Ranking the Best Zombie Games of All Time, Gravity Rush, Days Gone, Sniper Elite 4

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to side Quest. This is our weekly
video game show here at geek Verse, and I am
your host, il mus I got with me the brain
munch er. How are you doing, my friend, I'm doing
pretty good.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
H you know, not to spoil what we're going to
be talking about, but I feel like just the idea
of like brain munchers, do you still like consider that
like a zombie thing? I feel like it's kind of
like pushed away from that.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Is a brain munch or a no, like a proper noun.
I don't think I know what that is.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Okay, probably not brain eater. They're munching.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
They're munching on brain like from an ip or is
this just a general term? I'm really lost.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
That's just my vocal these days. Man. That's you know,
I'm munching on my my sandwich. I'm munching on something. Zombies, Okay,
I feel like back in the day they're always known
for for munching on brains. But I'm getting two into
the weeds here. You can, you can take the mic
away from me. I'm happy to be here. I'll leave
it at that.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yeah, we we've got a fun episode for you all today.
Really just two topics. One games have been playing. I
have a few shoutouts there, kind of all centered around
PlayStation Plus, which I'm a recent member signed up of.
And then we're gonna be doing a ranking of the
best zombie games of all time, very imprompt too. We
decided on doing this like earlier today or like yesterday

(01:19):
or something, so it's kind of a last minute thing,
but you know, it was kind of a slow news week,
and this is the kind of thing that we like
to do, do random rankings. I've so many of these
just written down on a notepad, and this one felt
right the timing for a couple reasons. And we'll talk
about what that is gonna be later, but yeah, that's
what this episode's gonna be. And then, man, there is
all sorts of things swirling right now. The Xbox showcase

(01:43):
for January, which they've been doing for the last two years,
finally got announced. That's gonna be the couple weeks from now.
And then there's been i mean, once again, the rumors
of the switch to swirling again and again it seems
like potentially this week is gonna be an announcement. So
if that's the case, next week episode we'll be breaking
that down to some extent, so we'll see if that
ends up happening. But I don't know how many other
leaks and the rumors and all sorts of things that

(02:06):
come out and then nothing ever actually happens, so that
could be the case here. All we know is that
they announced they're gonna announce something before the end of March.
That's like all we have to go off right now.
That's a little little runway for what the rest of
the month is gonna look like here. Other than that,
hit au Patreon get episodes early and ad free. It's
a great place to go and support us. You can
also support us by leaving a review. You can also

(02:28):
join us on discord and just talk to us about
the games you're playing, or the movies that you're watching,
or whatever the heck else do you want to do.
And I don't even know what's released on the feeds
these days. We did a nice, big, juicy newscast last week,
and I think it's gonna be getting chopped out into
two parts, so you can look forward to that. We've
got all sorts of TV show reviews. What's the first
like big movie review of the year.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Kirkland Taylor and I potentially will be dropping a Wolfman
review that comes out January seventeenth, so that would be
this Friday. There's out of country right now, so I
got a dialogue with him when we can do that,
but we're both pretty gung ho on it. So yeah,
I don't want to over promise, but i'd say you
could probably expect to see a wolf Man. Well, I

(03:11):
think if if I don't attend, I think Taylor would
drop a Cello review for I would say a wolf
Man would be the first one of the year, which
I mean, we ended the year with Nosferatu, so it's
kind of fitting great like vampires and now we're going
yeah lichens.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, like a little peak behind the cords. We recorded
that like movie preview like way back in November or something.
So now my brain now was so long ago that
I don't I can't like immediately picture what the runway
is for the first few things of the months of
the year here. But anyway, that's what's to look forward to.
But yeah, let's get into today's episode here. Yeah, So,
as I mentioned, my game pass subscription lapsed. I subscribed

(03:50):
for a month to play Indiana Jones and you know,
a couple other things that were there that lapsed, and
then I decided, you know what, since I got my
PS five, I haven't subscribed to PlayStation Plus, and I
haven't been a member of that since like god, I
don't know, maybe like twenty eighteen or nineteen or something.
I don't maybe later in that It's been a long
time since I've subscribed to that service. And since then,
they've made a whole bunch of changes that you know,

(04:11):
I've seen the announcements of of course, and you're doing
a great job of shouting out all sorts of games
that are on that service. Yeah, it's been a while
since I've been in there, especially now that they have
their yeah, like game Pass competitor version of it that's
just more than monthly games but has all sorts of
back catalog stuff, has some newer ish titles, a lot
of third party things in there too, and so, yeah,

(04:31):
it's been it's been fun checking that out, and honestly,
I'm really impressed. I think I just people always say that, like, oh, yeah,
game Pass so much better than whatever PlayStation's doing here,
But like, I don't know, I think this is a
seems like a really I don't know what the number
is if you compare how many games are on each,
but like you got a bunch of classic PlayStation stuff.
They have like a whole section of like Vita games
that you know, I've got like remasters or something, so

(04:52):
that you can like explore all these different generations of
PlayStation pretty good on like the newer stuff. Of course
you're not getting the day one releases like game Pass is,
but also like PlayStations games are generally like higher qualities
spell than like what you're getting Indiana Jones is kind
of like an outlier there. It seems like for a
lot of people. Yeah, and then you'll tell that was
a Day one release there, you guess indie games. Indie games,

(05:14):
you will get some day ones, and there's some yeah
really top two ones like Plucky Squire and then yeah,
it's funny like also, I don't know how these contracts
work out, but there's like a lot of Bethesda Slash
like Xbox things that are just lurking around on the service,
like alls, there's a Wolfenstein games and other things like that.
That was funny for me to go through and see.
So I'm still getting used the whole layout of it.
Because I feel like maybe there's just a spot where

(05:35):
you can go to view every single game that is downloadable,
but I feel like they break it off in all
these different categories and I keep clicking around. I've looked
through all these lists multiple times, and I keep finding
new things, which is fun. It's like a finding, like
a treasure. But it's also like, how come it's so
hard to find, just like the things I'm looking for.
And then there's like weird things too, where I've found
a few games where I'm like, oh, this is in
the catalog, click it, it's like forty bucks. I'm like, wait,

(05:58):
excuse me, what is this just not updated? Yeah, what's
going on here? And then there's of course the game
trial stuff, and that's showing on this service. So I'm
still getting used to how it all all works out.
It's a little more complex than like game Pass, which
is just like a list and then there's categories down below.
But yeah, it's I don't know. I'm very impressed by
the offering that they have here, and I guess I
haven't worked out like what the price of it is
compared to the game Pass on like a yearly basis,

(06:20):
Like if you're getting. I know there's different tiers for
PlayStation as well. I got like three months of premium,
so I'm just gonna rock with that. I've access to
everything right now. And yeah, really really impressed with just
the general offering.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
I gotta say, yeah, no, I I mean, I've been
subscribed for definitely over a year now. I think it
it comes up again in April, and I think I'm
gonna go down a tier just U, I don't know,
got a got a big difference.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
You're the very top tier in the second one. Do
you even know?

Speaker 2 (06:48):
So Premium and Extra I believe, if I'm not mistaken,
that's the that's the name of them. But for Premium
you get access to cloud streaming where you can you
don't have to download the game to play it. I
usually don't even like that because I just sometimes, you know,
you get a random little speed bump of Internet and
then you just like lag out, and if you're playing
a video game like you don't want that, especially if
it's an action based game. So I've noticed a couple

(07:09):
of games that that's the only option, Like the s
It's weird, Like the Sly Cooper Collection, you can only
stream it but then you can just like download the
games outside collection.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
So I don't know, it's funny because cases, but.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
I think that was the only game that I actually
attempted that on was like Cooper, funny enough that you
mentioned that one, but like I was just like lagging
out as if I was playing like an online game
with like a thousand ping like it was like that bad.
I'm like, okay, no, I'm gonna download this. This is
this is that atrocious? But uh yeah, so yeah, access
to that and then you get the access to the Trials,
so so you don't get access to that if you

(07:44):
are just an extra member where you get unlimited play
for I think it's two hours, which is I don't know,
it's it's more than just an hour. I think experience.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
I'll tell you like if you're gonna like the game
or not so true.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yeah, pretty. I did the trial for a few games.
Stellar Blade was one. Bought that game. Ballders Gate was
another one which I bought that game. So it's been
I think one hundred percent success right for me of
doing the trials and then purchasing the game. So that's
been effective. It's funny for the the Baalders Gate experience.
So I think I actually got like twenty minutes of
actual gameplay because Shane, I like made our characters like together,

(08:18):
and then I'm just like reading through all the whatever.
And then I didn't know this, but you can actually
make your characters at the exact same time. So I
like made my character and I'm like, okay, add second
player now, and then it like brought up like the
split screen. I'm like, are you kidding me? We could
have done that whole thing together, but uh yeah, hindsight,
but so yeah, I believe that's the only difference there.
And then I think some of the classic games are

(08:39):
only on the prema maybe like.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
A certain console or something. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah, Like I remember when I first got it. I
don't know if it's changed since, but I think PS
one and PS two were on Extra, and then if
you wanted the PS three titles, they were on, yes,
the premium, which that was like the only category I
wanted to jump into was those PS three titles, So
I think that's why it initially got the premium membership.
I don't know if they've since worked like swap that around,

(09:04):
but like, as far as I'm aware, as long as
you have the extras tiers like you get like the
Ubisoft Catalog, which, of course that has a buttload of games,
all the Assassin's Creed in there, Firecry. So yeah, no,
it's it's definitely impressive catalog. And I think early on,
like when it first rolled out, it was pretty obvious
of like, Okay, Xbox is definitely the winner here, but

(09:27):
I don't know, like they keep adding more and more
in there. Of course, they still do their monthly game releases.
I'm definitely getting better at navigating the catalog as well, because,
like you said, I I was. I was confused by
it too. I'd be like looking for a game not
knowing I'm in the PlayStation store let alone, like the
PlayStation Plus tab, but I can't remember what it is.
But there definitely is like an all games. Yeah yeah,

(09:51):
I've gone through that quite a few times, just looking
for a very specific two player game that I can't
remember the name of. So of course I just like
go through the whole all of them. But uh, yeah, no,
it's it's fantastic. I hope they, you know, just keep
adding more and more to it. It's it's nice that
it's not just a clear like yeah, Xboxes is the
name of the game. When it comes to game past
type systems, PlayStation's up there.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's just a credit to
how strong PlayStation's history is and their back catalog of
stuff is just super great. And obviously xboxes has kind
of grown in a way just because they like acquired
so much stuff. Like obviously when they got the bethesta
acquisition that was a huge amount of stuff that could
drop on the console. They like, even the Activision Blizzard
stuff is like barely even dropped on there. So like

(10:33):
once all that stuff comes in, if they do a
huge drop at some point, and that'll be like wow,
even crazier value for this thing. But yeah, PlayStation just
like has all these great ip sitting in their back pocket.
So it's it's uh, yeah, it makes it easy to
make a service like this just really really solid and
well rounded. So yeah, I've I have four games that
I want to highlight here that I've been jumped. I

(10:54):
downloaded just that shit ton of things, just savagely downloading things.
My I'm sure my internet build insane. So so yeah,
here's here's a few shout outs, a couple of quick hits.
When is this game called Intelligent Cube. Do you know
anything about Intelligent Cube. Oh, yes, I've seen this on
my PlayStation. Yeah, this is one that I have heard of,

(11:15):
like somewhat recently on some podcasts probably it's called Intelligent
Cube with a cube by the way, a que instead
of seeing the cube, And yeah, it's it just sounded
like a weird, interesting thing. And then I think what
reminded me of it was when I was playing Astrobot
recently and there's an Intelligent Cube bought in there that
has like kind of the cube logo things as is
like head, which was really funny. And yeah, it's it's

(11:38):
a very strange puzzle game. It's set in like this.
The setting up is like you're just on these very
blank like gray black cube tiles. There's nothing in the background.
You're just a little guy. These cubes are kind of
rolling down the row and you have to kind of
put you almost like planting like landmines, like you're putting
down a spot activating at the right time, and then

(11:58):
you like capture that cube and you're just trying to
like pretty much survive the onslaught of cubes coming at you.
And then there's other ways that it evolves on that.
The framing of it is very silly, where it's just
like each level, depending on how well you do it
calculates you like your IQ, like your Intelligent Cubes score,
and so I like the theving of it is like
very goofy. It's a very weird game. It's kind of
like janky, but to get the hang of it, and

(12:19):
like the tutorials, like I don't even I don't know
what the heck is going on these controls. Like it's
very weird to like put like mark a tile and
then like time that attack on that tile later. It's
just like an extra step than like most games have
to like do an action. It reminds me a lot
of humanity, which is the game that I loved from
twenty twenty three that like weird o puzzle game with

(12:39):
all the people. It's different that it doesn't have all
the human element of it, but just in terms of
like the look of the levels kind of being very
minimalist and really just focusing on like this weird kind
of puzzle gameplay and being kind of silly. And then
I think the most surprising thing about Intelligent Cube and
everyone's got to go on YouTube and listen to this afterward.
Is the soundtrack is like in insanely theatrical. It's like

(13:02):
an Indiana Jones adventure type theme. But if you just
look at gameplay of what it is, you would never
expect that that is what it is, like this epic
adventure music. It doesn't fit at all, but it gives
this game just this extra It already had a weird vibe,
then when you throw the music in there with it,
it gives it like an extra strange vibe. So this
is the kind of I think this is a PS

(13:22):
one game, and this is the kind of weird freak
show PS one stuff that I love to see because
growing up, I didn't own a PS one or two.
My next door neighbor and you know, like cousin and
stuff had them. So I played select games like Your Spiros,
Your Crashes, your Twisted Metals. Those were kind of like
the Big three for me, and I just didn't really
explore like weird games, Like I never went to the
video store and rented strange games like this. But it's

(13:45):
just kind of a really one weird It almost feels
like a three DS game, like a very specific way.
So yeah, showed up to Intelligent Cube. I don't think
it's one. I gonna be going back to it over
and over again and try and beat it by any means.
But a really weird, weird, interesting game.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
The shout out there and I I did not know
about this game. I thought you were referring to a
game called Cubert, which you might be familiar with.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Class situation with an.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Orange gentleman that I mean similar, he got cubes in there.
But it's funny that you mentioned that, Like just this
is definitely not a game that you would rent or something.
Just thinking back to like Little Me and Blockbuster looking
for like the one video game that I'd be allowed
to rent for like the weekend. If I saw this cover,
like never in a million years my grabbing this game.
You know, like they're not going after a younger audience.

