If you’ve ever seen me walking around campus, you might notice how my gaze shifts from the tops of structures, down the winding paths between buildings to how the architecture inside the MU Student Center is constructed. I’m not admiring anything, simply calculating which locations to never visit in the inevitable case of a zombie invasion.
Because of this, I’m very picky when it comes to my zombie video games. “Dead Rising” was too unrealistic and “Left 4 Dead” was too linear. The Nazi Zombies feature in “Call of Duty: World at War” was simply an afterthought. “Dead Island” came close to satisfying my undying love of the undead with its open-world exploration and scavenging system, but I’m still looking for more. Let me tell you how it should be.
When you are playing a zombie game, you want the setting to be as realistic as possible to help you train for when you’re actually facing the brain-hungry suckers yourself (right?!). In all honesty, anyone who goes inside a shopping mall like in “Dead Rising” is asking to be zombified. The tropical paradise of Banoi in “Dead Island” was refreshing, but what are the chances that I’d be on vacation when the zombie apocalypse struck?
Picture this: instead of trying to create a setting that will appease all gamers, try creating a _software_ that will allow all gamers to be appeased. For example, develop a rendering system to decode the images found in Google Earth to match the graphics of the game. Create a randomization tool to automatically populate the insides of buildings realistically. And voilà, you have a game where someone can select any location on the planet and experience a zombie invasion there. Either that, or give me some relatable suburb or small town (I’m not talking New York City).
After you get the setting down, you have to create believability in behavior from start to finish. By start to finish, I mean I want to play a game where I’m minding my own business when I walk past a television blaring the news of the infection. I want full control of my character from the outbreak to the dwindling number of zombies due to starvation. After that, my character should be responsible for responding to the mass panic and creating a plan of action for surviving the brunt of the storm. With this, include a day and night timer so events could pass realistically and make certain locations more dangerous at different times of day and as weeks pass.
Now that you have your basic premises down, how do you handle your individual character? Scavenging is a must (sorry neighbor, your stuff is mine). How you allocate your time to resource-gathering and shelter-building will determine if you survive to see the next day. The upcoming game “Fortnite” is taking the concept of “Minecraft” and warping it to fit zombies and safe house constructing, supposedly, so I’d like to see a build upon that. Over time, you will learn what the best strategy is and how to improve upon it.
It would be nice to add several role-playing elements into the game. Customized characters and attributes as well as a leveling system would lend itself to creating a character that you either feel more attached to or could model after yourself. A varying character build will create more variety in gameplay and provide a higher incentive to replay the game. An open-world exploration factor nearly identical to “The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim” or “Fallout 3” should be implemented. I want to be able to decide if/when/how I travel. If I think the forest is safer, I’ll take that route to the mission location. If I decide that I’d like to hot-wire a car and go zooming through familiar streets, that’s my prerogative. If I want to leap from building to building rather than take my chances on the ground, then I want the ability to free-climb up believable surfaces to get to the roof (cue “Assassin’s Creed” mechanics).
Creating zombies shouldn’t be that difficult for developers. After all, zombies are just really, really dumb AI (artificial intelligence) that are unable to use weapons. That doesn’t mean I want my zombies to be pushovers: If I’m bleeding, I should see an increased number of zombies in my vicinity that come barreling toward me.
Something absent in most zombie video games is a zombie that actually is scary. And I don’t mean scary as in jump-out-from-a-dark-corner scary. I mean there is no reason to fear it because your character is somehow immune from the virus so you are only damaged as if they are dumb melee enemies. If my character is bitten, I want it to be game over unless I am a compulsive saver. There is not going to be a cure that you can inject yourself with in the timeframe we will be playing, so I don’t want developers to give me an easy way out.
In almost all zombie games where you can revisit locations (think “Dead Rising” or “Dead Island”), all the zombies you blew the brains out of last time are magically back and appear in the same locations. No. If I spend my time and effort while risking my life to take down one of those things, I want it down for good.
The last thing I can ask for in this now-blockbuster-quality, best-selling title I’ve described is a cooperative mode (either online or locally). I might think that I would cut off all human contact when the zombies run wild to avoid attachment and unnecessary mouths to feed, but the reality of the matter is that I’d make sure my friends and loved ones are safe. Let me experience that in the game as well.
So there you have it. I’m not asking for much, just for all my wildest dreams to come true.
Developers, get at me.
