List of zombie video games
This is a list of video games with an undead theme. Subjects for an undead theme may include zombies, vampires or ghosts. It also covers demons and werewolves which are death-related and normally allies with undead. Most games with undead are Survival Horror or action adventure
Modern horror zombies
These games feature creatures inspired by the archetypal flesh-eating zombies seen in horror films, B-movies and literature, such in the films of George A. Romero, for example. Particular zombie rationale and depictions vary with the source.
Name | Year | Platform | Description |
---|---|---|---|
Beast Busters | 1989 | Arcade | Gun-game in which the players have to shoot their way out of a zombie-infested city. |
BrainBread | 2004 | PC | Zombie outbreak Half-Life mod. |
CarnEvil | 1998 | Arcade | Game about an undead amusement park given the title, "The Greatest Show Unearthed!" |
City of the Dead | Canceled | Based on George A. Romero's Dead films. Its creation was canceled midway through production due to the company developing it going out of business.[1] | |
Cold Fear | 2005 | PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox | A coastguard receives a call to a ship where the military scientist crew are all dead, the dead crew are re-animated by a creature called the exo-cell which gives the corpse an in-satiable hunger for flesh and death. |
Corpse Killer | 1994 | PC, Sega CD, Sega CD 32X, 3DO, Sega Saturn | Video game which featured a gang of hunters/soldiers who flee from a village full of zombies. |
D2 | 2000 | Sega Dreamcast | Game (originally for the never released Panasonic M2) played from a 3rd/1st person perspective with a light RPG element. |
Dead Head Fred | 2007 | PlayStation Portable | Game revolves around Fred's missing head while progressing through the game the player can collect an assortment of different heads which all have different abilities. |
Dead Island | 2008 | PC, Xbox 360 | |
Dead Rising | 2006 | Xbox 360 | Player is trapped inside of a mall filled with thousands of zombies. |
Flesh Feast 3D | 1998 | Sega | Zombie Hunting PC Game |
Zombie Panic! Source | 2005 | PC | A multiplayer Half-Life 2 mod, in which players are divided into two teams, survivors and zombies. When survivors are killed, they become zombies. Zombie Panic! is a mod for Half-Life by the same developers. |
House of the Dead series | 1996 | Arcade, PC, Xbox, Nintendo Wii | Zombie blasting arcade games once famed for their extremely violent portrayal of anti-zombie combat. |
Hunter: The Reckoning series | 2002 | Xbox, Gamecube | |
Infected | 2005 | PlayStation Portable | Players assume the role of a New York cop and must rescue civilians from the undead, shoot-em-up. |
Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green | 2005 | PC | The only Romero-based game ever released, with a parallel story to the movie of the same name. [1] |
Left 4 Dead | 2008 | PC, Xbox 360 | A multiplayer, Zombie based survival game currently in development by Turtle Rock and Valve |
The Oneechanbara series | 2000 | PlayStation 2 | Hack and slash games involving the female protagonist cutting swathes through an army of undead in modern day Japan. |
Resident Evil series | 1996-2009 | Various | Features typical flesh-eating zombies created by synthetic means, i.e. mutagenic viruses created by the evil Umbrella Corporation. However, Resident Evil 4 features a parasitic type of zombie and some other monsters rather than stereotypical zombies. |
Possession | 2010 | Playstation 3, Xbox 360 | A twisted action-RTS where you are an undead zombie looking to exact revenge on the humans who made you this creature. |
Stubbs the Zombie in "Rebel Without a Pulse" | 2005 | Mac OS X, PC, Xbox, Xbox 360 | A third-person game played as the zombie, along with an army of converted zombies. |
Survival Crisis Z | 2004 | PC | Computer role-playing game (CRPG) |
Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys | 2008 | Nintendo DS | |
Touch the Dead | 2007 | Nintendo DS | On-rail, first-person shooter that challenges a player to eradicate hundreds of waves of zombies in prisons, swamps, and military bases. |
Typing of the Dead | 1999 | PC | A spin-off/port of House of the Dead that tries to serve as a typing trainer. |
Urban Dead | 2005 | PC | A browser-based MMORPG where players can join either the survivors or the zombies, in the battle for control of a quarantined city. |
Zombi | 1990 | C64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore Plus/4, Amiga, Atari ST | Like Dead Rising, Zombi has a zombies-in-shopping-mall theme inspired by the film Dawn of the Dead. |
Zombies Ate My Neighbors | 1993 | SNES Sega Genesis | A humorous game including parodies of many classic B-movie monsters. |
Zombie Massacre | 2010 | Wii | light gun arcade |
Zombie Revenge | 1999 | Arcade/Sega Dreamcast | Beat 'em up where players choose one of three characters to pummel zombies |
Zombie Zombie | 1984 | ZX Spectrum | 4 action game with a B-movie inspired plotline. |
Video games with small zombie roles
The following games have zombies, but they are not a central part of the plot.
