Zombies!

Whether you are playing with a bright pink beach ball in the middle of a sunny resort, investigating the insides of an air hangar, looking for supplies in hut surrounded by a hot vast wilderness or simply screaming at the top of your lungs "DIE ZOMBITCH", you are playing a Zombie game. But when it comes down to the sawn-off shotgun, which zombie game is the best? Here's a list of my top picks in the Zombie genre.

1. Left for Dead Series

Let's face it, the L4D series has been one of the most satisfying of the zombie genre for one reason: Stalking. 

Who doesn't love a good stalk? With multiplayer allowing you to play either as a zombie or part of a survival team there are few other titles that simulate actual fear. I actually screamed out loud a few times (read: every-time) when a witch or a jockey popped out of nowhere and viciously attacked my back. The game lacks plot since it expires its use of plot after you play the game through once and it simply becomes who can get to the other side of the map with the most headshots the quickest. Notable maps are the Cornfields and the Fairground. Creepy.

2. DayZ, Arma2mod

You spawn in the middle of a soviet country-side, in the infinitely expanding world called Chenarus, you'll have a bit of food, a drink and maybe a weapon, if you are lucky. There are no objectives, no place to be, your one mission is to simply survive. In an endless landscape you scavenge for supplies and try to avoid the plethora of problems waiting to multiply from your very first step in this bleak landscape. Zombies hang about  more frequent than their living counterparts, they might be dulling prodding themselves against a chicken wire fence, or waiting gormlessly in that house you need to enter for supplies. You might get eaten by zombies, killed by your fellow human players, expire from hunger or thirst, exposure, from your wounds or a number of other reasons. Cautiously approach fellow players, they may want to band up, or murder you for your loot. This will be released as a stand-alone game in the next couple of weeks.

3. C.O.D Blackops/Blackops||: Zombie Mode

Combine this game with scotch and a competitive attitude and you make for some of the best times of your life. This game is best played in company, with your friends (or enemies). Don't play it for the story line, there isn't one, but then again you are playing in a world of magical teddy bears, inexplicable lava outside of bus-stops or even on the moon, and its somehow become infested with zombies, so what do you really expect. The premise is strategy, band together with your fellow player, score points by knifing, building barricades and getting headshots, use the points to get bigger shinier weapons. Try to come up with different ways to survive the increasingly insistent hordes of zombies making their way towards you and your companions. Make it a drinking game. 

4. Dead Island

This title is a delight, if not for the relaxing island resort environs, then for the accidental inclusion of developer’s mode when the game was first released. There was nothing quite like watching your large black protagonist have his arms swing beside him like two pieces of glitching spaghetti. The premise is pretty straightforward, a group of swearing down-to-earthers holidaying on a resort are horribly surprised that the island populace has been re-enervated as flesh eating corpses. Have fun bashing up endless waves with boat oars, beach balls, fistycuffs, guns axes, or seemingly anything you can find laying around. The replayability is limited. But it's good mindless fun, if you like that sort of thing.  

5. Minecraft

Yep, Minecraft. Not simply a zombie survival game, but also a sandbox creation universe in which the sky is the limit to the ways that you can dream up to prevent zombies from blowing up your house, stealing your children, destroying your hard mined and constructed furniture. From its simplistic brightly coloured visuals to its multiplayer success, Minecraft is not to be left out on the list of the greatest zombie survival games ever made.

6. House of the Dead Overkill

I've done a review of house of the dead overkill on my blog before but i have to give it an honourable mention on here because it is so ridiculous it cannot be left out. Few games made good use of the potential for the Wii mote, but this one certainly made it the most fun. From Varla Gunns, the big boobed shot gun toting character to the hideous story line, i can't help but wonder if I’ll ever see zombie games in the same light ever again. This arcade style zombie shooter for the Wii platform makes use of the Wii mote as a gun that you point at the screen and blow zombie brains to high hell, there are power ups, boss fights and tits, what more could you ask of a zombie game. HOTD doesn't try to take itself seriously; it is most definitely a stand-alone satire title that delivers the most fun for buck.

7. Resident Evil

No zombie game list would be complete without including this series. This cult classic is the mother of the entire zombie/horror survival genre and it all started with Jil Valentine and Chris Redfield trapped in a Mansion without a cure for the now infamous T-virus. This title was a rare blend of excellent story and great action combat dynamics. The legacy this game has left behind has inspired almost every zombie movie and game to date.

8. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct

This game follows on from the popular TV series of the same name. It pulls from the difficult decision making P.O.V of the protagonist Rick from the TV series and puts you in the shoes of the leader of a group of survivors. The gameplay is features Daryl Dixon as the first person shooter, who fights the walking dead on his journey towards Atlanta. You must decide whether to help or leave people along the way making tough decisions you think will best help your group survive. 

9. Dead Space

Taking place hundreds of years in the future, you, the protagonists exist in a world where earth’s natural resources have been exhausted. Having mastered space travel humans use a process known as cracking to travel to different planets and strip mine them of their resources before returning to earth. On a routine mission to Ishimura something has gone wrong, signalled by the violent imagery of corpses splattered about the walls and limb strewn on the floor. In this universe zombies go by the name of Necromorphs and you play as Isaac Clarke an engineer aboard the ship who must make his way to escape the horrors aboard the ship.

10. The Last of Us

Humanity has been decimated by a virus, the remaining survivors risk becoming contaminated and controlled by a fungus, turning them into zombie-like creatures. Plot-driven post-apocalyptic zombie games are my favourite. For a zombie game this one has the most believable human relationships throughout which set it apart from its somewhat tacky neighbours in the zombie genre. Use your resources widely; alcohol and rags could make a medi-kit or a Molotov cocktail, which would be more useful in this world of limited supplies.

Fable |||: The chicken kickening

Fable ||| is the kind of game that will have you creating a depression in your couch so large it may actually engulf you. This is the one true power of all greatest of video games. The great thing about Fable is that the protagonist has just the right mix of personality and vagueness that makes it the perfect mould for any prospective player to really see themselves as the character. Unlike Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, whose main character Ezio was so vapid most people have a hard time even pretending they want to be him, Fable ||| allows you to immerse yourself in the world of Albion like a Duck to a bread crumb. Isn't that what great games are all about, the character? (Sorry C.O.D players, guess you're shit out of luck.)

Fable ||| kind of picks up where 2 left off. You arrive in a less than ideal version of Albion. Your mother, or father (depending on which gender you select at the start of the game) was the last hero of Albion and you are one of her/his children. Now your evil sibling has become a tyrant and rules over Albion with an iron fist the likes of which no peasant comments come close to vilifying enough. You are the naive pampered prince or princess of Albion and when you discover your brother has gone mad and the decisions he has been making you decide to confront him.

There’s only one thing going to come of an underdog royal ousted by their sibling, that’s right, a struggle for power. I won't put too many spoilers in but the game is split into two main parts, the first your journey to oust your brother from the throne and usher in a new era of peace and kindness and all the good things, because that's the kind of ruler you would be wouldn't you, everything will be peaches. Until the second half arrives and with it a twist so emotionally frustrating you'll find yourself jumping out of your couch depression and yelling at the screen. If any of you played Fable 2 I liken it to the end scene with the dog. It's that heart-wrenching.

The game has all of the staple elements that make fable so playable, the immense capacity to wander with the ease of quick travel if you aren't in the mood to roam. The comic characters juxtaposed with the plain tragic. The longing transvestites, who you'll marry, mixed with the dark deeds you secretly hope your lover will never discover. But these things have been done in the previous Fables, the tried and true at the heart of what we all play RPG's for, what has Fable 3 really brought to the table that hasn't been thoroughly digested already? The answer to that is not much; the combat is pretty much identical all be it slightly easier once you have levelled up your magic to the point where you just hold down B before limply removing your thumb to enjoy the decimation of wave after wave of hollow men.

You can use melee or magic and despite it not being all that necessary I found myself using a mixture of both just to increase the difficulty and to give myself the illusion that I was playing a game that required me to use more than one button. The game has some interesting areas too, particularly the desert called Shifting Sands and its city of Aurora. This is where the second half of the game gets interesting as the kingdom of Albion faces a great threat from across the seas and you must begin to make some hard decisions on how to deal with it.

Ultimately Fable 3 is an exquisitely playable game with an ending that crashes abruptly to a halt with all the subtlety of a faked orgasm.