in, such as the multiple songs thrown in that put an upbeat spin on odd situations. The most notable I can remember is "Lollipop".

Spoiler: Imagine this playing while you're cannibalizing 50s social stereotypes

It had a story that surprised you as well, alongside all the mindless mayhem. I can't remember exactly what happens but you (Stubbs) died because of the actions of the men who turned the place into a mechanical monstrosity, which subsequently saw you ironically ressurected due to chemical experimentation that seeped into your grave (which is then at the heart of the city after much urban development). You end toppling down the symbol of developing americana that killed and warped your body to begin with, quite a poetic situation.

To sum it all up in terms of familiarity, you could easily mistake this game for being a product by Tim Schafer, with all the quirky comedy, inventive game mechanics and surprisingly good story.

 

[idodo35]

my favorate is L4D2
but zombie games isnt really a genre... i mean sure zombies usually star in survival horour games but even a game like PVZ is still a zombie geme! (a preaty good one actually) and it has nothing to do and no way to compare with the likes of L4D2 or dead rising...
they are just diffrent...

 

[Soxafloppin]

I'm not a huge fan of the Genre. I choose Dead Nation as one of my Free PSN games, because I already had Infamous and only it and LBP(regrettably) interested me.

I loved it though! Its so frantic and fun! I ended up Platinuming it.

 

[wurrble182]

dead island did it for me, the combat was vicious and satisfying, the setting was at once surreal and gorgeous, the loot and upgrading system was bags of fun, i like all of these things enough to forgive the god awful acting and glitches, so it's my #1

 

[DanielBrown]

Dead Island, probably. Played that game for several days straight and started over immedietly after completing it. It had a lot of flaws, and got pretty repetative, but I still had a damn lot of fun with it.
Haven't played that many zombie games, tbh. Not very intrested in them.

 

[Right Hook]

Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse.

When it comes to zombie games it's the only one I've played with an original concept. Everything else wants to see how long you can survive while Stubbs wanted to see how many people you could infect. Add to that a mob of your own minions that you can increase through methods other than biting such as gaseous AoE attacks.

Also the fact that it was a game set in a 1950's alternate universe where we already had hover cars and all sorts of technological wonder. The period allowed for some unusual humor to slip in, such as the multiple songs thrown in that put an upbeat spin on odd situations. The most notable I can remember is "Lollipop".

Spoiler: Imagine this playing while you're cannibalizing 50s social stereotypes

It had a story that surprised you as well, alongside all the mindless mayhem. I can't remember exactly what happens but you (Stubbs) died because of the actions of the men who turned the place into a mechanical monstrosity, which subsequently saw you ironically ressurected due to chemical experimentation that seeped into your grave (which is then at the heart of the city after much urban development). You end toppling down the symbol of developing americana that killed and warped your body to begin with, quite a poetic situation.

To sum it all up in terms of familiarity, you could easily mistake this game for being a product by Tim Schafer, with all the quirky comedy, inventive game mechanics and surprisingly good story.

Nice choice! I think you are the first one to mention Stubs, definitely a lot of fun and a really cool take on the "zombie" game, probably one of very few games that offer an alternate perspective. This game is pretty underrated and was all but forgotten (at least it seems that way to me). I really liked it and it's probably my little brothers favorite zombie game.

 

[As Seen On 360]

Nice choice! I think you are the first one to mention Stubs, definitely a lot of fun and a really cool take on the "zombie" game, probably one of very few games that offer an alternate perspective. This game is pretty underrated and was all but forgotten (at least it seems that way to me). I really liked it and it's probably my little brothers favorite zombie game.

Zombies as a whole have become a diluted issue in gaming. It's sad because there was a time when they served purposes in culture, either scaring you or making you laugh, depending on the subject matter of the movie/game.

Now they're just trivialized novelty cameos in games that didn't really want them. Even Left 4 Dead muddies their reputation by making them a fish in a barrel enemy, they never truly scare you or make you nervous to round that next corner. It's all about competition now, who contributed the most to mowing down the zombies, who did it quickly, who got the most multi-kills. The point being that the zombies were an after thought in that game design, any enemy could have replaced zombies and the game wouldn't have to be reworked to accomodate.

I fear for the day when games like Amnesia turn into a time trial centric affair, when it's no longer about being paralyzed in fear as you refuse to leave that wing of the dark castle. Instead it'll just be about memorizing a level's layout, replaying it to the point where you've got it memorized, and beating your friend's time. As far as I'm concerned most of the "horror" games coming out now are FPS that just happen to include monsters.

 

[Right Hook]

Zombies as a whole have become a diluted issue in gaming. It's sad because there was a time when they served purposes in culture, either scaring you or making you laugh, depending on the subject matter of the movie/game.

Now they're just trivialized novelty cameos in games that didn't really want them. Even Left 4 Dead muddies their reputation by making them a fish in a barrel enemy, they never truly scare you or make you nervous to round that next corner. It's all about competition now, who contributed the most to mowing down the zombies, who did it quickly, who got the most multi-kills. The point being that the zombies were an after thought in that game design, any enemy could have replaced zombies and the game wouldn't have to be reworked to accomodate.

I fear for the day when games like Amnesia turn into a time trial centric affair, when it's no longer about being paralyzed in fear as you refuse to leave that wing of the dark castle. Instead it'll just be about memorizing a level's layout, replaying it to the point where you've got it memorized, and beating your friend's time. As far as I'm concerned most of the "horror" games coming out now are FPS that just happen to include monsters.

That's a good point, using zombies outside of the context of horror is a problem, Left for Dead isn't a scary game 90% of the time. I think the horror genre as a whole is suffering from not really being scary, probably because the games are being diluted so everyone can finish them. Some genres this isn't such a huge issue but when you remove difficulty from survival horror, you inadvertently remove tension as well. Too many games rely too heavily on arsenals of weapons, when they'd be better off with no weapons or the security found in having a gun to be extremely fleeting because you only have four bullets and you are just praying you can find enough ammo to top off your clip before the next creature shambles forward out of the dark.

 

[The Weaver]

Just to throw something out there that hasn't been said before, that I find a bit underrated: http://projectzomboid.com/blog/
A rather good survival game with a bit more realistic take on a zombie apocalypse, being: there is no cure and you will die.