Left 4 Dead 2
There are purists who will say that the first Left 4 Dead is the quintessential zombie game and that its sequel is a cash-grabbing wannabe. But when said sequel has assimilated all the levels of the first—upping the scale and upping the spectacle while preserving that incredibly pure four-players-against-the-world conceit—it’s hard to see it as anything other than superior.
Left 4 Dead imagines zombies (or "infected", to be precise) as a crashing wave rather than a lingering, overwhelming presence. A quiet courtyard can become a screaming death zone in seconds. In the sequel especially, the gore system can reduce charging creatures to a hobbled mess, and trailing guts effects recall the overwrought gore SFX of old video nasties. The result is a satisfying, bloody co-operative massacre that grows in intensity as the round progresses. Left 4 Dead generates great survivor stories, and features one of the best realisations of a zombie horde in PC gaming.
Resident Evil
In 1996, Resident Evil coined the phrase “survival horror”. It was more than a snappy marketing line—Resident Evil was a counterpoint to previous horror games and to the other standouts of ‘96: Tomb Raider, Quake and Duke Nukem 3D made you unstoppable, whereas Resident Evil made you vulnerable.
Sure, you're Raccoon City special forces, but that still makes you human, reliant on scarce ammunition and the element of surprise to make it from one room to the next. And Resident Evil loves to take the latter away from you. Tank controls were outdated even for the day, but they were kept in to force ponderous, agonising reactions to quick and bitey foes. Unlike Left 4 Dead, just one of these zombies can cause serious damage.
Resident Evil 4
A contentious entry, because the lumbering antagonists of Resident Evil 4 aren’t technically zombies. The Ganados are compelled to behave like the undead, though, stumbling slowly toward Leon with pitchforks and muttered curses. They embody the zombie shambler archetype, but Resi 4 peps it up with a nasty twist—an ordinary enemy can split their melon and start flailing at you with a writhing mass of claws in scenes you might expect from a medieval remake of The Thing.
It’s easy to make fun of the Resident Evil games for the corny dialogue and wayward vocal work, but they’re clever with their source material. Resi 1 was an excellent haunted house. Resi 4 is a pastiche of deepest darkest Europe. It’s a grim cross between the Germanic woodlands and Transylvania, a mythological parallel dimension full of dark villages and castles where cultists and crocodiles live side by side. There they wait for an earnest outsider to come a-wandering. Leon, fuelled by naive determination and a curtain haircut, fends them off in claustrophobic, desperate combat.
Plants vs. Zombies
Back in 2009 PopCap was on a roll. Thanks to Bejeweled and Peggle it became known for creating colourful and compulsive short-session games. Plants vs. Zombies continued that trend, pitting waves of zombies against their most feared foes: potted plants powered by blobs of congealed sunshine.
The Walking Dead
The undead threat can feel a little blasé now, but we forget when staring down the horde of B-grade zombie shooters that the apocalypse’s best stories aren’t about animate corpses at all, but the human dramas that unfold around them. The Walking Dead was about people, which is why Telltale’s formula is as successful as a zombie game as it (almost) is with fairytale werewolves.
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