- Blood (computer game) - has zombie enemies
- Breath of Fire - The player's party encounters a town filled with zombies, and must rid it of the plague to continue onward. The town's name is Romero, in reference to legendary zombie filmmaker, George A. Romero. In addition, all the game's sequels have featured at least one zombie-like enemy.
- Castlevania Series - Every game in the Castlevania series has included zombies. Some are infinitely-spawning enemies which are very easy to defeat, while others have been featured as bosses (Beelzebub) or as components to a boss (Legion, Granfalloon).
- The Carmageddon series, particularly Carmageddon 2 (1998), features a zombie takeover of a large city through which the player must drive, killing zombies along the way. However, it should be noted that this is only in the censored version of the game; the uncensored version contained regular pedestrians as victims instead of zombies.
- Diablo - Has zombie enemies
- Doom series (1993) - The player combats gun-wielding, zombies (among other demons) on the moons of Mars, Mars itself, and Earth. In Doom 3, more traditional zombies were added.
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion zombies can be found in some of the game dungeons
- Friday the 13th (video game) game that focuses on zombies as enemies haunting the 'cursed' Crystal Lake, led by Jason Voorhees.
- Ghoul Patrol - Sequel to Zombies Ate My Neighbors
- Metal Slug series (1996-2006) - Zombies appear as enemies and the player character can even be turned into a zombie.
- Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia - Has zombie enemies
- The Half-Life series (1998) has several types of zombies, which are mutated humans controlled by parasitic alien headcrabs. Also, there are several mods for the Half-Life games featuring traditional zombies:
- BrainBread - A multiplayer Half-Life co-operative mod has players fighting off zombies and becoming zombies themselves.
- They Hunger, A single-player mod for Half-Life, features a three episode trilogy set in rural USA. The scenario is similar to the classic zombie film Night of the Living Dead. Zombies are also smarter than usual, capable of flying helicopters and using mounted machine guns.
- Zombie Master - In this Half-Life 2 modification a team of human players must complete an object while defending their base against zombie hordes that are controlled by a "Zombie Master"
- Nocturne (1999) - In one chapter, The Stranger is dispatched to deal with a zombie outbreak in a small farming community. It is revealed that the zombies are the side-effect of an infestation of a Lovecraftian dark god entombed under the village.
- Quake (1996) - Zombies are one type of monster that appear throughout the game. They may only be killed with explosives.
- Both Mortal Kombat Deception and Mortal Kombat Armageddon feature longtime series protagonist Liu Kang as a zombie.
- EarthBound (1995) - The town of Threed is initially occupied by zombies and other undead beings. These zombies are capable of speech and gather honey from flies for Master Belch.
Revenants
Revenants are based on folklore; these games may have a supernatural or fantasy theme. Unlike the mass-attack cannibalistic zombies of modern horror, revenants rose from the dead for individual purposes.
- Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem featured four distinct kind of zombies, all relating to ancient and occult gods, and all of varying strengths and alignments to different gods.
- Revenant, in which the protagonist is a risen soul from Hell, tasked with finding a local King's daughter.
- Siren - The primary enemies of the game, the "shibito" (屍人), are people affected by a local religious ritual gone awry. Shibito in the earlier stages appear and behave predominantly like zombies.
- Legacy of Kain: Defiance features resurrected creatures that rise from the ground or out of the walls by temporarily inhabiting the shells of corpses to escape the Spectral Realm and enter the living world. These creatures aren't seen in the Spectral Realm and are only presented in Raziel's chapters.
- Zombie Nation - in this game, released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990, a mysterious meteor called 'Darc Seed' crashes to Earth and turns the inhabitants of the United States into zombies.
- Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones had revenants appear as one of the more common types of monsters that are fought in later chapters.
Voodoo zombies
These games use a voodoo background for their zombies.
- Shadow Man Players assume the role of Mike Leroi, who is cursed to be a zombie slave but has also been chosen to be the Shadow Man. Shadow Man is able to travel between the living world and Deadside. In addition to Shadow Man himself, Deadside is filled with a variety of undead creatures that behave in a more traditional zombie-like fashion.
- Akuji the Heartless The game centres around the voodoo priest and warrior Akuji (voiced by Richard Roundtree), who had his heart ripped out on his wedding day by his brother, and through the use of voodoo magic is now cursed to wander through hell. Akuji, however, has a chance for redemption: if he traverses hell and collects the souls of his ancestors then the loa Baron Samedi will grant him safe passage out of the underworld.
- Monkey Island (series) LeChuck is a pirate and the main villain appearing in the Monkey Island series of computer adventure games produced by LucasArts. Undead throughout the series, LeChuck has a different form in each game (evil-ghost-pirate, evil-zombie-pirate, evil-undead-demon-zombie-ghost-pirate and stone giant), and in the fourth and latest game he could transform at will between the three forms
Fantasy zombies
These fantasy games take the D&D version of the zombie as their basis.