(14:32):
I don't think with the.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yeah, I don't know what the audience what.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
This game is just smart people, I guess the Intelligence Cube.
I'm intelligent. Let's try that's true.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, generate your IQ score people who love touting their
IQ online, that kind of person. Yeah, And then next up,
this is really perfect. This was on here because as
I've been chronicling with you, Kirklan. I've been getting like
into the Sniper League games, uh, and recently over the holidays,
I was really craving to jump into another Sniper League
game as perfect. It's like a few months ago I

(15:01):
bought Sniper Leite three, like a three sixty three sixty copy,
and so I dropped that into my Xbox Series X
and it doesn't work with the back compat, which is
extra strains because on my Xbox for the three sixty
Sniper Lee two worked, so like the older game was working,
but not the newer one, so really strange. So I

(15:22):
still have my three sixty somewhere. It's not actively plugged in, right,
so I can play that someday. I'll just get it
on Steam or something, but so it is. I was
very pleased to see when I was cruising through the
catalog here that on PlayStation Plus they have Sniper Eleait
four on there. So three is still eluding me, which
is too bad because I know that's the one that
you're a fan of. Yeah, I want to share that
experience with you. So I'm kind of circling around it

(15:44):
and I'll get back to it someday. But yeah, I've
been playing Sniper Leap four. So the setting of this
one is Italy. That's kind of like the big differentiation
between all these games, right, is kind of where you're
at with it. And yeah, I think this once again
a series that I know I've mentioned on side quest,
but if you've missed those discussions, like very underrated series,
generic name, generic title, generic art, art working, all that stuff,

(16:04):
but like really fun stealth action games, huge sprawling levels,
and I think, you know, going from Sniper the five,
the first one I played, back to two, I was
like pretty underwhelmed by two, which kind of makes sense
it's a much older game, but back up to four,
like this feels kind of just on par with five
in that in terms of the scale and like the
complexity of the levels, and like you know, obviously the
visual quality is not quite as good as five, but

(16:26):
it still looks great. I think it's still pretty modern game, right,
And yeah, I've just been having a blast. I think
they do such a good job in these games of
levels with a lot of variety. I mean, one, the
levels are huge, so even within one level you'll get
different sequences where close quarters stealthier sequences versus big open
sniper areas all sorts of different places to have like
shootouts indoors, outdoors, you know, all these different highlights and

(16:50):
things like that. But then also like levels where there's
like sounds going off so you can like time your
sniper shots. That's a big mechanic of this to kind
of muffle your sound. But then other ones where you
don't have that at all. I just finished earlier today,
Like a long stealth mission is set at night. I mean,
I guess technically it's not really a stealth mission, but
that's just kind of how I played most of it,
just kind of going around the outer edges, taking people out,
accomplishing a couple of goals. Eventually it leads to a shoout,

(17:11):
which is always my Like, I just love that give
and take of this game of stealthy around for a
long time. I try my best not to save some
although sometimes I just randomly die and then I relose
my save right there on every start the whole level,
but like it inevitably I hit someone and it was
just too loud, or I take a sniper shot, missed
up the timing in terms of muffling it, and then
everyone's after me, and those moments are always very high octane.

(17:33):
I'll start throwing land mines down at all the doorways,
find a nice little sniper's nest and kind of close
it down. And I just love the gameplay loop of
these and I feel like there's so much depth of
mechanics that, as I've mentioned before, it feels a little
bit like a Hitman sort of like experience in terms
of the sandboxinginess of it. And I feel like I'm
just not nearly as good at this game as I
am at Hitman, so I'm still figuring out how a

(17:53):
lot of those mechanics work. But it's just super super engaging,
and I think maybe the highlight is, especially as I've
been playing a lot of hit manately, is the AI
is like really good in this game and really interesting,
and they will spot you from really far away, so
you got to be really good and stealthy, which to
me is like a plus. I think I maybe bumped
up the difficulty because I've played a couple of these
games now, so that's getting a bit harder now, and yeah,

(18:16):
just thinking about that, and then when an enemy spots you,
and once they've seen you a little bit now, they're
like on extra higher alert and they'll like find you
quicker if you're not stealthying around them, and like, I
don't know if they see a body or if they
have reasona believe that you're somewhere, they'll like really go
up and search and look around for you orreas. I
feel like a lot of like it doesn't feel like
a simple like throw a rock in a bush, enemy

(18:37):
walks over there, you knock them out, and you move
along kind of game, which is like the stealth and
like ninety percent of games, you know where stealth is
kind of like the back element of it, but in
this game it feels I mean, you can still throw
rocks and bait people, but it's just because the way
the levels are designed and because of sound and vision
cones and all that, it doesn't feel like as a
viable strategy maybe on like lower difficulties, so super enjoyable time.

(18:57):
I'm just I'm I probably could have waited. There's another
Sniper League game coming out later this month, and then
Rebellion has like another game coming out in like a
couple months, as we talked about Adam Fall, so like
there's probably enough coming out that I didn't need to
pick this up now but I was just kind of
craving this sort of gameplay. Not that I'm getting burned
down him, but I'm trying to like not only play it, man,
because I want to want to try new games and

(19:18):
all that. So loving this series. It's it's just been
a really great time and excited to play the new
one that comes out late this month and just yeah,
eventually get to three and then I feel like one
is gonna be a pretty rough experience, especially from like
looking at Steam screenshots, but maybe someday, just for the
check mark fashion of it, I should play it at
some point.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
I went from my similar experience with that was playing
Witcher three, and then I'm like, oh, I love this series.
I'm gonna jump into the first game play the first game,
and I'm I think I got like fifteen minutes in
on my Steam library. I think that's what it is.
It's like a very interesting like like combat. I don't
know if you're familiar, it's like very mouse heavy, so
like the way that you sweat, that you move your
mouse is the type of attack you do, and it's

(20:00):
a learning curve swinging.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
Does it like lock your camera? Is that what's going on?

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah? Yeah, so if I remember correctly, it's like middle
mouse button like enables you to like just do your
your sword. It's bad. It's bad. But I know Sniper
Lee question was gonna ask you because in Sniper Lee three,
the only one that I've played, I loved it. I
love the systems that they had in there, but it
did feel linear in the sense of, like, Okay, I

(20:25):
do have my level that is it's pretty open, I
can do different things, but there's like very obvious like
check markers that I feel like the game kind of
wants me to hit. Like let's say there's like a
sniper point that it's it's almost like a bonus objective, like, well,
you found the sniper point. So then it's like, okay,
well I found those sniper point on this level, the
game wants me to go to this location to like

(20:46):
take out enemies from this position. Does does the game
still have those like in the later titles or do
they just have many more of them or is it
just not so obvious?

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, I think because I wonder how this just going.
And obviously three is the one I haven't played, but
like two, when I went back to that, it felt
very linear, like the levels were much smaller, and it
was kind of like, yeah, there's one corridor through the middle,
and then like maybe a small little path around the
left and right side, you know, obviously like take turns
and stuff like that. But it did feel like a
very basic level structure. I think four and five feel like,

(21:19):
I don't know, maybe take like a hit Man level
of times by like three in terms of size, you know,
like kind of not you wouldn't even call it an
open world. That's that's a little too ambitious, but it's
like very big levels, and so like I guess to me, like,
I don't really know which one it wants me to
go to first. I don't know if that's ever really
what it's asking for. And I think I even I'm
sure in the settings you can tweak things and turn

(21:40):
the map off. I haven't done that yet because I
feel like, one, this game's just a lot harder and
something like hit Man. I play with the map off now,
but I know these maps so well, and I know
where people are, and you got the instinct vision and
all that. I don't know if that would be too
punishing in this, but I do like what I tried
to do today is when I was playing through this mission,
I really only use my mini map to like see
if there was enemies nearby, but I didn't ever actually

(22:02):
open up like the full map. I was like, I
kind of want to. I feel like I had been
doing that and maybe falling into a bit of that
habit of like playing through the game in a bivilanar way, like, Oh,
what's the nearest objective I've have, I'm just gonna go
there and check it off. And so rather than just
like looking around in the world and seeing what looks
cool or interesting or strategically what seems like a good
thing to do right now, you know, I was trying
to like actively do that today and I had That's

(22:23):
where like this level I played today was like the
absolute highlight for me because of that, because yeah, I
never never opened up the map. I was just kind
of going around what looked interesting, what looked like a
good building to kind of clear out, or what was
like mostly going around the edges of the maps and
kind of like taking out the people around the edges
and then slowly working my way in going back and forth.
And one thing I always do in these games is
like if I make a huge loud firefight in one

(22:44):
section of the map, I'll just dart out of there
and I'll run and I'm like, I'm gonna go find
a different objective. I'm gonna wait for that cool down
and I'll find my way back there, or maybe I'll
get through there through a different direction. And so that
kind of stuff's really engaging. sEH, I'm I am curious,
really curious to go back to C three just to
give you that like how big the maps are relatively
It seems like four and five the map seem to
be about the same size, which is like very overwhelming,

(23:07):
like it's a very very large area that yeah, I
don't even know.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
I think the short answer is like no, there isn't
like a linear progression of the way you should be
doing things, and yeah, on all these levels, like there
are a couple bonus objectives I've missed, but like I'm
trying to do a lot of it. But yeah, I'm
also not just like trying to check the box because
I yeah, I think a big difference with this game
in Hitman is like I don't know if there's the
replayability there, Like I'm not really It's like I think

(23:32):
these would be the games that I'd want to come
back five years later once I kind of forget it
and play the levels again, not like master levels, play
them over and over, jump up the difficulty. It's not
not that kind of experience for me, And that's fine.
I'm just looking for like a shooter campaign kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Right, Yeah, No, I I guess the replayability factor was
kind of the main reason why I was asking that,
because like I had replayed submissions in Hitman or in
hit Man in uh snaperly three, But it's mostly just
because like, oh, I missed that objective, so then when
I replay it, I'm kind of going the exact same route,
just knowing what I missed. Yeah, Whereas, of course in
hit Man it's like, wow, now there's an opportunity to

(24:07):
go into this room that I don't even know where
I'm going, like and like in hit Man and I
like we're just talking about Hitman now. It's it's never linear.
It's never like okay, it's very obvious where I have
to go next. I just go in there. I'm like,
let's go check out the back room, like what's over here?
Like where can I go? And where can't.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
I yeah, up, yeah, I mean, and then like you
can just you could turn on like full mission story
guidance and the game does become like a campaign linear
kind of game, like you have that option there. So
I'm sure you can do a lot of things, especially,
I mean, this game has talked about the five. It
kind of surprised me as like, oh, yeah, there's like
full multiplayer. There's a multiplayer competitive you can do, or
you can just have like a cat and mouse death

(24:43):
loopy kind of thing where there's just like other sniper
human players on the maps fighting against you. And so
I don't know how active these lobbies are going to
be years later. I'm sure you don't need many players
to have one other player on your map, so I'm
sure you can get a cue for it. But that
would also add a lot of replay replayability. That was
something I had on in five at the beginning, but
I was like, no way amy putting that on going forward.
It's just too much. These players are too good. I'm

(25:05):
too bad at this game, and I prefer to have
like that single player experience. But that would be definitely
another way. There might even be co op to if
you want to go through with your friend and take
out these levels, So that could be interesting. I don't know.
I just know there's all sorts of crazy things on
the menu that I kind of ignore. But yeah, these
games have a lot to them. They feel like fully
full of shout games in a world where like I
feel like most games just really it's either multiplayer game

(25:26):
or a single player game. They don't try and do
both anymore. I like that Sniper Leaders, at least for
these last two entries, has been doing that. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yep,
so you go. That's Sniper Elite four. I think I'm
probably about maybe halfway through the game, feeling like four
or five missions of it at this point, So definitely
gonna plug through that, try and finish it before Resistance

(25:46):
comes out, which is which is pretty soon. How about
we take our first break of the show and we'll
be right back. Okay, we are back, Okay. The next
one I got here is definitely a highlight and once
again just like weird PlayStation stuff, which yeah, I feel

