 Hi y'all, Wood here. It's honestly overwhelming how much zombie media there is out there. Games, movies, books, comics. No matter what it is, zombies have infested it in some way, shape or form. Which, I guess that's their nature. In fact, at this point, zombie is a genre all of its own. With its own sub-genres within it. You got zombie comedies, zombie drama, zombie freaking penguins probably, even zombie beavers. And it's not what you think. It's actual beavers! Why? Of course, you still have the classic zombie horror, and oh so much more. And I think it's pretty safe to say that there is way more bad zombie media than good, especially so with the movies. Jeremy is me, Jenny. Brains! Terrible B-budget straight-to-DVD movies that you would typically find in a blockbuster $1 bin back in the day. You know, back in the day when blockbuster was actually a thing. See, I told you we'd regret not using that blockbuster gift card. $20 down the drain, he just, he wouldn't listen. Save it for a rainy day, he said. Oh, that guy's definitely dead. Got it through the stomach and then the face and oh, I'm sorry. I'm just taking a break from this video to play some Raid Shadow Legends for the next out of no 45 seconds. You guys remember back when this game sponsored me last month? Yeah, I honestly never stopped playing it. My clan is going as strong as ever. In fact, I keep having to kick out some weakling and active players to make room for the hardcore guys. Oh, and why should you download this game? But it's only because Raid Shadow Legends is the coolest brand new mobile RPG with an amazing storyline. Awesome 3D visuals. I mean, look at them. Giant boss fights, PvP battles, hundreds of champions to collect and customize. There's a special tournament happening right now globally. So if you want free 50,000 silver, a free epic champion, and to compete with me and other players, you're just, you're just gonna have to click that link down below. I loaded you started playing last time and said you had fun with us. So if there's anyone left that hasn't downloaded the game at this point, give it a shot. Oh, right. The rest of the video. Although I will say there are plenty of B budget zombie movies that have brought me unbridled joy in the past, like Planet Terror or the first couple Resident Evil movies. I mean, Planet Terror is just good, but nothing beats getting a group of friends together and watching a horrible zombie movie. It's just the best and most hilarious time you can have. That being said, there are always those standout zombie movies that kind of make you secretly wish a wave of flesh eating has been humans actually did sweep across the globe. That way you could live out your wildest post-apocalyptic fantasies. Oh, and I've shotgun the Rick Roll now. Not, not like the Rick Roll, like that annoying song. The Rick Roll, like Rick from Walking Dead, his role. The leader. I want to be the leader. You guys would follow me, right? I mean, you don't die, but I'd be fine. You're leaving freaking fur everywhere, man. Also, if I could cherry pick here, I'd like to be the comic book version of Rick Grimes, but in the TV show Rick Grimes' body. Not for any, like, weird kinky reason. It's just that the comic book Rick was way cooler. Oh, and I shoot some Mad Beeple with my ridey, so I kind of need it. Where was I? Oh, yeah, good zombie movies. Shaun of the Dead is probably the zombie movie for me. It's just a really great movie. A parody of Dawn of the Dead, but it's not really even about zombies. It's about Shaun. It's hilarious. And if you haven't seen it, what do I care? Hey, buddy, if you jump on this table and knock everything off. Hey, hey, no, you can't be trusted. I do honestly think it's easier to create a great zombie game than it is a zombie movie. It's just easier to get the viewer or player actually invested when it's their ass on the line. Running away from hordes of psychotic animal-like creatures that just want to sink in their teeth for that one final bite that ends your life one way or another. No matter who you are, that kind of thing gets your blood pumping. When you're watching a movie, it's too easy to pick apart the awful zombie makeup or laugh at the stupid noises the actors had to make. Like, when I watch it, I'm always thinking to myself, do they, like, practice that in the mirror before they're rocked up to work just looking at themselves? Think that's why zombie comedy movies end up being a much more enjoyable experience and harder to screw up than a zombie horror. Whereas games like the new Resident Evil 2 remake will have you sitting on the edge of your seat with the volume set way down on low and all the downstairs and all the upstairs lights are turned on in the house. Just in case zombies end up being a real-life thing right at that exact moment you decide to boot up the PlayStation 4 and use your DualShock to take control of Leon Kennedy. So yes, just like with the movies, there are loads of terrible zombie games. But today, I want to focus on some of the good ones. And zombie games come in all shapes and sizes, just like the zombie movies. You have open-world RPG zombie games, story-driven episodic graphic adventure