Zombies in computer and video games
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a list of computer and video games prominently featuring zombies.
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[edit] Modern horror zombies
These games feature creatures inspired by zombies in modern horror films, B-movies and literature (Romero zombies, for example). The storyline behind these creatures may have a biological or scientific theme.
- Area 51 (first-person shooter) - FPS in which humans infected byan airborn mutagen are similar to Zombies.
- Beast Busters - An arcade gun-game in which the players have to shoot their way out of a zombie-infested city.
- BrainBread - A multiplayer Half-Life co-operative mod has players fighting off zombies and becoming zombies themselves.
- City of the Dead - Based on George A. Romero's Dead films. It's creation was cancelled midway through production due to the company building it going out of business.
- Cold Fear - A Coast Guard receives a call to a ship where the military scientist crew are all dead, the dead crew are re-animated by a creature called the exo-cell which gives the corpse an in-satiable hunger for flesh and death.
- Corpse Killer - A video game that was released on SEGA CD which featured a gang of hunters/soldiers who flee from a village full of zombies.
- Dead Awaken - An online text-based MMORPG where players can choose to fight on either the side of the living or the dead.
- Dead Rising - An action/adventure title released by Capcom for the Xbox 360 where the player is trapped inside of a mall filled with thousands of zombies.
- Doom series - The player combats gun-wielding, satanic zombies (among other demons) on the moons of Mars, Mars itself, and Earth. In Doom 3, more traditional zombies were added.
- Duke Nukem: Zero Hour - In this Nintendo 64 game, there are several levels set in the victorian England were the player must fight decomposed corpses reanimated by an alien virus.
- Evil Dead series - based on the film series of the same name, in which the chainsaw- and shotgun-wielding protagonist Ash kills intelligent, sometime comical Deadites.
- House of the Dead series - Zombie blasting arcade games once famed for their extremely violent portrayal of anti-zombie combat.
- Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green - The only Romero-based game ever released, with a parallel story to the movie of the same name.
- The Oneechanbara Released in Europe as Zombie Zone, this PS2 action game involves cutting swathes through an army of undead in modern day Japan. The player character is a bikini-clad young woman armed with a katana.
- Quake - Zombies are one type of monster that appear throughout the game. They may only be killed with explosives.
- Resident Evil series - This quintessential zombie gaming experience features typical flesh-eating zombies (and stranger creatures) created by synthetic means, i.e. mutagenic viruses created by the evil Umbrella Corporation.
- Stubbs the Zombie in "Rebel Without a Pulse" - A third-person game played as the zombie, along with an army of converted zombies.
- They Hunger, A single-player mod for Half-Life, features a three episode trilogy set in rural USA. The scenario is similar to the classic zombie film Night of the Living Dead.
- TimeSplitters - Makes use of zombies, though often in a comical way: the Challenges contain a Behead the Undead series which revolves around the player trying to kill as many zombies as possible before dying. In TimeSplitters 2 the first mission features zombies created in a Soviet lab, and in TimeSplitters: Future Perfect zombies feature from the Mansion of Madness level onwards, and are shown to be the biological predescessors of the titular Timesplitters.
- Typing of the Dead - A spin-off/port of House of the Dead that tries to serve as a typing trainer.
- Urban Dead - Choose to survive as a zombie or a human, this MMORPG puts the player in a fictional city of Malton, which has a zombie problem.
- Zombi – A 1990 arcade adventure. Like Dead Rising, it has a zombies-in-shopping-mall theme inspired by the film Dawn of the Dead.
- Zombies Ate My Neighbors - A SNES/Sega Genesis video game in which zombies and other B-movie monsters ravage suburbia.
- Zombie Panic! This Half-Life mod pits one powerful zombie against a team of underarmed survivors. when the survivors succumb to death, they respawn and play as a zombie for the rest of the round.
- Zombie Revenge Arcade beat 'em up where players choose one of three characters to pummel zombies. Also released for the Sega Dreamcast.
- Zombie Zombie – A 1984 action game with a B-movie inspired plotline.
[edit] Revenants
Revenants are based on folklore; these games may have a supernatural or fantasy theme. Unlike the mass-attack cannabalistic zombies of modern horror, revenants rose from the dead for individual purposes.
- Mortal Kombat: Deception - The character Liu Kang had dies in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance's opening movie, but is resurrected as a zombie by Onaga. Kang returns in his zombie form in Mortal Kombat: Unchained, the PSP port of Deception, and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Deception's sequel. Deception also features numerous zombie-like creatures roaming the lower planes of the Netherealm.
- Siren - The primary enemy of the game, shibito (死人?), are people affected by a local religious ritual gone awry. Shibito in the earlier stages appear and behave predominantly like zombies.
[edit] Vodou zombies
These games use a vodou background for their zombies.
- Shadow Man Players assmue the role of Shadow Man, undead voodoo warrior, to travel back and forth to the world of the dead known as Deadside, where the dead roam freely.
[edit] Fantasy zombies
These fantasy games take the D&D version of the zombie as their basis.
- Various Dungeons & Dragons-based games feature zombies in peripheral roles; for example, Baldur's Gate II features a man returning from the dead as a zombie to wreak vengeance on his family members for a terrible funeral, and Planescape: Torment features a city populated by the undead.
- Diablo series - have zombies, skeletons, and various other undead as monsters.
- Ghosts n' Goblins - This game features an overwhelming abundance of zombies.
