Zombies in video games: plenty to get your teeth into

When George Romero first introduced us to his particular flesh-eating strain of the walking dead in the 1968 masterpiece Night of the Living Dead, little did he know that he was unleashing a cultural behemoth.

Zombies went on to grow in popularity with audiences throughout the 70s and 80s, with films such as Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972), The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974) and Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) proving a success at the box office and contributing more than their fair share of gory illicit pleasures to help whip up the video nasty panic. Fourteen years after the release of Romero’s groundbreaking film, the fledging video game industry had its first bite at a rich vein of undead storytelling with the release of Entombed (1982) on the Atari 2600.

The zombie virus has since mutated and spread through the industry, leaving a large body of work on the slab for dissection. From the cartoon B-movie thrills of the 16-bit Zombies Ate My Neighbours (1993) through to the gritty open world of Days Gone (2019) – there’s something for everybody in this eclectic genre.

For many, however, Resident Evil is the first title that springs to mind when considering the video game zombie. Launched initially for the PlayStation in 1996, the first instalment of Capcom’s seminal survival horror series immediately sent shockwaves through the industry.

Building on a gameplay style set by previous horror title Alone in the Dark (1992), the game combined high quality pre-rendered backgrounds with polygonal models to striking effect. It achieved a cinematic flair that had been unseen in games until then, with beautifully staged fixed camera angles employed to create maximum dread. The immovable camera meant that there was no way to know what lurked around that dark creaky hallway corner – a trick borrowed wholesale from horror films. This cinematic effect gave birth to perhaps the most notorious jump scare in gaming history: a pack of rabid zombie Dobermans crashing through the grand hall windows and surrounding the player.

The hokey plot follows a group of police officers as they investigate a series of murders near an old mansion. Within the dark walls they discover that the evil biomedical corporation Umbrella has established a secret lab underneath the house, and an escaped virus has caused the dead to rise. The B-movie plot is complimented by some truly baffling dialogue and line delivery, with lines such as “You were almost a Jill sandwich” passing into video game lore. The original game’s unintentionally hilarious presentation is probably the closest video game equivalent to the illicit grindhouse zombie pleasures offered in features such as Andrea Bianchi’s sleazy Burial Ground (1981) or Claudio Fragasso’s zombies vs mercenaries gorefest Zombi 4: After Death (1989). The massive success of Resident Evil exploded into a series of eight mainline entries, multiple remakes, countless spin-offs, CG animated movies, slick Hollywood productions and a recent (divisive) Netflix series.

Zombie horror has often been an effective vehicle for discussing social issues – from the rise of consumerism in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) to the grief of those lost to war in Bob Clark’s Deathdream (1974). Despite leaning into the campy side of the genre more often than not, the Resident Evil series has also dealt with some difficult subjects over the years. Although Umbrella as a corporation is painted with broad brush strokes, its desire to create weapons for bio-warfare and the collusion with governments revealed in later titles has horrifying parallels in the real world. Its disregard for human life as it tests a deadly virus on its own employees and the population at large is something that has sadly been seen in war countless times in numerous conflicts.

Through found diary entries in the game, the player is exposed to the horror and panic that grips employees of Umbrella as they realise they have been doomed by their malevolent employers. An entry by an animal warden starts by chatting about mundane tasks before gradually deteriorating into a haunting final entry that simply reads “Itchy, tasty” as the virus takes hold of his faculties. There are also themes around government-sponsored eugenics and the immorality of a profit-fuelled medical industry woven throughout the series. There is plenty of meat on the Resident Evil bone for those who can look beyond the gore, jump scares and unnatural dialogue.

But what does it mean to be a zombie? Definitions differ but the one thing that seems to be agreed upon is the duality of being somehow alive but dead at the same time. 2018’s The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories from idiosyncratic director Suehiro “Swery” Hidetaka, explores this oxymoron in a visceral and compelling puzzle platformer that also tackles LGBT issues in a way that is rarely touched upon in games. While searching for her missing friend, Emily, on Memoria Island protagonist J.J. is struck by lightning and dies burning in a flower field. Resurrected by a mysterious doctor with a deer head, she suddenly finds herself undying – her body able to withstand extreme pain and even dismemberment without death. She uses her new-found undead abilities to solve complex logic puzzles and avoid knife-wielding enemies as she continues her search.

