The walking dead have been trampling over our games for decades. Are the flesh eating parasites still wanted or do they need a shotgun to the head? Two of our editors go head-to-head to fight it out on how relevant zombies are in today’s gaming.

Jacob | Case Against

Zombie games have become a largely growing fad with video games over the past few years. Games like Left4Dead, Left4Dead 2, Dead Rising, Dead Rising 2, ZombiU, WarZ, Dead Island, the Call of Duty Zombie series hit the industry like a ton of bricks, Plants Vs. Zombies, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare DLC, Borderlands: Zombie Island of Dr. Ned DLC, Dead Space, Dead Space 2, and not to mention the mobile android and iOS based games that are simply flooded with zombie games. Search the Xbox arcade for Zombies and see an unlimited amount of zombie themed games. At least, you will discover that zombie based games or games featuring some form of zombie-like material are more abundant than other themes such as superheroes, vampires, sea monsters, ghosts, outer space, aliens, underwater, animal, or dinosaurs to name a few.

Now there is a reason why games like Resident Evil, Medieval, House of the Dead, Silent Hill, Half-Life, Stubbs the Zombie, as well as other 90′s and early 2000′s zombie based games were not mentioned. Series like these were established before zombie games took off like they did a few years ago. You know a theme took off when you start seeing DLC’s in each game based after it. Does anyone remember the last DLC or add-on for a superhero or werewolf themed game play.

The point here being, zombies have invaded everything gaming wise and will lose their fervency at some point only to be replaced by another theme…or will it? It is not a matter of being a good or bad game, and yes zombies are a very flammable and plausible concept when considering game writing and development. What will the next fad be? Will there even be a next fad? Could zombies have their pick at what game they wish to theme in for all gaming time to come?

Full Article including APM's argument in favour of zombies.

vampires!

I just played zombieU and my heart is still THUMPING!

Having said that. The zombie craze came out of children growing up with res evil. What ever gave 8 yr olds an adrenaline rush in the last decade will be the next adolecent phenom.

I will say yes, im a massive fan of zombie games nothing beats unloading a 12gauge into the many faces of the walking dead.

the thing is that there are a ton of zombie games and VERY little good ones, i been looking for a good zombie game on PS3 and there are only two i actually thought were good, undead nightmare and dead island. Dead island was a lot of fun, bad story but the game its self was really fun, and undead was a great add on that just costs 10 bucks. when i play a zombie game i dont want to kill a thousand zombie's like they are ants, i want to feel that im surviving, that i cant take them all down by my self, and that if im not careful im in deep shit!

gotta agree with that one.  maybe next gen we can get a better zombie game when there a real chance of having thousands of zombies on screen.

I never classified the Dead Space enemies as "zombies". Also, if the game is good, I don't care what type of enemies it has.

we can have enough zombie's on screen, the problem is developers dont make hard games any more. and a zombie game should be hard. thats what i liked about dead island, it wasnt actually hard, but when i could aviod combat i sure as hell did. i didnt need to get into a fight with every zombie i see. i hope that the last of us will make it that way and that i cant kill a million zombies without a sweat, its called survival for a reason, i tried playing black ops2 zombies the other day and it was a joke, we really need a good zombie game, and i hope that the last of us will be that one that makes a shift in the industry 

I played the Zombi U demo and it scared the fuck out of me!  Never had such a feeling that things were just going to go to shit and there was nothing I could do about it.  The game is very well done (though I'd like a strong narrative).  I'm not going to buy it but the game is damn good, if the demo is anything to go by.

Zombi games are slowly dieing. Even though there's a lot of them but not as much as the earlier gen's.