Zombores

Fine, because it's All Hallow's Eve, and that's supposed to mean something to our society for... some reason, let's talk Zombies. A lot of vid/podcasts are talking about, and they are certainly pervading the computer game sphere at the moment, so...

Zombies are supposed to be a metaphor, for consumerism, or... all sorts of other things. Maybe they were intended that way at the beginning, I didn't really see it. Still don't see it now, and, frankly, I'm not sure they are intended as a metaphor for anything any more. Dead humans, the fright of death not being the end, of having to kill your friend because he now wants to eat your brains... okay, that last one is a possible area that is still addressed, but moreso in movies than in games because you can't make the player suddenly care about some person your character knew who died and now is back, whereas in a movie you can have characters care about others.

But, the point of this all is... zombies aren't anything other than zombies any more. They are simply a cheap source of enemy that can be bashed, shot, and otherwise killed in amusing and hilarious ways for entertainment, don't carry any stigma for picking on minorities (claims about Resident Evil 4 notwithstanding), and easier to have as an explanation than bringing in aliens because they are still human shaped, and don't we all want to kill other humans?

But this simplicity of concept is what makes them dull. When I hear 'zombies are involved', my already latent high disinterest/apathy kicks up orders of magnitude. All too often zombies are simply a subset of the survivor genre, and that bores me as well. Seeing someone trek miles for a turnip, while bitching with others who also want the turnip, doesn't scream exciting entertainment.

Now we have zombies that a killable fodder, vampires that are sparkly sex machines, and ghosts that... still don't do much beyond moving things around to scare people. Can we get some better supernatural please?

[END]