(26:06):
like we don't get a lot of weird PlayStation anymore,
but they definitely dip into it every once in a while.
But yeah, one of the main games I've been playing.
Here is a Gravity Rush, which I'm sure you've heard
of this in Kirkling. But like when I say gravity Rush,
what comes to mind? Do you have any any preconceptions
of this.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Sass Pace gameplay. I've seen it on the catalog, but
I cannot picture what the game is right now. I cannot.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
No, I mean, that's the exact same thing for me.
It's another game that I've just heard for years is
like cool and weird and interesting and good, but like
never people never hear people talking about like what it
actually is, what the gameplay is, what it's all about.
And I wish I could give you a succinct description
of what that is, but I don't even know because
there like there are comparison points I can bring up here,

(26:53):
and I will, But like, this game is so unique,
and I think that's what I'm liking the most about
it is it just is such a weird, interesting, bizarre game.
And I know there's a sequel out there too, so
I'm curious how that evolves on the formula. But yeah,
if anyone doesn't know, this game came out originally, the
first one came out in twenty twelve on the Vita
maybe have been earlier because I think it was a
Japan exclusive and then it came to North America, so

(27:15):
maybe a little bit earlier than that. But yeah, twenty twelve.
On the Vita, it was made by Japan Studio, which
Japan Studio was sadly closed by Sony a couple of
years ago, but a lot of the people there were
kind of folded into different teams, including and a lot
of them went over to the a Soviet team who
make Astrobot now right, So there's I can feel like
a little of the playful DNA here between Japan Studio

(27:39):
and this game here and then the version I'm playing
because this is a Vida game I'm playing with. PS
five is a remake that was made by Blue Points.
So Blue Point made the Shot of the Clossus remake
that did the Demon Soul's remake, so they're kind of
like the Tier one remake studio at PlayStation right now.
And it's funny going back and seeing like, oh, yeah,
they did this as well, which seems like a pretty
pretty great remake as far as I can hell remaster,

(28:00):
I'm not. I think it's more of a remaster than
a remake. Perhaps, but obviously it was a Vida game,
and now it looks great on my big TV planing
on PS five, so whatever they did, they did a
good job with it there. That's also something I'm curious
about how this would play with a Vida because there's
definitely a lot of like gyro elements to this moving
your controller around one just like move the camera and

(28:21):
like influence where you're moving, but also in like the
story comic Bookie sort of sequences, you can kind of
look around the scene a little bit with those, So
I don't know that could come off a little awkward
on the Vita potentially, so I'm curious how they would feel,
But it feels good with the PlayStation controller, of course.
How do I describe this game? This game is like

(28:41):
you are a character named Cat. You have a little
a cat named Dusty. The cat's name is not kind
of your name is Cat. You have Cat and Dusty.
You are these You're just kind of this girl who's lost.
You don't have any memory, you don't know what's going on.
You're in this weird floating city in the sky and
things are going bad. Parts of the city of falling up.
People are freaking out people don't know what's going on.

(29:02):
And then you have these powers. Granted you buy the
cat name Dusty that lets you affect your gravity. So
at any point you just hit the right bumper in
a specific direction and then you will just start falling
in that direction, and your character like has this funny
kind of rag doll to her which is like puts
her arms out, or if you do, like if you
just fly right on the ground, should just like smash

(29:23):
into the ground like Spider Man and the Spider Man
games when you just don't get a smooth landing on
the ground. And like that's kind of the basic format
of it. You're just flying around this city and the
quests are all sorts of things of like you know,
collect these orbs or do this little time trial, fly
through these pillars in time, and then eventually it like
introduces combat and stuff. But yeah, you're like changing your
gravity and then you can like walk on the sides

(29:45):
of buildings or on the roof of things too, if
you've like set your gravity there, and then any point
you can hit the left bumper and we'll just like
return your gravity like the default version like fall to
the ground. And then eventually On top of that, you
get like the ability to just like pretty much power
slide on the ground, like infinitively like a skateboard, so
you can like combo that by like gravity and like
flying into the ground and then landing with like a

(30:05):
slide and like jumping and doing more gravity. And it's
just I think that's why I'm loving it so much.
Is I just love movement in games like this, like
in open world games or like open area games that
have just like really fun movement systems, Like that's all
I need most of the time. I don't want to
do the combat in those games. I just want to
mount because that's like such an engaging part of it,
and this game is definitely nailing that aspect of it.

(30:28):
And I feel like the skill ceiling on this game
feels super duper high because there are certain like time
trials I've done and I'm getting like nowhere close to
like the best time on it. So I'm still like
a very clunky, like low level gravity shift. I'm just
flying into walls smashing all the time. It feels like
like I'm a kid on like the skating rink where
I just don't know how to stop, so I just

(30:48):
fly to the wall to stop at any given time.
That's kind of me right now. So it's it's really
fun getting better at this, or like when you get
a really smooth sequence of like conboy moves together, mixing
that in with like the combat, because the combat very
aerial base you're flying in people mid air and smashing
into them and stuff and like bouncing off them and whatnot.
So yeah, I guess that's the best description of the gameplay.

(31:09):
I can't think of a game that's similar to that.
It's like very unique and very weird and very interesting.
So that's kind of the first step of it. In
terms of the vibes of it, it's pulling from all
sorts of different things, or at least it's it's reminiscent
a lot of different things.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
For me.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
One thing right off the bat was like it's given
me a bit of near near automata sort of energy here.
In terms of like the world, this game is like
open world, but it's kind of small and you're unlocking
different areas, so I'm sure it gets pretty big by
the end of it. But like the environments are pretty bland,
the colors are like pretty washed out and dull, but

(31:43):
then like the sky is like this like hellscape like
peachy orange that looks like as if there's like a
fire going on, you know, when the sky gets really
messed up when there's a forest fire or something like that.
It feels kind of like that, which is like very contrasting,
like the very like browns and grays and like dark
washed out colors of just like the city and the
people and like everything except for the sky. And then

(32:06):
like your you know health bar, which is like green
and blue and that's really bright. So yeah, really weird energy.
There so much to the like. After I was playing
more and more, I was like, man, Near must have
had some influence from this game looking at the timelines
of it, uh, And I couldn't find any like articles
or anything that I like made that connection in terms
of them talking about it. But uh, there was. I

(32:26):
noticed in Gravity Rush too when I was googling around
that there's like a near costume like crossover in that.
So I feel like there is some sort of respect
or love from these developers for each other. Feels like
in the way like Stellar Blade has like the Near
like the two B costume. I think that you can
get purchasing in there field like that same sort of thing.
Uh there. And then here's a very weird way to

(32:47):
describe like how the city, because the city feels like
almost like a liminal space. There is people walking around,
but like it does not feel like a real place
that living that like people are like there's no way
that there's no like agriculture, like food, Like I don't
know how these people live at all, Like none of
it makes any sense. It feels like a weird dreamscape.
And it almost feels like like the you know, like
the monastery and firing them three houses. It's like there's

(33:10):
people and stuff, but like the buildings are pretty bland,
it's pretty generic. You can't really go in a lot
of places. It doesn't really feel like a real place.
It's more just like to facilitate the characters. It honestly
feels a lot like that. And the music of the town,
like the basic town music sounds so similar to like
the three Houses like monastery music. So obviously Three Houses
came out after this, but that's something I wonder about

(33:30):
in terms of like an influence there as well. That
might just be me putting you know, too many like
a conspiracy level thing, but like all these things I
just mentioned, weird mixture of vibes that leads to a
very strange and interesting and unique game.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
It's it's funny because just looking at a gameplay, I mean,
the gameplay is unlike any game I've played. I'm sure the.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
Trailers are they're actually moving well, whereas I'm like just
flying into things.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
But just like the aesthetic of the world, the characters,
all those pieces remind me of many different games that
I have played in the past, whether it's other anime
type up game. Oh my god, what was it called
Scarlett Nexus? I think that's what it was. Very similar
sort of vibe of like the comparison to Three Houses though,

(34:17):
where like I'm like running through the town, every character
that I interact with is just a statue. They just
stand there. They have the same dialogue when you like
interact with them, but then you can like hand in
a quest exactly like three Hour Three Houses is I
remember shot such a dragon Ball dragon Ball z Zeno
Verse had a very similar thing where you're like running
around the town is like the exact same song playing

(34:39):
like like no matter where you are, every character is
just like staying. I wonder if it's like a Japanese studio,
just like Classic because I imagine this is from a
Japanese developer, right, yeah, it was a Japan's studio, so yeah,
oh yeah, there you go. That's the main one themselves.
So it's funny just like a similar type of I
don't even know what you would call it, just just

(34:59):
a uh, just a similar style or like way to
to manufacture those types of worlds, because even Stellar Blade
to an extent, is a little bit like that. There's
a lot more living, breathingess to the warp to the cities,
but a lot of times when you're going through these cities,
like the same songs just going and you know, it's
it's a good Japanese orchestra song. It sounds amazing, but

(35:19):
like still it's just it's just very similar type of
experience and yeah, mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah. And I think in terms of talking a little
bit more about like just the general vibe around the
town stuff, Like the game has a silliness to it one.
I think that's part of how almost how bad I
am at the game. I think that is like intentional,
like you slamming into things is like a part of
the humor of it, or like at one point, this
this kid is he's lost his his loss his dad.

(35:47):
He doesn't know where his dad is, so he's he's
gonna stay that. You tell him to stay there, I'll
go get your dad. And like at any point you
can hit the I Guess circle button and you'll, like
any physics objects around you will like get scooped up
in your little gravity, your little gravity orb around you,
and then like they'll fly with you. And so you
just like pick up this guy's dad when you find him,
and he's like flailing in the air's like, oh, what's
going on here? He can't normally do this power as

(36:09):
you're like flying across the city now with this guy
to like drop him off at his son. Or like
early on in the game, you have to like build
your house, which was a very random little side quest.
You just had to go around, find a bed, scoop
it up with your gravity, well, take it down to
the sewers, find a chair, pick it up with your gravity,
well move around, bring it back to your sewers. And
it just feels like a very goofy tone to it
as well, and like one thing I love about I

(36:32):
feel like I haven't talked about this much recently, but
Crackdown one of my favorite all time favorite games. I
love Crackdown so much. My favorite parts about it. What's that?
What's that?

Speaker 2 (36:40):
What was the new game? Crackdown three?

Speaker 1 (36:41):
Is that the one that was like not playing, not
just enjoyed Crackdown three? The original Crackdown one of my
favorite games of all time. Literally mean that. I love
that game so much. One of my favorite parts is
that there's just these agility orbs all across the city,
right at the top of interesting places that would look fun,
that would look like they're fun to climb, and that's
how you like love up your agility stats. You climb
these crazy things, you grab the orb, and now your
stat's a little bit higher. And that's just like when

(37:03):
you look out at the city scape you and see
all these green orbs, like, oh, I can't wait to
go climb all these things. And by the end of it,
you're just super powered. You can jump super high. And
this feels like that where there's just these crystals all
over the city. So it's like anytime you're going to
do a quest, or if you just want a little
downtime in between, you just finished a big quest, big
combat stuff. I'm just flying around the city, flying through orbs,
trying to combo, so I get like a nice straight
line and grab as many as I can, just super

(37:25):
enjoyable to fly around in here. And then I think
the other thing I should mention is I mean the story,
as I mentioned, very anime, very over the top. There's like,
you know, God, and there's all sorts of crazy worlds
and dream dimensions and there's clones. I don't even know
what the hell's going on yet, no idea. All I
know is you're a hero and you're trying to save
the city by bringing pieces like an extent.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Is there like an existential like like I don't know,
just big big existential. I don't want to say threat,
but just like inner existential. What the hell is the
word I'm looking for, just like finding your place of
like being a human. I feel like I guarantee this
game is going to philosophy. Yeah, I guarantee in the
way that near and I'm sure, Yeah, yeah, we're definitely

(38:09):
gonna get to some like weird philosophy from like some
Nietzsche stuff.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, we're gonna We're gonna get there for sure. It
feels like that will be the case. I think we're
still at the point where it's like I don't even
know your character, doesn't even know who she is really
or what's going on, still trying to figure all that
the breadcrumbs. Yeah, of course so but yeah, I've met
some crazy people already at this point. But I love
the way the story is told because I mean it
has like when you talk to someone, it will bring
up like a little fire emblemy sort of like little

(38:35):
portrait and you'll have your discussions there. But like for
certain story beats, rather than having like a as them
three D animated stuff, it'll pull these like little comic
book strips. And the way when you're clicking through the
dialogue going to like move to the other frame, as
I said, is you can move the control around. You
can kind of it makes it feel like a comic
book that you're holding a little bit and like shifting
around and looking at and it'll like shift around. But
it gets really playful with it where there's one scene

(38:56):
where the character cat like falls down and like bunks
on like three things on the way down, and the
way the comic strip like bonks down these three separate
panels down to like the Pottom part, and then like
the new dialogue pops up. It's just really imaginative, and
I love the art of the comic books. It's like
a whole different just hand drawn art style, a lot
more clarity to it, and it looks beautiful. So yeah,

(39:16):
I don't know. I really am curious how I'm gonna
feel about the game by the end of it, but
like as of right now, it's just such a weird curiosity.
And it's cool that there's a sequel out there too,
for like an odd game like this, I'm curious to
jump in that that someday too. So I feel like
gameplay wise, it's hard for me to recommend this game
to anyone, just because like I have no really comparison points.
Is just a weird thing. But I think you should

