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Naughty Dog - going from making one of the best series ever, playing a game that felt different to all the other games being released at the time.
Now? A zombie game. Really, Sony? Really?
God, I hope it turns out differently than I'm already expecting. :(
It looks like I am Legend crossed with Uncharted which on paper sounds great but there have been way to many zombie games already. Given that it's a Naughty Dog project I've got high hopes for this one.
Hey, it could be worse. They could be taking a familiar IP and trying to rebuild it into a completely different game that just tries to pack in with an already over-filled market. Y'know, like taking X-Com and making a shooter out of it. At least Uncharted is probably going to remain untouched.
I never actually thought zombie games were overdone. Not good ones, at least.
I'm excited to see what they do with this one. I won't be playing it, because I don't have a PS3 (nor do I have any intention of buying one), but I'm interested to see how it turns out, nonetheless.
Zombies as enemies are getting boring, zombies kill people just because they're zombies and that's what zombies do. Make the enemy someone with a motive (other than "braaaaains!!!") and we might have a great plot on our hands!
Every time this complaint rolls around I have the same reaction: Please show me all these zombie games that I have missed. Because there are plenty of games out there where zombies are an enemy, but they could just as easily be replaced with commies or nazis or robots or aliens or what have you. Zombies have shallow motives? Sure, find me a videogame where the enemy doesn't and I'll show you a rare gem. These are Not Zombie Games™, they are games which happen to include zombies. You might as well complain about a new SSX because there are ice levels in Sonic. Rye talks about an angle on zombies here and she's pretty much spot on; if the zombie apocalypse isn't about the survivors, then it's not a piece of zombie media.
Games which are actually about zombies are pretty smurfing rare, in fact I can think of Project Zomboid, Dead State, Dead Rising, Dead Island (debatable for the same reason), RDR: Undead Nightmare and that's it. Probably a few flash games knocking around as well.
If you can't spot that zombies are a massive 'thing' at the moment in video games, you're not noticing many video games. Even Call of Duty has zombies these days. And perhaps you're confusing my definition of zombies with the "particular" definition of zombies. I don't mean "Undead, those who raise from the dead, those who eat brains." I mean "those who have no mind for themselves and are basically strong humans with the brain of a predatory animal." They are a cheap way to get out of having to come up with an enemy which is intelligent and a cheap way to get out of a good plot. I know that there can be good games with them, but there comes a point where it feels like every other game is just another zombie game and that's when it becomes kind of annoying, especially when it comes from studios like Naughty Dog who quite frankly are good enough to do games that aren't already overdone. I do hope that they come up with something really interesting though, something unique and inventive. Either that or have an epic plot, or awesome characters. But if I want to play a game with zombies, I tend to just wait for the next L4D game in order to get my fix.
Anyway. Since 2008.
Dead Nation, Dead Block, Dead Space, Dead Space 2, Dead Rising 2, Left4Dead, Left4Dead 2, Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies, Yakuza: Dead Souls, Rock of the Dead, Zombie Panic in Wonderland, Zombie Wranglers, Undead Knights, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, Zombie Tycoon, Burn Zombie Burn!, Plants vs. Zombies, Zombie Apocalypse, I Made a Game with Zombies in It!, Shellshock 2: Blood Trails, The Last Guy, Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ, Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys!, Killing Floor, OneeChanbara Revolution, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, Resident Evil: Revelations, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Resident Evil 4 HD, Resident Evil Code: Veronica X, The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return, The House of the Dead: Overkill, Silent Hill Homecoming, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Silent Hill: Downpour.
From one list I found online, anyway. I recognise well over half of those titles.
EDIT: Perhaps the weird thing is that I'd enjoy it if they returned to a 'slow moving' zombie game purely because I'm so sick of the current 'generation' of zombies. xD
Yeah I agree; zombie games are getting boring. Where are all the games where monkeys, pirates, and food are the enemies?
