Zombies Question...

Zombie stories and films have never appealed to me. Zombie games, on the other hand, do. Notably Left 4 Dead - the team aspect of it is great in particular, the sense that you're in a hostile world with few places which are safe and you're relying on one another and a bit of luck to get through to the next safe house.

 

Yes. Zombies or at least some derivative have been used in fantasy quite extensively.

In fact, the zombie was one of the first monsters introduced in the earliest edition of the game, in the Dungeons & Dragons "white box" set (1974), where they were described as acting under the instructions of their motivator, usually a magic-user or cleric of chaotic alignment.

This is about the only way that zombies ever could exist in real life, so what are the odds of that all you zombie apocalypse theorists?

I really wouldn't describe the "feel" as post-apocalyptic but rather "survival horror" to use Resident Evil's* term.

I like the whole zombie thing as long as those weird conspiracy fringe people don't start in with the "government's zombie virus", "zombies are real", or "it could happen" crap.

I mean, zombies are great entertainment fodder for movies (Day of the Dead, Sean of the Dead, Zombieland, etc.) and video games (Resident Evil*, House of the Dead, etc.) and, as I mentioned above, in fantasy (a very broad genre that includes everything from horror to sci-fi) novels and game.

Personally, I like slow zombies in video games but not in movies.

*Please note that I purposefully excluded the craptastic Resident Evil movies because they're almost as bad as the Star Wars prequels. I also didn't include 28 Days and 28 Weeks Later, not because they're shit movies, I think they're great. It's just that those monsters aren't zombies. They're still alive.

Come to think of it, the very notion that anyone could possibly believe that zombies are real is ludicrous. If you're dead and your brain is dead, how would you be able to see? If your brain isn't working, you can forget about being able to stand let alone walk. Idiots.

 

I just bought a zombie book called Dead City. I'll let you know how it goes

 

Devor: I'd say 28 Day/Weeks later are zombie movies. See, there's two types of zombies: infected and magically ressurected. Infected are what we tend to see in modern settings - like 28 Days later and Left 4 Dead - whereas ressurrected zombies are more of a fantasy thing, like the Draugr in Skyrim, and in some cases are under the control of a necromancer. I still consider all of them zombies of some shade or another.

 

Well, there's zombies and there's zombies. In Walking Dead, they show a brain scan of a zombie coming back to life and how parts of the brain "restart" when the virus kicks in. They don't wander around muttering brains, though, which is the kind that doesn't make sense to me.

I'm not a fan of the "Zombies are real" attitude, either. I have trouble believing that a zombie infestation could ever get off the ground the way it's commonly described as spreading. They're deadly if you're surrounded by them, but easily enough controlled if you have the upper hand.

That's a first.

 

Devor? That is a first indeed. I guess that the whole 28 Days/ Weeks thing is a matter of opinion or really lazy semantics. Take your pick. By that logic mummies are zombies too.

*EDIT* I am looking forward to World War Z though. That movie looks badass!

 

Clearly I wasn't paying attention earlier. Sorry. Overworked today.

 

No worries.

 

I can only remember three movies where they wanted to specifically eat brains: George A. Romero's original, the one that started it all: Night of the Living Dead (1968), and then two of his cult classic sequels, Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985).

 

And Shaun of the Dead., but given that's a comedy/parody it might not count.