zombie games, online multiplayer shooter zombie games, absolutely terrible TV show tie-in zombie games that we will never, ever talk about on this channel. Looking at you, survival instinct. I guess a good place to start is one of the most recent zombie games to grace the PlayStation 4 with its exclusivity, Days Gone. Did you see me trying to figure out if that was actually a word? Exclusivity? It doesn't sound right. Seriously, man. You've got to stop. Oh, and I know what you're thinking. Well, at least those of you that didn't listen to the mixed reviews for this game and actually make your own choices in life might be thinking. Days Gone doesn't have zombies. Well, okay, sure. Not technically. Because the game itself doesn't consider them zombies, they call them freakers. Which, side note, I always love that every zombie franchise fills the need to avoid the word zombie like it's the plague. Wait, it is the plague. Or, more likely, both the word zombies and the genre itself is so ever done at this point. The word just isn't cool anymore. So instead, we have terms like freakers, walkers, geeks, Z-heads, the living dead, biters, lurkers, infected, the walking dead, dead heads, or just z's. But I do think that freakers, as they call them in Days Gone, is actually a pretty cool one. And to be fair, they really aren't your typical zombie by definition. They aren't dead people come back to life. They are still living human creatures that have just turned into these things. Which, as you find out, they're actually capable of some logical thinking, which is concerning and leads to some pretty creepy moments within the game. Also, unlike a typical zombie, thereby it won't turn you. It'll just, you know, kill you dead as they slowly eat you alive. Still, very scary. And zombie by definition or not. Creepy zombie-like creatures are good enough for me to count Days Gone in a zombie video game video. So let's not split hairs here, people, because I wrote out this entire video before I remembered that they're not actually zombies, and now I'm just sticking with the idea. I was super excited for this game ever since I saw that gameplay trailer that had the main protagonist sprinting away from an insane amount of zombies. A horde of which the likes we have never seen in a video game before. You've had the expression you had me at hello, but this game had me at stupid amounts of zombies. The icing on the cake was that this was an open-world zombie game, and surprisingly, we haven't really had many or really any good zombie games in the open-world genre. Needless to say, I was down to clown around and freak a town. I mean, that's what zombies do. According to almost every fictional zombie narrative ever told, they group up in hordes and roam together. And we've never been able to actually flesh that out in a video game before. Reason being, video game consoles can only be pushed so far. Well, that's why we haven't seen hordes like this in games until now. At least not in games that also managed to look this gorgeous at the same time. Like, seriously, this game is stunning. Some locations brought me to a standstill, as I stared at or at one of the most beautifully detailed video games I have ever seen, and I struggled to come to grips with the fact that this is the first non-portable console Ben Studio has created a video game for since 2004. What? And it looks this good? What have they been doing all these years? Anyway, in the past, too many zombies on the screen at once can cause a video game console to chug and slow the gameplay down to a mess of questionable frame rates. Look at games like Dead Rising 3, for example. I mean, I didn't hate the game, I enjoyed it for what it was. Actually, I remember really liking it. But I couldn't help but feel like it didn't live up to its promise of hordes of relentless bloodthirsty zombies. They were just kind of part of the furniture, there for aesthetics, to make the amount of zombies you see on the screen seem larger. This isn't a promo for Starbucks, by the way, I forgot that was behind me. Nope, nope. Dying Light is gone. Dying Light's dead. My point is, look at this! And now, look at this! Everything Ben Studio promised for Days Gone, it delivered in spades. I have never experienced anything like running from hundreds of freakers as they chased me through buildings over carts, under bridges, and probably, inevitably, to my death. As I slowly try to chip away at them with bullets, explosives, or whatever I can find nearby. It's addictive, intense gameplay, and as a zombie fan, I beyond love it. Other than that, the game does have its faults. The pacing of... Well, everything is really slow. The story seemed like it was gonna be very mediocre at the start. And I think that was in a large part because of the pacing. But at around 30 hours in, the story not only picked up big time with more twists and turns than I expected from the title going into it, but Days Gone totally pulled an ocarina of time on my butt. Meaning, you remember back in the day playing Zelda on your Nintendo 64, when you finally pulled out that Master Sword thinking you'd finished the game and then you suddenly realized you were barely