- Magic: The Gathering Online - Zombie cards are extensively represented in the online version of the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering.
- Thief: The Dark Project admits every kind of undead creature. Zombies appear throughout the game.
- True Crime: Streets of LA - One of the chapters features the main character (Nick Kang) going into a series of tunnels underneath Los Angeles and facing zombies, demons, and a dragon.
- Kingdom of Loathing - This popular MMORPG includes many different types of zmobies,[sic] undead who primarily populate the mispelled cemetery. variants include grave rober zmobies[sic], zombified zmobies (a zmobie who got sick and died again, then came back to life as a zmobie), conjoined zmombies,[sic] zobmies [sic], and corpulent zobmies. All zmobies subside entirely on braaains. They are kept in check by KWE Wrestler Kitty the Zmobie Basher.
[edit] Parasitic zombies
These games feature parasites that control a human host, making them appear zombie-like.
- Half-Life series - Zombies are created via alien creatures called headcrabs, which take over the victim's nervous system. Half-Life 2 features several zombie variants, including swift and toxic types, as well as another zombie-like creature, the Stalker, who is made through brutal re-engineering (take note that a Stalker is not created from the union of human and headcrab, and ergo not technically a "zombie").
- Halo series - The parasitic Flood bear strong resemblances to most popular conceptions of zombies, including rising from corpses and mindlessly warring against the living. On the other hand, the Flood are able to use weapons and are highly mobile, unlike the typical image of a braindead, lurching zombie. These creatures are also capable of driving vehicles.
- Metroid Prime 2 - The Ing can possess dead Space Fedaration troopers.
[edit] Other
- Abomination: The Nemesis Project - Real-time strategy game where the player must defeat increasingly mutated forms of zombies.
- Alone in the Dark - The game originally believed to spawn the "survival horror" genre of gaming in 1992, most enemies encountered in this game were zombies or other mutant creatures with related features.
- Aurora Watching - Levels 5-6 are full of zombies.
- Dangerous Dave series - Zombies feature in various levels.
- Dead of the Brain 1 & 2 are two gory digital novels similar to Snatcher concerning a zombie outbreak. Released only in Japan for The FM Towns Marty, MSX2, PC-98, and was the final licenced PC Engine game to be released in 1999.
- Disgaea: Hour of Darkness - You play as the lord of the underworld and can fight and recruit different forms of zombies. There is also a major story line in the game where you meet a little girl who "asembles" zombies.
- EarthBound - In this Super Nintendo RPG, zombies humorously invade the town of Threed. In the end, the zombies are defeated by the use of a fly-paper like trap.
- Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem featured four distinct kind of zombies, all relating to ancient and occult gods, and all of varying strengths and alignments to different gods.
- Exanimus - An MMO that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where zombie roam the earth freely.
- Fear Effect - in this four-disc game, an entire disc is devoted to exploring an island community overrun with traditional, green-skinned zombies.
- Flesh Feast 3D - Zombie Hunting PC Game by Sega.
- Judge Dredd: Dredd Vs. Death has zombies (labelled as "The Undead") among its villains, who are most notably encountered in a shopping mall a la Dawn Of The Dead. The so-called "Vampires" in the game also appear more like movie zombies, and behave like the infected in 28 Days Later.
- Killer7 - Unique action/adventure game released on the PS2 and Gamecube. Has players fighting enemies called 'Heaven Smiles' which resemble stereotypical zombies. The game involves shooting their weakpoints in order to create a gush of blood which can be collected to powerup certain skills and abilities.
- MapleStory - Zombies thrive in certain maps of the game.
- Apocalypse Weekend - Add on for the controversial game Postal², the player finds themselves under the delusion that the world is coming to an end and the dead are walking.
- Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness - One of the night time monsters you fight are the zombie-like Revenants. In the game's storyline, Revenants are zombie-like "low power vampires". They were the victims of vampires who drained them completely dry, without giving them some of their vampire blood in return.
- Red Faction 2 - Failed attempts at a genetically altered "super soldier" fail and hordes of the zombie-like creatures occupy later levels in the game.
- Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Zombies are featured as enemies in the game, typically in ancient tombs and other such places. They attack indiscriminately, and will go after Nazis and Allies alike. They have the ability to summon evil spirits, in the form of flying, ethereal skulls, with which to attack the player. Also, one of the bosses is a hulking conglomeration of many zombies fused together, and the console versions feature missions set in Egyptian tombs with animated mummies as enemies. In addition to the normal zombies, there are also armoured Zombie Knights, which resemble skeletal Saxon warriors. They come equipped with either a sword or a hatchet, as well as a shield that can reflect gunfire. Unlike normal zombies, they do not rise up again when killed.
- Tales of Symphonia - The Exbeluas, huge vicious monsters that Exsphere victims mutate into if the Exphere is removed, have been classed as "zombies" by some fans. Even though they are not technically undead, they behave in a zombie-like manner.
- Unreal series - The Necris are a smarter, science fiction variant of zombies.
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines - Players will encounter zombies at various points in the game. Zombies in this game are portrayed as lumbering, weak undead creatures with a hunger for brains.
- The X-Files: Resist or Serve - In one of the subplots, Mulder or Scully fights off a town of the undead.
- Zombie Wars (Role-playing Game)- Text based RPG in which humans have been infected by a supernatural curse turned into zombies. The remaining humans band together to fight against the player controlled zombies on the other side.