Gamertell

Let me tell you a little thing about zombies. They’re evil, undead, unstoppable and they really like brains. If there’s anything videogames have taught us over the years, it’s that zombies are not your friends, and any sane person will have a zombie apocalypse survival plan handy in the event that the dead walk the earth.

The most obvious place to gather incriminating evidence is the Resident Evil series, built around the foundation that zombies are the product of evil, corporate-greed induced scientific irresponsibility (the T-virus, manufactured by the Umbrella corporation). But zombies have been an (evil!) part of the videogame landscape long before RE landed in the US, bad dialogue intact, in 1996. The Castlevania and Doom series each had their share of zombie enemies through the years, Beast Buster was a 1989 arcade game set in a city overrun with the undead, the entire House of the Dead series (which hit the scene around the same time as Resident Evil) has always been about necessary zombie blasting (of the “shoot them before they eat your face” variety), and the list goes on nigh forever.

Zombies, as they appear in most games, are soulless, ruthless, brainless creatures intent on nothing more than having your brain for lunch. Few things short of a shotgun blast to the head will stop them, and they have a terrifying knack for amassing strength in numbers.

Just about the scariest thing about these creatures, aside from the obvious murderous intentions bit, is the fact that they can turn your friends - or yourself - into one of them. One minute, you could be a happy family, staking out a safe place in the midst of an attack, and the next, mom’s going right for your jugular. There’s something inherently terrifying in that ability to infiltrate safe psychological spaces (i.e. turn that trusted friend against you). Surely there’s social commentary behind the whole shebang – ideas about blind conformity and the tyranny of the majority are thinly veiled behind the blood and guts. Even more specifically, the RE series has always had that scientific responsibility subtext hiding behind each chapter’s vaguely shlocky plot.

The bottom line – next time a bloodthirsty animated corpse comes your way, you’d be wise to shoot first and ask questions later. Much later.

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