(39:37):
definitely check this game out, Kirkling, because it feels like
an amalgam of a lot of things that you really enjoy.
So I think I think it'd be a game for you,
even if maybe gameplay wise it's not necessarily something that
you've played before. I just think the vibes of it
is something that you'd be into.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
It's checking many many boxes. I feel like, just like
I definitely thought it was a different game just by
the name, and then when I when I when I
hold it up here, I remember seeing it on there,
and of course it's just like, oh, an animeated game. Okay, yeah,
I add this to the games I want to play.
They're usually hitting a lot of my yeah, just a
lot of my checks, my check boxes, I guess for

(40:14):
what games I like, and the gameplay elements. I mean,
when you're first describing it, I'm like pseudo Regalia. That's
what I'm thinking of right now. Just like interesting movements.
I love the way that you're just like you're saying, like, yeah,
when you getting too you just like slamming and things like. Man,
that's like my snowboarding experience this year. I'm just once
I get too fast, I can't control. I'm just like
grabbing onto a tree or something to slow down. But

(40:36):
oh yeah, this sounds really cool.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
It's weird to have like a movement game where you
never where you're not platforming, you're not like jumping on
Like that's a very weird combination.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Right A game that I want to recommend to you,
just on the basis of movement and especially how you
like you're saying like this is one that I'm sure like,
I don't know, speed runners usually like fine glitches in
the maps, but I'm sure like just seeing like yeah,
I'm yeah. So another one that makes me think of
that is titan Fall two, specifically titan Fall two. I

(41:09):
don't know if you ever played it.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
But that is a big backlog one for me.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Yeah. I remember Briggs was a fan back in the day,
and I when I went through it, I I was
just like, I only played the story. I didn't play online.
I'm sure the online is crazy, which is the movement
that you're able to do in that game, But I
love the story. I think I beat it in like
one city and it's like a five and a half
six hour story or something. But the movement, like because
you know, you're mostly in a mech, there's many missions

(41:35):
that you're not in the mech though, or maybe you
have portion of it in the mech, and then you
have to get out and just the movement when you're
running around, it's like more fun to play the game
not in the mech because you're just wall running. And
then if you like land and like slide, you like
pick up speed, and then you can like carry that
momentum to get like higher up in areas, so like
in the little training zone. It's kind of like in
UH at the start of like a Call Duty four campaign,

(41:57):
you know, when you're like running through the house to
try and get like the best time, and then it
like recommend your difficulty based on the time that you
beat it in, very like SAME's Ease to Titan Fall.
You like go through it's like, okay, recommend it on
easy or regular hard. But then there's like the time
trials of like beat it in this time, and then
there's like the records of people that have done it.
And I went through that so many times and realized,
I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna I'm never gonna get

(42:18):
it under ten seconds or whatever the hell the number was.
But especially because you're just doing all these movements, and
then you have to like hit targets, which of course
people that have played this game like hundreds of hours
are just God's at and then you like throw like
a like a grenade on certain portions, so like I
can get the movements down, but like doing all that
with like hitting the headshots.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
It's just it's a lot and you would love me
on White that is yeah, okay on the list, great
gam love dam White. I love it. Yeah, Titan Fall everything.
Really need to get to so many things on the backlogs,
only so much time. I'll get to it someday, I promise.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
Oh, I remember you telling me about this one probably
on the quest.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
Yes, it's it's really good. Uh Okay, I I think
that's all I want to say for Gravity Rush at
the moment. Like I said, I have not beaten it yet.
Once again. Another one. I think I'm probably about halfway
through it, so we will see how it how it evolves.
I'll report back on that one, but we take our
next epic. I have one more game, but it will
lead nicely into our main topic, so we will be
right back. Okay, we are back. The last game that

(43:20):
I've been playing on the catalog. This one has been
on my radar for a long time. Kind of missed it.
It was one of the main big PS four games
that I didn't get around to in that generation, and
that is Days Gone, and finally been playing some Days
Gone for the last couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
Here.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, this is this is kind of the last This
is like the White Whale almost of like the PS
four generation from like those really iconic PlayStation showcases of
like all those games, all those trailers hitting you know,
like whether it was God of War and the reboot
of that the Spider Man and that that coming off
SPI Horizon. You know, last was part two, Ghost of Tushima,

(43:58):
Death Stranding to Roy Become Human. And I feel like
Days Gone is like another one, like in that pocket
of like you know, the the Triple A first party
sony stuff that's going like up the extra mile in
terms of the presentation of it and doing something a
little bit different. So, yeah, I've finally been playing some
Days Gone, and yeah, it's it's been an okay experience

(44:19):
so far. I think as far as like these kind
of games go, Like this is like a very open world,
checklisty sort of thing, you know, very very sony first
party thing where it's very story focused, a lot of
a lot of characters having conversations, a lot of flashbacks
to other characters and all that. So it feels a
little by the numbers, And I think it probably still

(44:40):
would have felt that way if I played it when
it came out, which I think was twenty nineteen. I think,
especially now that I've played a bunch of more games
that have kind of followed in this PlayStation Sony suite,
I guess it feels like a little bit a little
derivative I suppose to some extent. But I mean, first
of all, I love the setting of this game. I
think it's set in organ Obviously, it's very similar nature

(45:02):
and stuff to what we have up here in British Columbia,
and so I always like when that's represented almost has
like a little bit of Pacific drive energy to it,
just because of the setting, plus the fact that you're
spending so much time with your vehicle, and there's like
that intimate connection with your vehicle in this game, so
it's a little bit similar to that. But like looking
out at like I assume like one of them is
like Mountain Baker looks a lot like that, but like
these beautiful snowy mountains with like just the forests as

(45:24):
they're going up and then you get like the more dry,
deserty areas with like the lush uh like deeper forests,
the creepier forest. That kind of stuff is really fun.
And yeah, like as I said, this is obviously connecting
to our main topic in that this is a a
zombie gamer. I think they call it freakers in this game,
which is like always the silliest thing when they when
they announce that, I still like, I feel like I

(45:46):
think about that trailer. I'll call it like once a month,
which is still quite a lot for a trailer, but that, yeah,
I remember that trailer.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
Like the long camp Yeah, yeah, whatever it was.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
Yeah, I can't remember the specifics, but just like climbing
at the barn, having fifty freakers coming up behind you,
running out onto the silo, knocking this thing out, just
trying to run away from them and all that stuff,
which is such an iconic trailer. I haven't quite seen
a moment like that in my playtime yet, and I'm
curious to see when I get to that set piece,
because I'm sure that's an actual piece in the game,

(46:18):
how it much how much it lives up to that.
But even like a recent quest I just did, it
had like a ton of zombies in it and they
I almost feel like it was teasing that sort of
bigger trailer e moment because like they're all there and
I guess if you went in guns blazes and they
would all target you, but they were like kind of
you were kind of sneaking off the background and end,
and they were kind of going after some enemies in
the story mission, right, and then they kind of followed

(46:39):
them away, and then there's only like ten that you
have to take out to beat the mission. But yeah,
I'm really excited to get to like a bigger moment
like that and see if it lives up to the
hype in just in terms of like kiting them and
being overwhelmed. And like I already feel like with small
encounters that I'm constantly running out of AMMO and resources.
So when I get to a bigger situation like that,
I can see why would feel so dire because you
don't just have like two two hundred machine gun shots

(47:01):
in your in your back pocket, Like I'm yeah, I
have like twelve pistol bullets at maximum or something like that.
Like it's very limiting in that way.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
So when you're like getting overwhelmed in a situation like
let's just say ten zombies, for example, you run out
of AMMO, is it just game over, like you just die?
Or is there like many other ways to like or
not many other ways, but just ways to like run
away or a melee weapon or something like how do
you kind of roll with the punches In those situations,
you always have.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Your knife that's your melee weapon and never breaks, it
never runs out, but it also takes like a lot
of strikes to take down enemies. At least with my
lower I think you can level it up a couple
of times, but it's very low. But you'll find like
improvised melee weapons on the ground, Like most melee weapons
break pretty quickly, so they feel almost similar to how
much ammo you have right in terms of how much
you can use them, And you'll find those pretty often.

(47:45):
So I like, usually when I'm going through an encounter
and I'm sneaking through, I'll be like, Okay, the baseball
that I'm holding has like thirty percent durability, so it's
about to run out, and I see there's a two
by four on the ground there. I'm gonna mentally clock that.
So when I get into an encounter, I'm gonna bust
through this bat and then I can run back here
and grab this thing. And so I feel like there
is a lot of that planning to it, of trying
to think forward, but I think a lot of it

(48:05):
is just like when it comes down to it, if
that's what's gonna happen with all the zombies, I'm gonna
try and get on my bike and get the hell
out of there. And that can be really chaotic because
also it takes a couple seconds to get on the bike,
reve it and go, and so many times I like
get on my bike, zombies are like jumping at me.
They're gnawing at my ankles as I'm just driving off.
Worst case is when like my bike got knocked over

(48:26):
or something because I got hit or fell or something,
and so my bike's on the ground, so I have
to go through the animation of picking up the bike
getting on it. And sometimes I'll run around. I'll do
a big lap, you know, in like zombie line when
he's at the gas station, it's like doing laps to
like unlock his car. It's kind of like that. I'll
run up, pick up the bike, go do a huge,
big lap. You know, I only have so much stam
in a two second. I'm like sprint for a bit

(48:46):
and then I'm walking kite them far away, and then
I'll sprint to my bike to try and get in
and out there hopefully once again I have gas, because
that's another thing too, in the way that a lot
of zombie games I'm sure we'll talk about, like the
resource management extends past just your weapons to also making
sure your gas is good and your durability your bike
absolutely sucks. You got to constantly use scrap to like
heal this thing, which you can do on the fly,

(49:06):
but it takes time, and if you are doing it
in a pretty loud, open spot, then you'll get swarmed
by enemies at all times. But yeah, I think that's
that's I can already envision that kind of fun kiting
element even just like the smaller numbers of anymies that
so far, but really excited to see those those bigger
set pieces. I'm sure they're gonna be sick.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
I'm so happy that you jumped on this game, because
this has been one that I mean, like you laid out,
like it's just been on the radar ever since that announcement.
It was a phenomenal E three like gameplay trailer or
whatever that was at the time, Like it was just
so unlike anything I'd seen before, especially in the zombie genre,
and I just liked all the setup and then it
came out. I feel like nobody, nobody played it. I think,

(49:46):
you know, shuts out to Hidalgo. I think he got
it and like told me a little bit about it.
He told me he lost like he lost his bike
or like came back to his bike and there's just
zombies all around it. And then I think that kind
of ended that play. I don't know how much further
he got in that game, but I don't know. He
gave me some positive things to it, but it's just
one that because I didn't hear like a lot of
buzz kind of like how Horizons zero Dawn had of

(50:09):
course or got a war. It just kind of like, oh,
it mustn't have been good, you know, because I just
haven't heard a lot of a lot, and not necessarily
it was bad. It's just kind of forgetful maybe. But
I've always been curious and I keep seeing it on
the PlayStation catalog. I keep going through there and it's
on there, so yeah, one day I'll have to boot
it up.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Yeah, I mean, I'm really curious to see how it
will evolve because so far looking at the map, you know,
a lot of games will like an open world game,
it'll show you, like the outline of the whole map,
but it only shows you like a certain chunk that
you're in or something like that, and then other games
like kind of hide that until you've seen more of
that area, like an Eldon ring, and then once you've
walked into that new zone, then it like the map
extends in that way. I'm guessing that's what Day's Gone

(50:50):
is gonna do, because so far, it feels like I've
almost been doing like a try a triangle, just going
around these same like three or four locations multiple times,
backtracking back to this camp to talk to people, and
then like going back, like I feel like I've seen
the same sections of map frequently. I mean I haven't.
It's not like on board of it yet in that way,
But I'm guessing I'll unlock new areas because like looking

(51:11):
at the outline of it, it seems like I've kind
of seen most of it, and I feel like that
can't be the case because I've only played for a
few hours. So yeah, I am curious to see how
it evolves in that way. But also, like the skill
tree for your character seems pretty basic, so I don't
know if there's more things hidden there. In terms of
like weapons, like you're pretty limited. You don't really have
like a pistol, a rifle and like a special weapon
at a time or something like that. So you're pretty

(51:33):
limited on how many weapons you can have, it seems like.
So I'm curious to see how that stuff goes and
if it gets more complex or if it's meant to
be kind of I guess minimalist in terms of your characters,
build and whatnot. And I mean there is definitely a
story focus. There's a lot of long cut scenes. I've
only skipped a couple of them, but I have watched
a lot of them. A lot of the flashbacks to
like your wife character go from whatever she is because

(51:56):
I don't know if she's dead or if she's just missing.
I feel like it's kind of ambiguous. Maybe she's dead,
maybe she's just I'm not exactly sure yet, still trying
to piece together some of that stuff. And then yeah,
I think in terms of like the basic gameplay, like
beyond zombies, there are other humans that you're fighting, so
you do get like gunfights, and then there's like this
weird cult of people who like have their head shaved
and they act a bit like weird and freaky, and

(52:16):
they attack and like more melee attacks and they'll try
and swarming almost like zombies. You get like a little variation.
Then there's like there's a bears and I think there
was like a bear zombie at one point or something.
It seemed like he was a little freaking out. That
is something that has been really funny where I think
a highlight for me of like a game like Fallout
usually follow it more than other scrolls, is like when
you just walk around the world and there's like some
random creatures just like fighting each other in the woods

(52:39):
because of how the enemies like target each other. And
that's been one of my favorite things. Is like I'm
sneaking up on an area and there's a bunch of
human enemies who will shoot me on site, and then
there's like a swarm of ten zombies and I'm just
like I'm just gonna stand back here. I'm gonna let
you guys do get out, and I'm gonna go ahead
and pick up all your I'm gonna take up the
last three people that remain and then like pick up
all the good stuff. So there's been a lot of
that too, so there's some funny moments in there as well.