- Various Dungeons & Dragons based games feature zombies in peripheral roles; for example, Baldur's Gate II features a man returning from the dead as a zombie to wreak vengeance on his family members for a terrible funeral, and Planescape: Torment features a city populated by the undead.
- Ghosts n' Goblins - This game features an overwhelming abundance of zombies.
- Thief: The Dark Project contains many kinds of undead creature. Zombies appear throughout the game.
- MediEvil and its remake introduces an Undead player character, Sir Dan a classic Knight but undead.
- Warcraft III - has a whole undead side
- The Legend of Zelda series features zombie like creatures called ReDeads.
- World Of Warcraft features troll zombies in instances such as Sunken Temple.
Other zombies
- Abomination: The Nemesis Project - Real-time strategy game where the player must defeat increasingly mutated forms of zombies.
- Alone in the Dark - The game originally believed to spawn the "survival horror" genre of gaming in 1992, most enemies encountered in this game were zombies or other mutant creatures with related features.
- Dead of the Brain 1 & 2 are two gory digital novels similar to Snatcher concerning a zombie outbreak. Released only in Japan for The FM Towns Marty, MSX2, PC-98, and was the final licensed PC Engine game to be released in 1999.
- Judge Dredd: Dredd Vs. Death has zombies (labeled as "The Undead") among its villains, who are most notably encountered in a shopping mall a la Dawn Of The Dead. The so-called "Vampires" in the game also appear more like movie zombies, and behave like the infected in 28 Days Later.
- Halo 2 and Halo 3 have multiplayer playlists used every once in a while on Xbox Live called "Living Dead". The "infected" players, while not really "zombies", team up to kill the non-infected players. When an "infected" kills a non-infected, the non-infected becomes an "infected" themselves, similar to Romero's Night of the Living Dead series. The non-infected fight in a similar way, usually teaming up to kill the zombies despite the Infection game type generally being a free-for-all game type.
- Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver features various types of vampires, with one type in particular being zombie-like in regard that their flesh couldn't sustain the rotting souls in their bodies, these being the offspring of Melchiah, whom he; himself, became a gigantic mass of stitched skins ripped from the bodies of his victims.
- Return to Castle Wolfenstein- Zombies are featured as enemies in the game, typically in ancient tombs and other such places. They attack indiscriminately, and will go after Axis and Allies alike. They have the ability to summon evil spirits, in the form of flying, ethereal skulls, with which to attack the player. Also, one of the bosses is a hulking conglomeration of many zombies fused together, and the console versions feature missions set in Egyptian tombs with animated mummies as enemies. In addition to the normal zombies, there are also armored Zombie Knights, which resemble skeletal Saxon warriors. They come equipped with either a sword or a hatchet, as well as a shield that can deflect gunfire. Unlike normal zombies, they do not rise up again when killed.
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines - Players will encounter zombies at various points in the game. Zombies in this game are portrayed as lumbering, weak undead creatures with a hunger for brains.
- In the Myth series, "Dark" alighned units are usually a sort of zombie or trapped soul, while precious few are evil spirits or cavemen of a sort.
- Evil Dead video game series, in which the player must fight The Deadites, demons and demon possessed-corpses.
Ghosts and spirits
- Silent Hill
- Fatal Frame series
- F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon), a 2005 first-person shooter that contains ghost-like creatures called nightmares. These appear in its freeware multiplayer component F.E.A.R. Combat, its expansions F.E.A.R. Extraction Point and F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate, and are due to appear in its sequel, Project Origin.
- Clive Barker's Undying
- Ghost Master is a strategy game where the player takes control of spirits to increase a mortal's belief in the supernatural, avenge deaths, and conscript renegade ghosts.
Mummies
- Return to Castle Wolfenstein- the console versions feature missions set in Egyptian tombs with animated mummies as enemies.
- Tomb Raider (series) - Tomb Raider 1 and Tomb Raider Anniversary featured mummified cat mutants, while the game, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation had more traditional mummies
- The Mummy Returns - video game based on the film
Vampires
- Castlevania series -The Castlevania series is about a war between the enchanted family of the Belmonts (originally "Belmondo") and Dracula. Almost every hundred years, Dracula is resurrected and it is up to the Belmonts to defeat him before he unleashes his wrath on the entire world.
- Blade
- BloodRayne
- Buffy video games based on the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Darkwatch
- Legacy of Kain series
- Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi
- Vampire Night (2000, Namco/Sega)
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption a vampire RPG from World of Darkness
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines also by World of Darkness
- Van Helsing
Liches
See List of fictional liches Liches are commonly from video games
Werewolves
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines there is a werewolf as boss
- Legendary (game) an upcoming game featuring werewolves and other creatures
- Van Helsing (video game)
- Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi
Notes
- ^ a b Tie-in game based directly on film franchises
See also
- List of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
- List of zombie films
- List of zombie novels
- Zombie
- Zombies in popular culture
External links
- Undeadgames.com a site dedicated solely to zombie games.