even halfway through? Yeah, 30 hours into Days Gone, the game kinda just re-exploded, and I was very impressed. The second half of the game feels like a sequel to the first half, like Days Gone 2 snuck its way into the first title. You got new enemies, a new story, new weapons, new camps, new everything. So yeah, it really does start to pick up much later in the game. It just takes a sweet time to get there. But mercifully, the game is just a joy to play around that. And the more you play, the more the game rewards you for it. As you start to unlock later abilities, it really frees you up to be more creative with how you play the game. Usually, games will throw everything at you in the first couple hours, all the weapons, enemy types, gameplay mechanics, etc. But Days Gone takes a much slower approach, and I honestly loved it. There are several different types of freakers, as I mentioned before, but almost 30 hours into the game, I've probably only seen about half of them. Not to mention you still have the humans to deal with, marauders setting up traps to try and steal your bike, rippers who are a whole new level of insane and just want to kill you for the fun of it. You know, normal people stuff. The further into the game you play, the more the hordes of enemies start to build up, the harder the freakers become to take down, the more the game throws at you, and it all feels very rewarding. Building up trust with the separate camps, earning credits and fixing up your bike, it all takes time, but the pacing as slow as it is, it makes it feel very real. The game does a great job at making the world feel alive. It was the closest thing I have experienced to an actual walking dead scenario come to life within a video game. All these separate camps with their own cultures and way of life dealing with zombies and other issues in their own way, and you're just there drifting between them all trying not to mess anything up. Oh, and it actually has some pretty great stealth gameplay, which I didn't expect, if that's your thing. It's pretty fleshed out, and you can easily take down enemy camps without raising so much of an eyebrow, let alone an alarm. But if you're more of just a pump that shoddy, it'll be fine kind of guy or gal. Then you're in luck, because the main character, Deacon St. John, has had a load of military experience from his time in Afghanistan, so with some well-played shots and utilizing all the cover around you, you can John wick your way out of most situations too. The gameplay is usually open to your preferred style, and I like that. I actually have been addicted to Days Gone since it released, which ironically, I can't even remember when that was at this point. The Days have gone by pretty quick since I started playing this one. And I do agree with most of the reviews that the game is around a seven or eight. It's not perfect, but damn, it's as fun as heck seven or eight. And I do recommend playing it, but also giving it an honest shot. If you're still not into this game after about 10 or 15 hours of playing, then maybe it's not for you. But that really is when it starts to get good, and yes, I do realize how much of a hypocrite I'm being right now. Let's not talk about it. All in all, not a bad effort from the same studio that made Bubsy 3D. Yes, let that sink in. What? Okay, next, let's talk about World War Z. And no, I'm not flipping back to zombie movies as much as I would love to spend 10 minutes talking about Brad Pitt. What a man. No, I mean, World War Z, the game. Yeah, wouldn't you know? World War Z has a video game, and it's actually pretty freaking good. And you might be wondering, wow, I never heard about a World War Z video game back when the movie came out. Wonder how I miss that? Well, I got news for you, bud. You didn't miss it. This game came out last month. Yup. Strange. World War Z Movie, 2013. World War Z game, six years later. Man, talk about development hell. Actually, that wasn't the case at all. This is just a brand new multiplayer zombie game that decided to use the license of the World War Z movie, because it was a lot less of a scary idea than trying to sell people on a brand new IP. But it's not just a branding ripoff. The zombies act the same way they did in the movie. Hordes of zombies pile up on each other, building human pyramids to climb walls. Just like in that one iconic scene from the movie. Actually, that's about the only scene of the movie I remember. Well, that part and that one moment when Brad Pitt cut that chick's arm off in like one swift motion. That part was really cool. Oh, and the World War Z game's story is based more off the book, since the movie had nothing to do with the book. So yeah, while they did rip the name for Clout, they at least did a good job at making it feel at home in the World War Z universe. The universe that previously consisted of one book and one movie, but now we have a game. The developers claimed that the World War Z game was influenced by Left 4 Dead. Now, for me, the word influence means would from beat em up influence me to download Raid on mobile because it's a really fun game and you should check that link in the description. But I think for the