(53:00):
And yeah, I think the highlight in terms of gameplay
has been like just clearing the bases, that very generic
open world thing that every open world game has. But
you'll be in this little town area and if there's
a gas station, a couple of houses, you gotta find
out where the zombies like have their home base, and
then you gotta like torch it. But when you do that,
it'll attract more of them, and then like in their
home base, always like some will pop out of that
home base like they were I guess breeding in there

(53:22):
or sleeping or something. So as soon as you do that,
they'll be flying out towards you. And so I'm always
trying to like, how could I get an angle? We're
gonna throw this molotov and then like dart out of
there so they don't see me. And so that's been
really fun and always hectic, once again because of how
limited the AMMO is just based on like one, how
many shots it takes to take out some of these
guys if you don't have like perfect accuracy, which that's

(53:42):
a lot of things I've seen in the skill tree
is like just better accuracy and stuff. So I feel
like you're meant to be a pretty weak gunman at
the start of the game, but presumably pretty pretty stacked
out on that. And I don't really know what kind
of crazy weapons you get in this. It seems like
there's a lot of empty slots, but I don't know
if you're getting chainsaws and RockA launchers like someone games
have where it is more sticking to the grounded biker
style shotguns and pistols that.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Kind of thing, right, nice, Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, just
because we were talking about the good old E three,
I randomly watched like the God of War revealed trailer,
like like when it was announced that God of War
was coming back, and man, what a well made trailer,
like the fact that you don't see Krados like at
all and then he then he's like steps out of

(54:25):
the shadow, and like the one I was watching was
like a live reaction, so it was like the crowd
just going crazy. It like gave me goosebumps and it's
so old, but still I'm just like, man, what a thing.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
We should go back and do a little live stream
watch that absolutely big hype PlayStation or other conferences would
be a good time.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
God, I want to watch our own When we saw
Todd Howard up there.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Skull six, Yeah, did you see that? Did you see
that post recently making its round rounds of Reddit, which
is like the length of time between Skyrim and that
announcement is now a shorter amount of time from that
announcement to now. So so like that's how long ago
that freaking announcement was. It's like so so long ago

(55:05):
that we've just been waiting for that.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Bet h, I feel like such a sucker. Todd Howard
was just standing up there with his leather jacket, feeling
like a rock star as the crowd's like going crazy
even though they like this a little leather.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
Jacket that he has. Yeah, so funny. Yeah, I think
I think that's maybe all I'll say for Days Gone,
you know, for all these games, Like I'm kind of
just I've played enough of them to you know, normally
I would wait if I don't feel like I enough
to say about it, But yeah, I definitely need to
see more of the sauce of it. I've heard Days
Gone is a very long game, so that's another thing too.
I could see it dragging if it's really slow to

(55:37):
get to the good part. So we'll see how I
feel about that sort of stuff. Yeah, but I'll report
back on that. But that leads perfectly into our main topic,
which is going to be We're going to rank the
top ten zombie games of all time, and that's why
I've titled this. But I also, to me, just right
off the bat, I also, to me, it's almost like
the best zombie games of all time, sure, but also

(55:59):
the best zombes in games. And I feel like that
actually makes a pretty big distinction, right, because a lot
of games have zombies in them, and maybe that's a
really big part of it, but there's other games that,
you know, yeah, maybe that's just like a part of
the setting. Maybe there's there's games that are all about
killing zombies, but those games that just kind of like
in the background, you know, like Freaking Oblivion has zombies
in it, but it's like it's not really a zombie game,

(56:20):
but there's zombies in it, and if zombies are good,
that could make it get high on this ranking. So
I think for me, the way I'm looking at this
is one I'm trying to find, like, what is just
the best game with zombies in it, but also what
is the best game that really lives up that zombie
fantasy that zombie either the horror of it, the like
gameplay to slaughtering zombies, or also I feel like zombies

(56:42):
sometimes can be a silly thing too, and so I
feel like that's an important part of it, like those
kind of three pillars. Yeah, best game, but also best
utilization of zombies as like, I don't know, I guess
just a feature mechanic of theming that sort of thing.
But how do you think about it the same way differently?

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Yeah? No, I mean it's it's a spicy topic for conversation.
I feel like one that could be very obviously subjective.
Some people might get very heated and offended by the
list that we go out there. But this is our
list at the end of the day. This is the
be all end. Like I said, it is the all
all list for us.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
It's true, it is the definitive ranking. But like I said,
we came up with this topic in less than twenty
four hours. Yeah, we did not research zombie games for months.
To make this list is off the cuffs right here,
you know. And obviously the fact that I've been playing
Days Gone had a top of my mind, and the
fact that you've been playing and talking a lot about Zomboid.
Those are the kind of two of the things that
put it towards the top of the list too. And

(57:35):
I feel like I feel like Taylor would have wanted
to join on this, but we need a topic for
today and the boys out of Country, as you said
so exactly, we're just gonna go for We can always
revise it with him later, get his take on it
at the time, but we're gonna do this in the
same format that we did for our best Snow levels
and our best video game names that we did, which
you haven't watched those rankings really good time. The Snow
one's timely, the name name one is always relevant, really

(57:58):
good times. I've listened back on those and really really
happy with how those turns out. They're just fun time
and this is kind of the same silly sort of
fun ranking that we can do here, So the same
format where we're both just gonna go back and forth,
throw a game, add it on the list, and we're
just gonna build up a big list of all the contenders.
What are the best one of the most relevant and
the most interesting zombie games, and then we'll take that list,
we'll whittle it down to a top ten, and then

(58:20):
we'll do our best to rank it. Does that sound good?

Speaker 2 (58:22):
That sounds good. I wanted to start with a question though, because,
like I love to hear, sometimes there's like maybe I'll
just pull on for example, because this is definitely gonna
be one that I nominate.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
Is I have something in here that you're not gonna like?
So I'd say go okay, not in terms of not
liking the game, but it just in terms of like, okay.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
That's a stretch. It's a stretch, I mean yeah, because
there's like a distinction on like what is a zombie,
Like is it that's good or is it just a virus?
And sometimes video games or you know, other medias they
do it very differently. Sometimes it's a very different take
on the zombie genre.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Absolutely, some are silly, some are scary, some are just
loud and dumb. Right, there are different versions of it
for sure.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
Yeah. But like my question was gonna be like, sometimes
there's like a game series, would you want to just
nominate like a specific game out of that series, like
the best game. Yeah, that's probably the safest way to
go about it.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
Yeah, there are some really tricky ones though, I've thought
about that. Yeah, well, we'll get to those series when
we get there, but some of them are gonna be
hard to decide on one individual game. We'll see.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
Yeah, no, definitely, I can foresee that happening. I'm gonna
start kind of in the goofy range. And this is
one I didn't think of right away when I was
mentioning to Shay what our topic was. This was the
first one she pitched, and I loved it. Plants versus Zombies.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Yes, I was gonna ask you because I don't know
if we've ever talked about plants versus zombies? What experience
with this?

Speaker 2 (59:39):
I was a massive PVS player back in the iOS days,
but back in the the the iPod Touch era, before
it was an iPhone. iPhones might have been out, but
I was an iPod Touch user. And I would take
the public transit too and the and and back from
school every day, and that's like an hour plus that
I'm getting like on both ends of the day, and
I would just be of course, I had like a

(01:00:00):
uh broken iPod two, so I like I got like
all the paid apps and stuff on there, like that
was just like my PS vita essentially the iPhone, the
iPod touch whatever it was. And uh yeah, I think
there's like an Xbox One as well, like they transitioned
over to console if.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
They made it like a sequel. And then they have
Plans Ver Zombie Garden Warfare you know, okay, fair, and
that's not even the same game play anymore. That's like
a third person battle reality thing.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
I believe you don't like that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
I mean, I've never played those ones. I've only ever
I think I've probably played two. But yeah, Plans for
Zombies one is one that just played. I've probably played
through that campaign. Yeah, at least five or six times
or something. I love that game. It's been a long time.
I need to revisit it. But goddamn, I love plas
Ver Zombies. Doesn't know. I guess you would call it
like a tower defense sort of game. Yeah, but like

(01:00:52):
I don't It is very unique. I've never really quite
seen a game quite like a gameplay wise, super fun
strategy game. It gets like the silly, goofy tone of
Zombie that you're talking about. Of course, some of them
have like the football helmet and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
The Zamboni riders. Man, when those are coming out and
you don't have like a lane ready. If you don't
have a lane ready for the Zamboni drivers, you're just like, hey,
I'm restarting this level, like there's no way.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Is Shay also yeah? Is she also nostalgic for that?
Did she play back in the day?

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
I didn't really ask. I was gonna assume so since
you stayed talking about it, yeah, since she just popped
in her in her head right away, I would say yes,
but no specifically the first game for me, I don't
real remember playing the second one, but like you said,
like I think, I think I went through that main
story however many times, and then there must have been
like some sort of survival arcade mode thing that they
had it that I was playing on repeat. But no,

(01:01:41):
it was great. I had different, very variety of levels,
like when you have the night levels, so you have
to make your mushrooms like you can't be getting your
son from your sunflowers anymore. So it's just it made
you tweak your strategy around and then they'd implement like
the pool, so like that's a very different element. And
then of course the zombies are just read down. Yeah,
the zombies are just so iconic to you, like image,
it's almost like a Minecraft character to me now, like

(01:02:02):
when I see that zombie, it's like, oh pbs like
that for zombies. Yeah, well, shouts out to that mobile
game first one.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
I'm gonna use that as a perfect transition, and this
one you might not like it. I'm gonna nominate Minecraft
here because okay, most basic enemy in Minecraft that I'm
sure everyone's first enemy that they will see is the
zombie when the first nightfall hits in Minecraft, usually you know,
the first time you've ever played the game, but I

(01:02:30):
think also every time you come back to it and
you're living in like a little dirt hut, you know,
and you hear that first you hear that first zombie noise,
it is terrifying. And they are the like, I mean,
the enemy spread in that game is really well designed,
where you have like the speedier spiders and you have
like the slow zombies, and the zombies' just more. There's more.

(01:02:51):
There's they're innumerable, there's more of them, so they're just
kind of slowly surround you. They're very very slow, They're
very bad. They can also I think they can poison
you now like they can like you know, wrought you
a little bit if they get you. It's just not
something that was in there back in the day. But yeah,
I think the it's a tricky one because it's like
it's one zombie type, it's one enemy of many, but
to me it is like the first, Like the creeper
is the most iconic Minecraft enemy, you know, it's like

(01:03:13):
it just it is what it is. But I feel
like the zombie is like the first one of the
most crucial one of the puzzle. And just the sound
effect that is another thing that lives rent free in
my head. I can I can just picture that and
especially like if you're playing late at night or something,
and like that sound comes out of nowhere when you're
in a cave and you don't not seeing it coming
and you just hear that noise. Man, it like throws

(01:03:36):
in that fight or flight response. So I think in
terms of that way, like Minecraft, you might not think
of a scary game, but like it can be a
terrifying game at times exploring that world, being on your own,
not having much resources, no safety, and I think I
mean all those sound effects, like the little TNT sound
that the creepers have. Of course, all the sounds in
that game are great, but specifically the zombie I think
is a very crucial part of what makes Minecraft what

(01:03:59):
it is.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
Yeah, I don't know, I don't know how I feel
about that one.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
I mean, like I said, right now, we're just we're
just chuck them on the list.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Yeah I know, But yeah, how I respect the pitch though,
because it's like I wasn't really thinking about that too.
I kind of forgot the zombies were even in there,
Like when you first said zombies, I'm like, oh, yeah,
the creepers are kind of like a zombie, but then
they actually have zombies. So yeah. I also wasn't the
biggest Minecraft player, but still I hear that audio and
there's something to that about a non horror game feeling terrifying,

(01:04:28):
like I had that with Harry Potter and the Phlosopher's
Stone on PS one Back the Day shouts.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Up to the troll and the dungeon, what's your next one?

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
My next one? I'm going left for dead too here.
I'm gonna come out hard and heavy, Okay, specifically number two.
Number two also kind of just accompanied the first game,
like you could play all the maps and have all
the characters from the first game into the second, So
it might be a cheat. There's so many great zombie
types in that, but I guess if you're if you're
really wanting to pin one down, I would say just
like the generic, like the the cannon fodder one, not

(01:04:59):
really the special enemy types.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
I mean they're all they're all zombies though, right technically still.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Like the witch? Is that is that a zombie when
you come across a witch?

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
I think they all are.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
Yeah, okay, the.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
What do you got? The you got? The Boomer, you
got the hunter? You smoker, Smoker. I think they're all
zombie variations, bitter guy, Yeah, the Charger. I think they're
all zombies. In the Oka, I think every single one
of them is a zombies. So I think that it
goes to the zombie game. It's not always about just
like the generic mindless like Minecraft one, there could be
there's all types of zombies in the world. I think

(01:05:33):
leftfore Dead does a great job of one, making like
gameplay a really compelling gameplay loop, but also like coming
up with unique concepts like the Smoker. That's never a
zombie concept I've seen before, you know it something like
a boomer and we've seen that before. But like, yeah,
there was some really unique stuff in there, like this,
like the Hunter being the kind of more agile one.
Like definitely the variety there is is key.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
I'm realizing how much I've played some of these games
we're talking about, because as we're talking about them, all
I can hear is the audio effect from Left for
Dead right now, like literally, like I can hear the
music from the tank entering it's like, oh my gosh,
here we go, or Charger. I can hear the little
witch like in the background.

