I hate zombies

I’m done. I quit.

When Dead Rising came out, zombies were a cool but slightly overused phenomenon, a fantastic enemy who allowed for the creation of a lot of interesting game types. Making a zombie game out of personal favorite RPG Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (the obvious, overlooked inspiration for Dead Rising) seemed to open a lot of possibilities. Following that were Left 4 Dead and Plants vs. Zombies, two interesting takes on zombies that took their positivie traits (the slow, shambling nature, the overwhelming nature) and combined them with other good ideas. Plants vs. Zombies built on the overwhelming invasion idea, while Left 4 Dead took them and made a cooperative, “hey guys let’s survive the apocalypse” experience out of them.

Then Call of Duty happened. I’m going to blame Call of Duty: World at War for everything in the world being wrong. World at War took a good game and appended zombies to it, for the sole purpose of being memorable. No innovations, no good ideas, just…hey guys, look! Fucking zombies.

And now they’re everywhere. They’re taking formerly respectable franchises and turning them into zombie apocalypse titles (Yakuza). They’re invading DLC of proud franchises, and shitting all over them. Most damningly, we have Red Dead Redemption, a fairly serious western, now having…zombies. Why? Because zombies! Zombies sell! Focus groups like zombies.

I’m done. I’m done. The presence of zombies, those once exciting enemies, is now a deal breaker to me. I can’t take them. This is worse than World War 2 shooters four years ago, because at least then you didn’t have every fucking game with Hitler plastered on the walls. Now, you have to look to find a franchise that doesn’t have zombies.

And I’m sick of them. I’m really, truly sick of them.