development team at Saber Interactive, influence means we played Left 4 Dead, we liked it a lot, so we made that game again and called it something else. And um, I'm not complaining in the slightest. You played the game with three other players or a mix of NPCs. You start the game on a rooftop. There's a big charging ball type enemy that will slam your entire body onto the ground over and over and over and over while you scream down the mic at your buddies to hurry up and save your ass. Locas that will always manage to find the moment you least expect them to pounce on you and then they do it. Screamers that call other zombies, episodic missions that don't need to be played in any certain order and I mean you get it, it's Left 4 Dead. But I will say I'm mostly poking fun at the devs here. While it has its similarities, sure, it doesn't feel like a carbon copy of Left 4 Dead. Rather, it feels like it used Left 4 Dead as a base and then improved on just about everything from there. And I enjoyed playing Left 4 Dead with my friends for sure, but I loved playing World War Z with them. I had a stacked crew of friends on Xbox Live. We played through this together and it was constant talking, laughing, screaming. And by the time it was all over, we wished there were more levels to play on. There's tons of different characters and classes to choose from, each with their own unique abilities and gameplay styles. You level up your class as you play, unlocking new skills. But you also level up the guns you use and you can upgrade those too. All of that helps keep the gameplay fresh. But honestly, the game does a pretty good job at keeping itself fresh anyway with its great level design. But mostly just the frickin' zombies, man. We talked about this in Days Gone, but man, this game has hordes of zombies. Hundreds, thousands of zombies pouring in down tunnels, over mountains, scrambling over each other and climbing up to tear at you. For sure, way more zombies than Days Gone. But the trade-off is that these zombies are super basic. All their animations are the same, all their actions are simple. It's just run and swing. And once you kill them, the character models disappear pretty quickly to free up the game to throw more zombies at you. But, you know, when there's this many of them screaming their way towards you at once, you won't give a damn what they're doing. You'll be too busy laughing with your friends in full-on panic mode as you spray bullets and explosives into the waves of zombies and watch them fly. It is crazy, stupid fun, and I loved every second. Man, just those huge hordes. I was always looking forward to the next one to see how crazy the game was gonna push it. And I won't ruin it, I'm not gonna show it, but I swear on the last mission, that last insane horde, the devs were just trying to find out how far they could push the console limits with that one. But ultimately, I was very satisfied with my time in the game. And for 40 bucks? Pshh. It's more than worth it if you have some friends to play with. I mean, if you've tried playing games like Left 4 Dead on your own, yeah, it's okay. But the pure joy of your friend getting smashed repeatedly again and again by a ball into the ground is just so much more sadistic fun than watching it happen to the NPCs. Oh, and also, this game is gorgeous as well. It really didn't need to be this good-looking, but there it is. Okay, this next game, I'm actually hoping I can do justice to it. Walking Dead. Telltale's The Walking Dead has an incredible story, both in the game and outside of it. A lot of you already know, Telltale closed its doors halfway through developing the fourth chapter in the series. In fact, pretty much every game they were working on at the time was left on the cutting room floor. Wolf Among Us 2, the next chapter in their Batman series, the Stranger Things game they were apparently working on, none of those will probably ever see the light of day now. But the one game that fans could not accept being just done? The Walking Dead. I mean, heck, most of us had already paid for all four chapters, and they had only done two at that point. But for me, it wasn't even about the 20 bucks or whatever it was. It was about the last seven years of my life. The first chapter of Walking Dead released in 2012. It starred Lee, a man who found himself on the way to prison at the time of the initial walk or outbreak, so I guess he got lucky? I don't know what you would call that. Nah, probably not without things turned out in the end, but anyway, Lee was an incredible character. Almost immediately into this outbreak, he finds a small child named Clementine. She was hiding in her treehouse, waiting for her parents who weren't ever going to come home. And Lee, he took it upon himself to take care of Clementine, no matter what the cost, to make sure that this girl survived. With no regard of his own life, as long as she was okay, and their relationship was so special to both of them, and it ultimately shaped the person that Clementine became throughout the next three installments in the story. The ending of this game, the first one, was probably the first time I ever shed a tear or two in a