Speaker 1 (01:06:10):
Yeah, yeah, oh so good. Yeah. I think for me,
Left for Dead one is the one that I guess
I just remember more. But even to your point, like
I'm probably even remembering playing Left for Dead, like those
missions in Left for Dead two, and I think there's
something to be said about just like the simplicity of
the Left for Dead one because you don't have the
Spinner or the Charger. I guess of the two that

(01:06:30):
were added with Left for Dead two, to me, and
in my mind, I think they're they're pretty.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
Much equal that was the one they added. I think
the charger was in the first game, but the Jockey wasn't.

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
I think you're right, Yeah, the spitner in the in
the jockey. That makes sense. I think there are about
equal games in my mind in terms of quality. I
love both those games so much, and obviously the survival
element of it. I can just in my mind pictures
so many iconic levels in there. And then yeah, just
like even outside of those special ones, just like the Hordes,
as you mentioned, throwing out the pipe bomb to drag
a bunch of them together, like just it's not to

(01:07:02):
spoil anything that's absolutely a top like that's just up there.
I'm gonna I'm gonna write Left for Dead one as
well on this list, just because it needs to be mentioned,
and then with that I will go right into Back
for Blood. I'll shout this game out here, so if
anyone forgets for Blood, this is the game made by
I think they're called Turtle Rock, and they're kind of
an offshoot of many of the people who made Left

(01:07:23):
for Dead, but since Valve didn't want to make it,
they went on made their own studio and they made
Back for Blood, which is like it's the exact same
as Left for Dead. You know, all the names are different,
but it's the same sort of thing, similar enemy types,
similar level designs. Sort of eat those, but it's just
more of a modern take. I think it came what
twenty twenty one or twenty twenty two, so it's just
like looks a bit better. You have some new fresh levels.

(01:07:44):
The characters have class types to them. That's a little
difference as well. So you have like a medic type character.
I forget what the other ones do. What you got
like let you got characters that have specific things, And
this is one that I think it's not quite iconic
as iconic for me as Left for Dead one, because
Left for Dead preceded it, of course sudden they just
came out in that time. Left four Dead was when
I was in high school with my friends playing the
stuff on the weekends, whereas Back for Blood is one

(01:08:06):
that I played through the campaign through. Once I played
with Dante and some other friends. That was a good time,
but then I didn't revisit it to the levels like
I can still picture someone in my head, the iconic ones,
but of course it's not gonna have the same mind
share so it's probably not gonna make the overall, but
I had to shout it out because it's it's a
great game. It's like about as good as Left four Dead.
It's just the fact that it didn't. It's coming to
all these years later my mind. I'm not quite in

(01:08:27):
that nostalgic space for it anymore, but it still is
a really great game that if anyone is craving that
kind of experience, a new version of that experience, I
still absolutely recommend that game. I think there was even
some DLCs that I never got around to, so show
it's too back for blood nice.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Okay. Another one I'll shout out is the Dead Rising.
Uh Okay, I think I've only played the second one.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
Interesting, I played the first one.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
I think. Okay, there we go.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
What is the setting of the second one?

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
Am all again?

Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
Oh it's a all as well?

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
Yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
Oh interesting?

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Okay, Well there's Dead Rising two and then three. There's
a lot of these games.

Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
There's four, I believe, and then they have remake that
came out last year with the first one.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
Okay, we remaster or something like that. Definitely didn't play
the third one. Yeah, Dead Rising two, that's the one
I played.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
Okay, I think I've only played the first one, and
it's a game that I mostly watched my cousin play,
I think just in high school or something, so I
don't actually have much experience like holding the controller for it,
but definitely an iconic one for me. But yeah, what
do you what do you love about Dead Rising two?

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Dead Raising two? My my passion for it grew from
actually just like idolizing the first game, because, like you said,
like I think I went over to a cousin's house
and like watched him play, and I remember that one
was being like it was all over those like Xbox
magazines and like the school library, and I would just
be like like the idea of it of a zombie
game that you're like, it's like kind of sandboxy. You

(01:09:56):
can make weapons and just kill zombies in unique ways.
That was like the coolest to me. It had a
kill counter, which I thought was just so unique at
the time. And then yeah, just like really crafting, like
your like your weapons together, Like like the cover of
Dead Rising two, he's got like he's got like a
canoe or I guess it's more of a kayak one
where you know you're rotating the double paddles, but he's

(01:10:18):
got chainsaws on both sides, and it's just like, hell, yeah,
let's get some duct tape and chainsaws, like this should
be easy. That sounds very dangerous, but it's good for
zombie killing. But those games, I think just the sandboxy
element to it and really like it's it's an intense
scary game, but like I remember just fighting like certain
like clown zombies, and it just seems so over the top,

(01:10:39):
like comedic in certain ways. You could wear like really
goofy outfits like the lego head on. Yeah, one hundred percent.
So I think it's it's really like that I say arcade,
not in the sense of like you're playing it at
an arcade, but it's just you kind of just do
what you want the time and it's.

Speaker 1 (01:10:56):
A very arcady.

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
Yeah. Yeah, actually I forgot about the time limit and
yeah they score counter.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
To still have the time limit on it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:04):
Yeah, it's yeah, it did. There was also a big
emphasis on like you would get these they're basically like
the cure, like you get like a vaccine, but like
it only like you have to get it when your
symptoms are coming up, so it's kind of a time
restraint on like getting one of those, not necessarily in
the day, but like you have so many different side

(01:11:26):
quests and stuff, but like you're like you should be
thinking about when you have your next like poker. I
don't why I can't think it syringe there we go,
like like when you could be getting one of those,
because if you if you're not on top of that
and you're just wasting your time like in the mall
killing stuff, like you are gonna lose because because like
that's kind of the main goal is not dying. But
uh so that time constraint element I always hated. I mean,

(01:11:49):
it's kind of what reminds me of like when I
was first playing like Pickment, Like I just as a kid,
like that would just stress me out, having like a
That's why I never wanted to play a majora of mass.
That always terrify me that you can tell run out
of time and lose the game, Like what as a
kid like I don't want that. So I didn't love
the time contral elment. But in hindsight, it it fits
because it forces you to go certain areas as opposed

(01:12:11):
to just I think I just wanted like a Sandbox
mode maybe back in the day. But yeah, now I'm
getting to my personal stuff. Judging the game as a whole,
I think it's just such a fantastic like game of
I mean, the setting is perfect. How many like movies
zombie movies have we've seen like attached to a mall,
Like it just fits so well. But the thing that
I do remember the most is just like the over

(01:12:32):
the top ness with some of the villains that you
interact with. Some of the characters, like they're just so goofy.
It's like you're playing like Saints Row or something like
just some of the cut scenes are just so weird
and wild. But yeah, no, it's it's good. It's it's heartfelt,
like you have you have a daughter at the start
of the game.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
Oh, I never would have thought Dead Rising is a
heartfelt experience.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
But it it starts that way for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
Yeah, I think this to me is like the peak
of like over the top, silly dumb. The zombies are
very slow and like have no brain whatsoever, and they're
just slowly walking towards you, but just going through the mall,
going to whatever store you find and grabbing like the
dumbest items you can find and somehow that leads to
like the crazy crazy kill. The one that I always

(01:13:17):
remember is going into the bathroom store, grabbing the shower head,
stabbing it into a zombies head, and then they just
like shoot all their blood out of the shower head
until they die. And it's like that's like the peak
of stupid Dead Rising. Stupid but great stuff that that
game does all the time. So good shout out there.
I wrote Dead Rising one end two on the list

(01:13:39):
just for the sake of that. Next up, I will
I'm gonna throw in a little Xbox Live Arcade game
in here. The game I played a lot back in
the day. It is called I Made a Game with
zombies in it. I'm guessing you haven't heard of this one.
It's very silly, very stupid, but I think you know,
this game is like lives in the same space in

(01:13:59):
my head as playing like games on like Mini clip
or addicting games I forget. I think this game might
have been like two dollars or something on the Xbox
Live Arcade, but this is like one of those early
I think it was one of those early Xbox Live
Arcade games, which is like, you know, Splunky's in their
trials like some of these games, and like it was
just such a weird time of gaming for me, Like, oh,
I can spend like a small amount of money these

(01:14:20):
really cool, weird games, these games that are very specific
and different. It was like, you know, playing games like
browsing games back in the day, was playing like indie games,
but we just didn't really think of it in those
same terms. And then like the Xbox five Arcade was like, oh,
indie games are back, and they're like they are a thing,
they mean something. And obviously Splunky has turned out to
be one of my favorites of all time. But anyway,

(01:14:41):
all that to say that I made a game of
zombies and it like exists in that same spot for me.
And it's funny looking back on it because I feel
like it's very similar to like what Vampire Survivors is
as a game where it's just top down, you're running around,
you're grabbing upgrades, you're killing zombies, you're just trying to survive.
I think the premise of the game is that it's
literally ten minute long game and you're just trying to

(01:15:02):
survive for ten minute song, and so you're grabbing different weapons,
different upgrades. You can play it co op as well,
and of course it just gets super hard. So even
though it's only ten minute song, very arcadi in that
way of like playing it over and over again trying
to get it, and then the game is very silly.
It's very tough. Even looking like the box art, it's
like looks really stupid, like it looks like a mini
clip game or something like that. And I feel like

(01:15:22):
it's very intentional, like the whole game has one long
song for it, and it's like the guy presumably like
the one developer of the game, and he's like singing
like I made a game, whiz be like that song
I can still just picture in my head because it's
just like the anthem of the game is like this
one like ten minute long track or something like that.

(01:15:43):
So it's just like cheering you on and like building
up this thing. So I don't think I can remember
too many specifics of it, but there's just a lot
of like foggy memories and yeah, that game was a
was a good time. So shout outs to I made
a game with zombies in it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
Man, you just opened up a whole like I'm but
just talking about especially just certain like flash games that
we play back in the day. I there's many that
struck me in the zombie genre, but one that I
actually found that I remember playing this so much. It's
called The Last Stand two. Specifically it was on Armor Games,
and there's like a website called Armor Games that has

(01:16:20):
games on here, and I'm like, I don't know if
this is just like a virus website or something, but
shouts out to The Last Stand too, because this is
a really new game where I love the gameplay loop.
It's kind of it's funny we're talking about plats versus zombies.
It's kind of a similar where like you have a
couple of guys lined up with like different weapons, and
but like there's an exploration aspect to it, because like
once that section of the gameplay is over and you survive,

(01:16:44):
you get to like basically choose like where you want
to go or like go like like maybe let's let's
stay home and like heal our guys or like reinforce
our base, or maybe we should go to the shopping
center because we're getting low on supply, so so then
we'll go there. And sometimes you'll go there. It's like,
oh the night was was quiet, like you got lucky,
like and you got some meds. So then you go
back and you got replenished. But then you go there

(01:17:04):
and it's like, oh no, an alarm went off. And
then now it's like the exact same gameplay, but now
you're in some something like a shopping center that you
don't really have it as fortified as this, dude, I know,
I know, And like like some of these flash games
back in the day, I'm like, these could be game
of the year, like like like man, like we've.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
Talked about we need to do an episode where we
really like do some research and find nostalgic for and
break it down.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
Yeah, exactly. And then the other one that I was
thinking had a similar type of gameplay element to it,
but it was more so like you're like a big
military convoy and and and depending on which route you go,
you'll interact with more zombies. And I can't remember what
it was called. Yeah, I can't remember it was called.
But it was so fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
That's a separate game.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
It is a separate game. Sorry, I'm thinking of two
right now. But the last and too, man, I I
played that so much. It was very hard, especially being younger,
I probably didn't have like the best strategy mine that
I you know, I'm not saying that I'm a god,
but still just better than I was. But I just
I found it so fun. And uh, I remember playing
the first game as well, and I remember his a

(01:18:10):
big deal because like the set, the main character, he's
got like a beard versus the first game, so you
just feel like you're like growing. And of course they
have like different gameplay mechanics and stuff that they introduced
in the second one. But yeah, shouts out the last
stand too. I completely forgot about it until now it's
and the main character. Now when'm thinking about it, he
kind of reminds me of the what's the chap from
Days Gone? Is it? Deacon? Is that me?

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
Yeah? Or Deeke for short as they call it, Deeks.
Deeke's Killing freaks, Deeks killing freaks. That's the one. Okay,
I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
Know if I wanted to pitch that game. I just
wanted to make I wrote it down.