No offense to anyone intended, but ironically the first thought that popped in my head is that Naughty Dog is literally trying to get closer to their target audience.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loony BoB
Agreed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loony BoB
Anyway, on the subject. I thought the first trailer with the real footage was promising because it hinted more to a global protest/revolution thing. Now that it's zombies it's just meh. A little cliché like Loony BoB mentioned.
First off, I agree with everything Milf said. Which is why I disagree with this point very strongly. The draw of zombies is that they are a mindless, effectively endless, untiring horde, and what that means for the survivors in a world over run. Yeah, zombies can be used as a cheap way out of having an interesting story. Just like Nazi's, Russians, monsters with a vague or non-existent back story, giant turtles who kidnap princesses because, well, why not, and evil sorcerers who want to rule the world because they're evil.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loony BoB
The problem you have isn't with zombies, it's with lazy game developers jumping on the bandwagon with a popular trend. Just like what happened 10+ years ago when Medal of Honor came out and every FPS had Nazi's, and just like every other time period and media in history has and continues to do.
I recognize a lot of those titles too. Funny thing is most of the ones I recognize are either re-releases of games that have been out for years or not actually zombie games. For many of the rest, zombies are incidental. They could be replaced with just about anything else and nothing would be lost from the games.Quote:
Anyway. Since 2008.
Dead Nation, Dead Block, Dead Space, Dead Space 2, Dead Rising 2, Left4Dead, Left4Dead 2, Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies, Yakuza: Dead Souls, Rock of the Dead, Zombie Panic in Wonderland, Zombie Wranglers, Undead Knights, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, Zombie Tycoon, Burn Zombie Burn!, Plants vs. Zombies, Zombie Apocalypse, I Made a Game with Zombies in It!, Shellshock 2: Blood Trails, The Last Guy, Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ, Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys!, Killing Floor, OneeChanbara Revolution, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, Resident Evil: Revelations, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Resident Evil 4 HD, Resident Evil Code: Veronica X, The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return, The House of the Dead: Overkill, Silent Hill Homecoming, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Silent Hill: Downpour.
From one list I found online, anyway. I recognise well over half of those titles.
So the question becomes quite simple to me really: is Naughty Dog a talented enough developer to make a zombie game that features a well told and thought out story and, if not bring something new to it, tell an interesting story well? Past experience is telling me it's a bit silly to doubt them now.
While true, it's also down to the sheer number of games hopping on that mainstream has meant, for me at least, that they have already explored all the avenues and reached all heights that current consoles can reach. I concede a fear that I can already know what to expect out of zombie games (same goes for post-nuclear war games) that come out these days. Yes, WWII games were overdone at one point, too, and perhaps still are. But that's the point - 'beating a dead horse' can be done. Vampire films/TV shows... sure, you might be able to count them on your fingers over the past few years but they're prominent enough to become very tiresome. There is no niche for this anymore, no aspect of these games that piques my interest. Nothing groundbreaking, nothing new, nothing daring, nothing original, nothing that we havent already played a few times over. When that happens, I start looking for something a little different.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vivi22
I do hope it turns out differently than I fear but the fear is there and the sadness is there that they have gone closer to the cliché FPS rather than further away. I hope, though, that you guys are right and that Naughty Dog prove me wrong because if there is any developer out there who can prove me wrong, I'm sure it will be them. I hope infected are few in number and that it's not a warpath through hundreds of them per level. I hope that bullets are rare, that exploration is key, that there is something different about the infected (eg. to take a note from Shattered Dreamer, they could be hurt by sunlight, and we could have our characters explore during the day and fortify at night... stuff like that), stuff like this... fingers crossed!