What sets apart The Missing from other games like Stubbs the Zombie (2005) or Evil Dead: The Game (2022), both of which allow you to control undead characters capable of self-dismemberment as a part of gameplay, is the visceral toll her zombie powers take on J.J. She screams in pain every time her leg is chopped off or her arms are ripped out of their sockets. She often stops to just sob uncontrollably.

Throughout the experience she receives text messages from her past that hint at something unsaid in her relationship with Emily and the deep buried secrets within her own identity. The devastating finale lifts the veil and marries the concept of regeneration as an undead character with a much needed regeneration in JJ’s life. Although not a traditional zombie game by any means, as an undead queer love story tackling bullying, acceptance, gender identity, sexuality, conversion therapy and suicide, The Missing seems more relevant than ever in these times of renewed hostility towards the LGBT community.

In games as in film, zombies can be brought into being in numerous ways. In titles such as Dying Light (2015), Dead Rising (2006) and Left 4 Dead (2008), a natural or man-made virus is the cause of infection and the subsequent resurrection of the dead. Naughty Dog’s critically acclaimed The Last of Us (2013) focuses on a fungal infection known as the Cordyceps Brain Infection – a condition based on the effects of a horrifying real-life natural occurring fungus. In nature the spores infect insects, controlling their bodies until the moment of death when the fungus erupts from within the host. In The Last of Us humans have become susceptible to the virus, mutating them into various stages of terrifyingly violent spore-covered zombies.

Players will never forget the ghastly ‘Clicker’ – infected humans with fungus completely obscuring their face, left only to communicate via a series of unearthly clicks and screeches. The Last of Us shows us a world destroyed by the virus with the worst of mankind exposed as greed and panic take hold among the surviving populace. The infected are a danger in the game no doubt, but as in all the most memorable zombie media, it’s the surviving humans that prove to be the most dangerous. The Clickers seem a distant threat when confronted with warring militias, deranged survivors and even cannibals.

Although The Last of Us does an exemplary job of portraying complex characters that you grow to love, the sequel pushes the narrative in an entirely new and much more controversial direction (spoilers ahead). By the time The Last of Us Part II was launched, the main characters — Ellie and her grouchy father figure Joel — had become beloved.

The sequel, released in 2020, starts with the relationship between the two at breaking point as the fallout of the events of first title’s ending comes into focus. The game then suddenly pulls the rug from under the player when Joel is violently murdered in front of Ellie by new antagonist Abby. Many players were (and still are) furious at the death of the character at the hands of someone who is seemingly a stranger. Alongside her pregnant girlfriend, Ellie sets out on a dangerous quest for revenge, tracking down Abby’s gang and murdering them one by one. Then the rug is pulled again when the game flips and suddenly the player takes control of Abby. This further infuriated lots of the player base who questioned why they were being forced to see through the eyes of a character who had murdered the protagonist. It’s soon revealed that Abby was on her own personal journey of revenge, Joel having killed her father in the last game.

What’s interesting is that Abby’s father is nobody of particular note, only an unnamed enemy doctor whose death doesn’t register as significant at all. He was just one of many nameless cannon fodder enemies. Video games commonly have a protagonist who is unquestionably seen as ‘good’ and on the side of justice, so this twist sits uncomfortably with the player. The game forces the player to engage with causality as a concept. We are invited to unthinkingly mow down waves of ‘enemies’, but at what cost? The player themselves is essentially in a zombie-like state – killing instinctively because that is what the game asks of them. Like the protagonist in Bioshock, they unwittingly find themselves guided by subconscious commands from within the game itself – relentlessly killing in order to progress to the next stage or section of the plot. The Last of Us Part II forces the player to reckon with the fallout of their unthinking trail of carnage in the previous game, with the visceral death of a beloved character the result.

Whether it’s blasting the limbs from zombies in campy B-movie simulation House of the Dead (1996), battling undead Queen’s Guards in Buckingham Palace in Zombi U (2012), or making life or death decisions in Telltale’s The Walking Dead (2012), there’s a rich history of interactive undead nightmares out there just waiting to be devoured. Like an unstoppable cadaver rising from the grave, there will be always be a zombie game slowly shuffling towards us.

In Dreams Are Monsters: A Season of Horror Films is in cinemas across the UK and on BFI Player now.