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
But you can you can go next as well.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
Oh okay, I appreciate that. Yeah, I don't want to
get in that conversation yet. Let's go. Let's go Dyinglte.
I'm gonna say specifically the first one game, just because
I haven't played the second one yet. I'm sure. I'm
sure they've it like improved a lot of systems into
the second one. But that first game, to me, that's
got to be like my top five favorite zombie game

(01:19:08):
I've ever played in my life. Okay, Okay, yeah, I
mean maybe i'll look at the list once this is over,
and that top five might be a little bit bigger
in my mind than I'm thinking. But yeah, that is
just such a phenomenal experience. Honestly, they really nail like
the Parkhour elements, Like the gameplay is fun, but it's
also so scary, Like it's the type of game that

(01:19:28):
I love playing but also was terrified of it. It's like, oh, okay,
I made it too far in the story. Now they're
forcing me to do a night mission, Like, oh, I
don't even want to do that. I just want to
keep doing these little milk runs for little Granny, getting
pack of smokes out in town. Like it just it
was so immersive, and I think because it was such
a good first person game, it just added so much
to that immersiveness feel where I don't know, like like

(01:19:51):
every it doesn't matter if I'm doing like a main
mission or if I'm doing yeah, like a milk run,
like like things can go sideways really quickly in that game.
And it's also one that it makes it well, like
any situation when you're playing online with friends. Not only
is it way easier, but it's so much less scary,
like like doing night missions with friends where you just

(01:20:11):
run around everyone's got like katanas or something versus by
yourself and they're just zombies all around you and no
one's looking out for you. Like you know in Elder
Scrolls or Fallout when you go to lock pick something,
you know, the world just freezes for you. Not in
that game, so like you actually have to like make
sure you're fine, and then you're you're you're picking the lock,
you're close and you just see a zombie getting really
close to you and you're like, oh my god, I

(01:20:32):
got a run. So yeah, yeah, I fucking love Dying Light.
That first game for me, it's it's yeah, it's phenomenal.
It's pretty crazy. I haven't played that second one yet,
but maybe one day.

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
Very nice, Okay, maybe I'll follow it up with I'll
put a Dead Island two on the list next year,
so I talked about this one last year. I'm not
going to nominate Dead Island one because that's a game,
you know, it's fun to mess around with with friends
playing that game back in the day, but it was
not great from what I remember, and that was when
I was like just playing anything and liking anything, but

(01:21:05):
Dead Island two. To me, this is like, you know,
this is not an all around great game, but it
totally completely succeeds at the absurd zombie slaying fantasy. You know,
like that one of the big marketing beats they had,
I forget what they maybe they called like the Flesh
system or something like that, where like all of like
the meat was like you know physics, like on of

(01:21:28):
the bones you can like rip off just like hunks
of zombies rip off their arm, rif off just like
chunks of their belly and stuff like that, and like
that sounds very grotesque and nasty, but it's like that's
part of the fantasy of playing a zombie game in
the first place. Is just like it's really satisfying to
kill zombies in general because you don't feel bad about it.
These things are trying to kill you. They're mindless creatures.
You just slay them, blast their heads off. Through all

(01:21:50):
this crazy stuff, and Dead Island, especially the second game,
really goes deep into that, and I think that's highlighted
so much by the fact that the game is like
kind of all about melee combat. Eventually you get introduced
to guns, but for the most part you're getting all
sorts of crazy melee weapons, which starts out as basic
things like a hammer and a ranch whatever, but then
eventually you get like Wolverine claus that you can like electrify,

(01:22:10):
so you're ripping zombies apart with like Wolverine Clause, just
getting all sorts of crazy elements on all these different things,
getting like huge clay wares and other swords and things
like that, and it's just super satisfying. Like the physics
system based around that, and that also adds a level
of intensity because if you're using melee weapons primarily, it
means you're having to be close to zombies primarily, and
that's always an intense thing. And then like when your

(01:22:31):
weapon's low on durability, you can just like huck it
at them instead, which is always really fun. And all
sorts of crazy environmental things. There's water on the ground
that you can electrify it to shock a bunch of zombies,
knock them off buildings, do a big like huge jumping kick,
flying kick and knock them off a roof. Super satisfying.
So yeah, I had such a great time playing that game.

(01:22:52):
And I love the setting of it as well, like
going through the La Beverly Hills kind of thing, going
through these mansions as you're smashing down on these rich
like I don't know, just smashing through the window of
this house to go through and find the zombies. And
of course they really they're dressed up in all this
funny outfits and all that sort of stuff. So yeah,
really great game that just buys totally into the zombie

(01:23:14):
killing fantasy.

Speaker 2 (01:23:16):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
I never played Dead Island, uh rip tid. I forget
if that's a dealc or if it's like a spinoff game,
but I never played that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:24):
It feels like a point five game, like a mon
yea yeah, cool uh game. I'll shout out here. Did
you ever play the Killing Room franchise?

Speaker 1 (01:23:36):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:23:38):
Okay? Or Killing Floor maybe is that what it was?

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
I think I may be the Killing Floor on Steam
from a Steam.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
Sale, but definitely a steaming game, so let me Yeah,
Killing Floor. I played the first one quite a bit
in high school with with some friends, and it's funny
you're mentioning back for Blood like it has a class
system very similar in that game, and like, no like
main story, but well, I guess leftfour Dead kind of

(01:24:05):
has it where you're just kind of doing like, well, actually,
those are a lot more narrative, so never mind. Killing
Floor is just like you get in there a couple
objectives to do, and that's kind of the same thing
that you're doing. Obviously there's there's different levels to do,
but I would find myself just kind of redoing the
same one over and over and over again with friends.
And I didn't put like hundreds of hours into it,

(01:24:26):
but I would definitely say like twenty plus. It was
just kind of an era when you know, you have
the lads all online together and everyone's jumping into that
and really really really fun gameplay. I don't really remember
too much iconicness from like the Zombies, so I don't
think I'm really going to be like fighting hard for
this one on the top ten list.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
Just zombies or is Zombies and other creatures as well.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
You know what it might be other stuff like I
it might be like depending on the level, it just.

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
You know, it's important context.

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):
No, it's true. I feel like maybe it's like de
Pendant on the level, like this level is more of
these types of creatures versus this one that's mostly just zombies.
I did the one that was pretty much just all zombies,
like a lot of like indoor settings. That was just
felt very claustrophobic. I mean, really just scratched that Left
for deaditch of like a different style of game into
that one. But Yeah, shouts out to killing floor and

(01:25:20):
I think they have a new one coming out, or
if it's not out, it's it's out soon.

Speaker 1 (01:25:24):
Yeah, I think you're right. I think I've seen at
some point three.

Speaker 2 (01:25:28):
I think, yeah, March twenty twenty five, so coming out
this year. Nice if it doesn't get delayed.

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
Yeah, which it probably will. One of the things I
wrote on my list is just zombies, which I guess
I didn't finish my sentence.

Speaker 2 (01:25:40):
But great concept.

Speaker 1 (01:25:43):
That does remind me though, that like if someone just says, hey,
want to play zombies, you know what that means?

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
Yeah, it means you're playing.

Speaker 1 (01:25:50):
Call of duty. So I think that means something. I
think that means something that is kind of offshoot mode
for this series. And I mean it's an off shoot
moode that they've done in like ten iterations or something.
So it's obviously not just a one off thing, but
I think that means something. And so it's a tricky
one for this list right where it's like, Okay, if
we're talking about the best game, or we just talking
about the zombies party, we're talking about the game as

(01:26:10):
a whole. There's so many games that have zombies in it. Yeah,
for me, the two that are worth mentioning are World
at War, of course, the first one that did it,
but then more importantly is Black Ops won. That's just
the one that I spent the most time with. We
did one on the stream. I forget what Black Ops
that was. We did one of them, played the new
one that came out last year, did some of that,
but yeah, Black Ops one remains to be like the

(01:26:30):
most iconic in terms of just quality game for me,
and I think they all kind of do the same
thing in terms of the zombie fantasy of trying to
hold off that Horde, boarding up the windows, taking them out,
getting stronger weapons, that kind of thing, and just trying
to survive as long as you can. And I think
an important thing about zombies, or at least with the
old ones and that's not the case anymore, is like
you are going to die at some point and it's
just a matter of time. Yeah, Whereas yeah, the new

(01:26:51):
ones have like exfiltrations and all these other crazy things,
which I think makes sense because not everyone has potentially
five hours to dump into a zombies run, right if
they're trying to trying their best. But yeah, I think
for me, Black Ops Want would be the iconic one.
How do you feel about, like which call of duty
or call of duty's should should make it on this list?

Speaker 2 (01:27:09):
Yeah? I mean, funny enough, I had those exact same
two that you did. I think the first one I
think of is World at War, just because the first
time going to a friend's house and playing that, like
the first experience of like Nazi zombies, and along the
way it just kind of dropped that the Nazi to
the name. It just became zombies.

Speaker 1 (01:27:28):
That's true, but that's what it was.

Speaker 2 (01:27:31):
There was Nazi zombies back then, and it even said
that like on the main menu. I don't think it
says that anymore. Well, I guess they're different era in
the new games. But anyways, yeah, I would say the
World at War. That's that's the one that I think
of first. However, I think the best one is that
first Black Ops game. It's the one I played the most.
I felt like it was enough added to the original

(01:27:52):
without making it feel overwhelming, Like like if I just
pick up a controller. It's kind of hard to say
because I have history with it, so maybe this, you know,
take this the grain of salt. But if I just
pick up the controller jump into World at War or
Black Ops, I know what I'm doing, you know, I
I I can, I can do it. But these new games,
I'm like hoping on a bus. You can miss the bus. Now,
there's so many like different mechanics in there. That's just confused.

Speaker 1 (01:28:15):
Something very special about just the original map and the
clausophobia that it had to it. Yeah, how little you
had to run around?

Speaker 2 (01:28:22):
Yeah, And I thought, like from Black Ops one, I
thought that was crazy when like those maps felt so big, right,
but whereas well, even even the World at War DLC,
when you get into like the more swampy map, I
can't remember all the names. Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:28:37):
I really like the Amusement Park one. I don't even
know what black Ops that is, but that was a
great map I really enjoyed as well.

Speaker 2 (01:28:41):
I think that was the first black Ops. It was
funny we like maybe DC one or some Yeah, we
had like one friend that like actually bought the DLCs
and then you could like log onto his account and
then just like download them and then have access to
them count of the authentication. But yeah, I would say
black Ops one is just the most like, yeah, all

(01:29:04):
those audio effects to fresh me there, yes, good call
the hell dogs in there? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, good stuff,
good pitch. That was the one where I was like,
I'm not ready to get into this yet because I
thought we're gonna I thought we're gonna struggle picking a
game because there's just so many options.

Speaker 1 (01:29:21):
But I still curious what I meant when I just
wrote zombies down on my list because I had call
Duty as a separate entry, so it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (01:29:27):
That okay, neat, let's go. Yeah, I wrote Nazi zombies.
That's what I wrote online, so very specific World at War,
but I figured transition elsewhere. I got World War Z.
Have you ever played this game.

Speaker 1 (01:29:43):
I have not. Oh man, what about it?

Speaker 2 (01:29:46):
It is? First of all, it's fantastic. It's definitely similar
to leftfore Dead. I think you can go first person
or third person. I've only played third person. I I
got this on PC and it just lag the shit
out of my system. So later on I ended up
playing on Xbox and it is so fantastic. It's just

(01:30:07):
probably similar how Back for Blood just feels like a
modern shooter versus like the old Left for Dead And
you know, LEFTFOD is fantastic, but it definitely just feels
dated compared to just I don't know the gun feel
or even just like some of the aesthetics, whereas this
one it just felt so much more cinematic to me.
There's plenty of zombies, I mean leftfo Dead has plenty,
but it just seems like a movie type like cinematic

(01:30:30):
when when you're especially like I love the lighting of
that game, like the way that your flashlight works in
some of the darker areas. It just feels like it
is a modern game and it's probably close to a
decade old. Now I'll have to double check pull it up.
But no, I played this couple of times with my pops,
and it is it is fantastic. It's it's a really
really solid game. Okay, twenty nineteen, Yeah, pretty new within

(01:30:55):
six years. I think it had like a a DLC
or maybe like a point five game. I can't remember
what it was called, Okay, but anyway, I think I've
only played the like just the Bass game. But yeah,
it had like I can't remember if you like have
characters that you play or like character creation in it.
I mostly just remember the gameplay. It was just really

(01:31:17):
really intense, really mirrored like the intensity of like those
final you know, like the final section in Leaff for
Dead when you're just like waiting for like that airplane
to come or something like. I just so many intense
moments like that plane World war Z. So yeah, I
wanted to shut that one out because just and like,
I don't think there's like a specific zombie type I
would really like designate as like my iconic. It's just

(01:31:39):
like the big massive hordes of zombie uh just feeling. Yeah,
I mean tea when within itself.