:zombert:
Yes,Quote:
Originally Posted by Loony BoB
and my point was that "inclusion of zombies as enemies" does not equate to "zombie games" in any meaningful way. CoDBLOPS is not about zombies, and including zombies as enemies does not make it a piece of "zombie media", it just makes it a game which happens to have a zombie-themed bonus as an aside from the meat of the game. There is a difference, fundamentally, between a piece of zombie media and a piece of media which happens to include zombies.Quote:
there are plenty of games out there where zombies are an enemy
Yes how strange that I would use the definition of zombies that everyone else uses rather than your particular definition :p My point is that what the zombies 'are' is less important than how they are used. They are an omnipresent, particularly horrific natural disaster, and the point of zombies is how the survivors react to the situation, not mowing through hordes of them. Don't get me wrong the second one can be a lot of fun, but the zombies of a game like that can be handily replaced with any of a dozen other stock enemies in videogames and there's not a lot of difference. If this is possible it is not a zombie game.Quote:
And perhaps you're confusing my definition of zombies with the "particular" definition of zombies. I don't mean "Undead, those who raise from the dead, those who eat brains." I mean "those who have no mind for themselves and are basically strong humans with the brain of a predatory animal."
Almost none of those are zombie games. They are just games which use zombies. If you seriously have a problem with people using zombies a lot then fine, but the solution is not to complain "abloo bloo bloo too many zombie games :crying:", it is to demand that zombies actually get used for something useful rather than being a generic enemy. To that end you should probably be supportive of a company you really like doing a zombie game because they might actually make, you know, a zombie game rather than a shooter that just has zombies in it!Quote:
Huge Ass List
On this part we agree at least xDQuote:
EDIT: Perhaps the weird thing is that I'd enjoy it if they returned to a 'slow moving' zombie game purely because I'm so sick of the current 'generation' of zombies. xD
Fake edit 'cause you posted again
If you think zombies don't still have potential to make some seriously interesting games then you don't know trout about zombies and are desperately unimaginative. Developers being lazy does not mean the subject of their laziness is exhausted, especially because they're all using them in the same way. Just because they change the zombies into mutated sapient foreskins doesn't mean the core gameplay will change if they're not being original, and the presence or absence of zombies is only indicative of dev laziness, it isn't make games worse in itself.Quote:
While true, it's also down to the sheer number of games hopping on that mainstream has meant, for me at least, that they have already explored all the avenues and reached all heights that current consoles can reach. I concede a fear that I can already know what to expect out of zombie games (same goes for post-nuclear war games) that come out these days. Yes, WWII games were overdone at one point, too, and perhaps still are. But that's the point - 'beating a dead horse' can be done. Vampire films/TV shows... sure, you might be able to count them on your fingers over the past few years but they're prominent enough to become very tiresome. There is no niche for this anymore, no aspect of these games that piques my interest. Nothing groundbreaking, nothing new, nothing daring, nothing original, nothing that we havent already played a few times over. When that happens, I start looking for something a little different.
As I said: Project Zomboid.Quote:
I do hope it turns out differently than I fear but the fear is there and the sadness is there that they have gone closer to the cliché FPS rather than further away. I hope, though, that you guys are right and that Naughty Dog prove me wrong because if there is any developer out there who can prove me wrong, I'm sure it will be them. I hope infected are few in number and that it's not a warpath through hundreds of them per level. I hope that bullets are rare, that exploration is key, that there is something different about the infected (eg. to take a note from Shattered Dreamer, they could be hurt by sunlight, and we could have our characters explore during the day and fortify at night... stuff like that), stuff like this... fingers crossed!
I know about Project Zomboid, I'm talking about the games that are a little more mainstream and, uh, "finished", for lack of a better word. But you probably knew that. :) I do like my little indy games from time to time (and more often than not that time lasts quite some time once I get into it!) - as you're probably aware - but I still want my epic games!
And saying that my definition of zombies is inaccurate is like saying I Am Legend is not a zombie flick. :p Technically, they are 'infected', not dead... but let's face it, we all call them zombies. :p
Is it fair to call them zombies? I was getting far more of an I Am Legend feel from it.
I'm excited to see what it's actually going to be about and how the gameplay is. It's Naughty Dog, so I can only expect it to be awesome.
I Am Legend had vampires not zombies.