video game. That moment still gets me every time I replay it. And the game also won Game of the Year that year, shattering expectations. So you can imagine my heartbreak when they cancelled the end of a story that I'd been invested in for almost a decade. Actually, you don't have to imagine it, because I was actually filming a video at the time when I found out. The Walking Dead final season has also been cancelled. Did they cancel the final season? Sources who wish to, oh my god. The Walking Dead team was laid off today, and the Walking Dead final season will not be complete. Anyway, long story short, the game was saved. The original team got to finish out the last two chapters, and honestly, I feel like they did an incredible job wrapping up the story in a neat little boat. Paying homage to the entire series to its fans, to Clementine, to Lee, and even themselves deservingly so. The fourth chapter even made some decent improvements over, well, all the Telltale games. It actually felt like they were finally starting to shake up their own formula a little bit. Too little, too late, I guess. The player had a lot more control over the character, and the movement felt like it had more weight to it. The decisions absolutely had more weight to them. While of course, they had a story they wanted to ultimately tell. They had to wrap it up in that aforementioned neat little boat. So the ending was pretty much always going to be the ending. But the story along the way, it really did feel massively shaped by your choices. In this game, Clem finds herself in a similar role that Lee was in in the first one, having to raise a small child, scared to screw it up. And you can screw it up, in many ways. The person that Album Becomes might not be the person you wanted him to be if you don't set the right example that you want to set. At the end of the fourth chapter, I was struggling to hold back tears just like I- At the end of the fourth chapter, I was struggling to hold back tears just like I was 10 years ago in the first chapter. It meant a lot to me, and I know it meant a lot to the team that built the story. I can't talk about a lot of the endgame stuff that I would like to talk about, but seeing the devs refer to themselves in the credits as the still-not-bitten team, that hits me pretty hard in the feels. So to anyone that may or may not and probably aren't watching this that have worked on the game in some way, I just want to thank you personally for that adventure. I mean, Melissa Hutchinson, Clem inside herself might be watching this since we're best friends now. I actually did an episode of my podcast with her. That's right. I have a podcast that I kind of just stopped doing after that episode. Oh well. Yeah, and I know all the Telltale games seem to be a hit or miss for a lot of people. Obviously the main complaint being it's not a game. I mean, it is a game. It's an interactive graphic adventure game. I'll put more plainly. It's a playable movie where you make choices on the outcome. Thing is, I love a good story. I mean, a lot of people do, whether it's a movie, a book, a comic, or a video game. If you have a fantastic story to tell, I'll be there and I'll be a part of it. To consume it in whatever way it's delivered. And being able to actually play that movie, to call the shots and feel directly responsible for every twist and turn, every mistake, every heart-dropping moment. Well, to me, that's even better than a movie. I am the movie. And that's what Walking Dead is for me. I also just love the Walking Dead universe. I read all the comics. I watch all the show. But honestly, I'm going to make the bold claim to say that even including the comic book's Telltale's Walking Dead game was the best thing to come out of the entire Walking Dead universe. And I really love the comic books. So... I should really say something. Okay, when I started writing out this video, I planned to talk about a lot of zombie games. It was going to be this huge definitive list of pretty much my favorite zombie games. I mean, even right here on my list, I have Killing Floor 2, Stead of Decay 2, House of Dead, Day Z, Dying Light, Red Dead, Undead Nightmare, Last of Us, Dead Island, Stubbs, The Zombie Zombie, Ups! Even Lollipop Chainsaw! Which is right there by the way. But I didn't realize how passionately I actually felt about the three games I covered so far. Also, I really never write scripts. This is the first time I've done it. I don't know how I feel about it. I don't love it. But anyway, my point is I have a lot more zombie games I could talk about. So if this video does well and doesn't completely bomb like a lot of my videos recently, then maybe I'll do another one. But the only way I'll know is if you like the video and share it around with friends so it actually gets watched. Alright, I guess I'll wrap this video up with two more zombie games, and one of them might actually be the original great zombie game. Zombies Ate My Neighbors. And I have a really cool copy that was in a house fire. And it survived. Zombies Ate My Neighbors for Super Nintendo, and it was on Genesis, but I never played that one so I can't speak for it. It might be my first recollection of a fantastic zombie game. I mean, for me at the time, this game had it all. Tenure on me felt like freaking Dennis the Menace strolling through my neighborhood running and gunning. Armed with Uzi water gun, bazookas, weed-whackers, explosive soda cans, ice pops, tomato, silverware dishes, H&C crucifixes, flameflowers, fire extinguishers. It was badass, man. This game oozed radical 90s nostalgic charm. Like, I think it was an unspoken rule that you had to play this game with shades on your baseball cap backwards. I mean, look at this guy. He's wearing 3D freaking glasses outside. What a cool guy. This game is hard as heck, but brilliant two-player co-op fun, even today. Okay, I'm gonna shift gears on this very last game and talk about an absolutely terrible zombie game, probably the worst zombie game, at least the worst one I've ever played. So what's the worst zombie game ever made? Well, I'll give you a hint. It's a Resident Evil game. And there's a lot of them. I realized what I was setting this up. It's so crazy to think that the same series that really made horror games what they are today also happened to have some of the worst zombie games on the market. And while some of the spin-off titles are actually pretty good, most of them, in my opinion, were trash. But the biggest offender? Resident Evil. Raccoon City. I honestly thought I had a copy in my house. I was gonna, like, burn it or something in this video, but I guess I ditched it a long time ago. I wonder why. Do you guys even remember this one? Because I sure as heck do. Way back in the still lug in my Xbox 360 to my friends' houses for a good old-fashioned Doritos and Mountain Dew-Fueled All Night Land, my friends and I were looking for multiplayer games to play. Oh, and we played them all. You name it. Halo Gears of War. Other games probably. I can't be bothered remembering. And then in 2012, we heard about a brand new Resident Evil game called Raccoon City. And apparently it had four-player co-ops, so we thought that would be a good idea. So that I could live a normal day-to-day life, even now in 2019, I blocked a lot of that game from my memory. So here's what I actually recall from that day. None of us had any faith that this game was going to be good. So of course, none of us actually wanted to buy the thing. We drove around for hours, going to blockbuster after blockbuster, trying to find stores that actually had it in stock. Oh, that would have been a really good chance to use that blockbuster gift card. Damn it. And yeah, we finally gathered up four copies of this bad boy, loaded it up, and, uh, well, let me put it this way. When you're unplugging your Xbox 360 from your house, lugging it into your car, driving it to your friend's house, setting it up there on a TV, it typically means you are spending the night there, maybe even sleeping in that house to make all of that process actually worth your time. Typically, you don't get 30 minutes into the session, and pack up and go home because you could tell that that night was only going one of one way, and that's exactly what one of my friends did. And I really don't blame him because the rest of us cringe-cried and complained our way through the rest of the game that night. The only fun that was had was us laughing at the terrible mess that we were witnessing before us. Awful game design, terrible controls, cringe-worthy voice acting, non-existent story, the visuals, oh my gosh, the visuals. There was four, count them, four character models, variations of these zombies throughout the entire game. And the one that seemed to appear more than any of them was this budget, rent-a-cop-looking zombie. Like, it was just a massive joke throughout the entire game. No matter what location we moved to, city, sewer, landscape, whatever. There was just rent-a-cop zombie after rent-a-cop zombie. Why was seemingly every zombie a police officer? We ended up referring to this game as zombie cops throughout our playthrough and we were just, we were delirious and dying with laughter. To this day, we still just refer to that game as zombie cops. Heck, it was the exact same group of friends I just played through World War Z with online and the amount of zombie cop reference jokes that were made throughout our playthrough. Ah, good times. Think what Metal Gear Survive did to the Metal Gear franchise and that's what Raccoon City or zombie cops does to the Resident Evil franchise. And it's not just a terrible zombie game, it's a terrible game. To this day, when someone asks me what is the worst game you've ever played, well, it's Universal Studios. There's no beating that, but the close second is zombie cops. And that, undead ladies and gentlemen, and everything in between, is my video about zombie games. So if you liked it and you want me to do another one, well, there's only one way that's gonna happen and that is if you smash that like button. Hey, flip all over that subscribe button. Share this video with some friends, spread it out into the internet so that it takes over the world like a vicious virus because that would just be appropriate. Ah, yeah. It's like a weird mix of Scott the was and AVGN. I didn't hate it. I didn't love it.