Speaker 1 (01:31:46):
Yeah, I mean I think it's uh less about the
individual zombie or just the general the general vibe of
all of it all Okay, I'm getting down to it.
I don't have them many more. I have a bunch
of like honorable mentions that I'm not really gonna make
a case for. I mean, Resident Evil, Okay, this is
a is a big coconut to crack. A lot of

(01:32:06):
zombies in all of these games, I think, I feel like,
I don't know if I've played one that doesn't have
like something that you would call a zombie in it.
A lot of them maybe don't feel like as zombie ish,
they feel like they could be some other undead type thing.
But I think the games that most have the most
like kind of generic like that's a zombie, it would
be Resident Evil two and four. And I'm talking specifically

(01:32:28):
the remakes here is those are the only versions that
I've played. But yeah, Resident Evil two kind of be
in the more city settings, so you're getting like construction
workers zombies and police officers zombies and that kind of thing,
and then RESI four is more like, Okay, you're getting
like people who live out in like the countryside, like
the villager type with the pitchforks and that kind of zombie.
So I don't know which one would be stronger in

(01:32:52):
that way. I think it's I don't know if this
one's actually gonna make the top ten, weirdly enough, because
I feel like Resident Evil has so much going for it,
and there's a lot of things. There's a lot of
easy creatures in there that would not fall under the
zombie category, and those are maybe the most basic, like
blend part of those games, the fodder enemies, but they're
still really fun, and I think they do a great
job of one just burning through your your ammo, right,

(01:33:13):
because that's a big part of those games is resource management.
And I think a great thing that those games do
is like almost anytime you kill a zombie, at some point,
it's gonna get up again, and it's gonna come get
you unless you killed it with like a RockA launcher
or something. But you're gonna you're gonna not try and
use your RockA launtra on like basic zombie types. So
the fact that they wake back up again and then
they have to fight them two times or maybe more,

(01:33:34):
or they'll like evolve, their head will explode, and then
they'll turn to this other zombe that has like this
thing coming out of it. I think that's like where
it kind of elevates it a little bit. And a
lot of those games are very cramped, especially resonable to
really cramped and narrow corridors, And so when you have
when you're surrounded on either end and they're moving slowly,
but that's still like they'll come at you pretty quick,
the zombies can be really effective and really scary. Just

(01:33:55):
because your your movement's pretty slow in that game, you
don't have a lot of great movement options and the
fact that you're limited on AMMO, I think it really
really succeeds with the the zombie fantasy. Any any other
Resident Evils that you want to pitch on here?

Speaker 2 (01:34:10):
Mm, I don't think so, just because like the ones
I've like, Resident Evil seven will probably be like the
most recent one I played, I don't think that's really
a zombie game per se, Like maybe in the later
stages get like the And when I think when I
think of village, I'm not I'm not thinking of a
lot of those creatures as zombies.

Speaker 1 (01:34:31):
I'm thinking more of the interesting other types of enemies.

Speaker 2 (01:34:34):
So I would say, maybe like Resident Evil five, did
you mention that one?

Speaker 1 (01:34:39):
I did not, But that's also a good one. I
just it's been a long time since I've played that one,
so I don't know if I have much of a
case for it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:44):
I barely scratched the service on that one. That was
a rental. My dad and I rent to that to
play couch co op together, and I don't know if
we were just idiots, but we could not figure out
couch co op. So I like played like an hour
and then we just took it back and rented a
different game.

Speaker 1 (01:34:56):
So that was a long Yeah. I loved that game
of the back of the Day back in the day.
It was a big co wop binge. Yeah, that was
a rental, but we rented it multiple times. My cousin
played that ship ton of that game. But it has
been a while, so I think I could make a
better case for two and four.

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):
But yeah, yeah, good good picks. Uh, And then I've
never played four. So my last thing, I'll say prisonvill two.
That opening in like the gas station that actually made
me like drop my computer, like not my computer, drop
my controller how much? Which how much I reacted to
like turning a corner and just like again, it's a
beautiful looking game, but I just was not ready for

(01:35:31):
a certain zombie in a certain situation and it scared
the spooks out of me. So I haven't really gotten
far in that game. I heard the mister X character
is even scarier and I was terrified. Yeah into that guy?

Speaker 1 (01:35:41):
Yeah, yeah, which I don't. I don't know if you'd
call him a zombie. Probably not right. It's kind of
a different thing. But anyway, not too sure.

Speaker 2 (01:35:48):
Cool. Let's refer to my list here. I got, of
course Project Zomboid. That would be probably, ye, my number
one pitch. I didn't want to bore everyone and you know,
wait a little bit to pitch that one. But yeah,
what else can I say? It's I pretty much only
one zombie type. I think in there, like they have
sprinter sprinter zombies. This game is just the ould limit

(01:36:11):
zombie sandbox, and not in the sense of like a
Dead Rising where you just go in there and like
fuck around. It's like you can completely customize the world
setting to just enjoy your way to play. And I
don't allow sprinters in my games. I need the base
the bass zombies. They're fast enough when they get around you.
I don't want people that run faster than my character.

Speaker 1 (01:36:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:36:33):
So yeah, no, I love Project Example and I think
it's the best Zombie gave.

Speaker 1 (01:36:38):
But yeah, we have failed really hard at lining up
a night to play. Yeah, so many times we've had
probably like eight nights or we've planned for it and
then like something's changed or one of us fell asleep
or something like that. Oh yeah, so at some point
we will. I've so I've only played like the tutor
up in like a half an hour just to before
we're gonna hop in one. Yeah, And I think the

(01:36:58):
funny thing about it for me was like, oh, this
game feels like the SIMS a little bit in terms
like the way the camera angle is, how zoomed in
it is, and like just the how zoom how it's like, oh,
you can touch every countertop, you can open every door.
Like the level of detail it like kind of reminded
me of SIMS, which is funny going like peak cozy
to like peak fear and stress and all that stuff.
So I'm very excited for it. I like the controls

(01:37:21):
and like how just like that it's as you say,
like Sandbox, It's like it's like the zombie simulator kind
of game, right, And I think, yeah, I'm really excited
to get more into it. I've only just yeah, touched
the surface of it, but excited to play more of it.
I mean, I just mentioned it days gone. I'll chuck
it on here. I think I just haven't played enough
to really make a great case. And once again, I
feel like those trailer moments, when I get to them

(01:37:42):
live up the hype. Then it probably deserves to be
top ten. But I just don't know if I have
the jug to give it there right now. But I'll
always chuck it on the list because it deserves to
be there. I only have a couple more. What do
you got?

Speaker 2 (01:37:56):
I wasn't even gonna throw this one on the list,
say said it was kind of crazy that I didn't
have it on my list, So I'm like, okay, you
haven't mentioned it yet. Last of us, right. It's like, like,
I guess it's a zombie game. Yeah, clickers are kind
of zombie.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
Yeah, it is a game with zombies in it. But
to me, that's that's where it's exactly. It's not a
zombie game to me, even like, yeah, we watched the
show and there's like thirty minutes of Zombie Continent, right,
it feels like that's such a like it's the important
part is that it's a post apocalypse setting and something
bad has gone on to lead to a post apocalypse,
but it almost doesn't matter that the zombies are like

(01:38:32):
what led to that point, and I'm sure there are
great moments, and the clicker is like maybe one of
the most iconic individual zombie enemies like in all video games.
I would say that's like a probably top five most iconic,
but I think it justs to be on the nomination list,
but like I don't and also that I don't really
like Last of Us, So that's like the tricky part
for me, where it's like in terms of game quality,
it's like objectively, I know it's one of the like

(01:38:54):
a top ten all time game for just generally across everyone,
but also for me, it's like it's hard for me
to fight too for it, but it definitely had to
come up at some point.

Speaker 2 (01:39:03):
Yeah, It's like I like how you said, it's it's
a game with zombies in it more so than a
zombie game, and I feel like the scariest threats in
that game for me, Well, there's definitely some scary clicker
moments for sure, but like a lot of it is
just to do with shitty humans, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):
Yes, that's the more compelling stuff for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:39:20):
Yeah, yeah, like and just like the human story that
they're telling in that game is just so much more
iconic versus something like Dead Rising Dying like Left four
Dead like those the zombies are right in your face,
Like you can't get anywhere without seeing a zombie in
that game, whereas I don't know, they're a little bit
held back.

Speaker 1 (01:39:35):
And lost of us. But yeah, and me and you
have both talked recently of how like thinking of playing
playing that game. I think with the second season coming out,
in the fact that the remat the most recent remake
of Last West Part one, well I guess now it's
called Last West Part one is on the PlayStation category.
I haven't downloaded, I haven't booted it up yet, but
we'll see. We can always revisit this and we feel

(01:39:56):
like we regret the decision after we've played that. I'm
sure the remake too would even have better zombies in it, right,
So yeah, we'll see if we regret that decision. But yeah,
definitely a worthy gnom.

Speaker 2 (01:40:06):
So yes, I know I don't want to get ahead
of ourselves, but season two is coming out in April,
so we got a little bit of time. If we
want to, we do.

Speaker 1 (01:40:12):
Yeah, I would love to do that. I think it's
I think I should really just do it, finally, sit down,
play through the whole thing, and just even if I
really don't like the gameplay, just who cares. It's not
what it's about really, and maybe who knows, maybe part
one the remake will have great gameplay.

Speaker 2 (01:40:27):
So it's like, how it's not a zombie game. It's
a game with zombies in it. You can just enjoy
it as like a story with some some gameplay elements
to it, you know, yeah, or so then enjoy.

Speaker 1 (01:40:35):
The gameplay, even though I've already watched the season of
the TV show, which seems like a pretty faithful one
to one. But anyway, I.

Speaker 2 (01:40:41):
Heard the Bill and Ted stuff is a little bit different.
But that's that's yes, fair enough, ye Differentially.

Speaker 1 (01:40:46):
You'll get a whole episode of that. I wanted to.

Speaker 2 (01:40:49):
Shout out Red Dead, Redemption, Undead Nightmare. Here did you play?
You played the first game? You didn't love it? If
I remember?

Speaker 1 (01:40:57):
That is correct? And I yeah, I did have on
did night So I've messed around with that a little bit,
but I wouldn't be able to make a case for it.
It's not familiar enough, but.

Speaker 2 (01:41:05):
Yeah, it's it's one I know because this was a
DLC and I never bought the DLC, but I remember
playing it quite a bit at a friend's house, and
I just love the wild West like setting for a
zombie game Like that was the most compelling thing for
me at that time, especially just using the weaponry that
you have, like the lever actions, the molotovs and stuff like.
Just just that in a zombie world was really really

(01:41:26):
intriguing and ticing, and of course like you're on your horseback,
so it was just like a really cool take on
the zombie genre. It's one that like popped in my
head as soon as I was making this list, But
not like the most unconscious because I never actually owned
the game, but I just played it quite a bit
at a friend's house and it was pretty freaky, honestly,
Like I maybe I saw gameplay nowadays it's like, oh,

(01:41:47):
this is kind of cheesy and corny, but yeah, fun idea. Yeah, definitely,
especially those night time sequences, like they would get pretty scary.

Speaker 1 (01:41:56):
Yeah. Yeah, there's also even because similar setting Weird West has,
like I'm actually you know, I'm gonna put this on
the list. So Weird West has a lot going on,
and a lot of it is not about zombies, but
there is like this zombie outbreak event that can occur,
which is really really fun. So sometimes in Weird West,
of course that immersive sim that I really love from

(01:42:18):
the creators of Sauner and all this stuff. Right, anyway,
in the game, you know, western setting, you'll be going
through a town and you'll take out a bunch of people.
Maybe there's been outlaws or maybe you're a bad person.
You're just taking out a town full of innocent people
or something. And then maybe you go spend twenty hours
doing all sorts of other quests and all this other stuff,

(01:42:38):
come back to the town and like maybe that whole
town is like all those people have, like the literal people,
the individual people with the names have like come back
out as like zombies, and so now it's just like
a zombie infested town. Or like I've had a situation
because it's a very immersive semi kind of thing. I
took out a couple of people in a town. It
was a whole like bloodbath in the middle of the town.
Center went off and did some things, and then what

(01:43:00):
people will do is like they'll take the bodies of
the people and they'll go put them in like the
local graveyard, Like they'll go bury the bodies, like a
really cool thing. And then I got a quest later
on that was like, oh, I need this item that
this character had. I'm like, I killed that guy like
twenty hours ago, so I went back to the town
went to go find the grave, but this thing had
regenerated as a zombie now, so I had to like
take up this zombie to like get this item. So

(01:43:22):
just a weird, cool game. The zombies are not a
huge part of it, but like, I love the implementation
of zombies in it. Obviously it is Weird West. It's
there's a little weird stuff going on in that game,
and it's a fun I never really thought about the
connection of Red Dead and Weird West in that way,
but that's a fun, little fun little note there.

Speaker 2 (01:43:38):
You go jump into that one day. It's all my
PlayStation catalog. I have access to it, and if you
want to.

Speaker 1 (01:43:44):
Spot yeah, not on playstaged Calo, but if you play
on Steam, there's a mod to play at first person.
So if you want like a classic Dishonorty Prey type experience.
I mean, you know, it might be a little janky.
I haven't actually played that mod because I played it
on Xbox, but it exists.

Speaker 2 (01:43:59):
If you it's like is metric it is? Yeah, yeah,
matters out there.

Speaker 1 (01:44:05):
And I think that was like pretty soon after the Launchack,
he did it pretty.

Speaker 2 (01:44:09):
Quick, passionate individuals.

Speaker 1 (01:44:11):
Yeah, I have one more. Well, I've quit two quick
shoutouts and then one more actual nom. But even the
nom's a little little flaky. I'll say I won the
Walking Dead games. Did you play these at all?

Speaker 2 (01:44:23):
I think I did, like I think I did like
Chapter one.

Speaker 1 (01:44:26):
Okay, yea yeah, because I'm sure most people say that
these are some of the best zombie games, like just
quality of game that includes zombies in them. I'm sure
the stories and the zombie parts of it are good,
They're just not games I really spent time with. And
I'm sure if Taylor listened to this, which he probably isn't,
but if he is, he's probably so mad at us
that we didn't nominate State of Decay, which is one
of his favorites. I just haven't played those games yet.

(01:44:46):
I'm excited for three. I definitely an jump into that
when it comes out, And at some point I do
want to go back and play one and two and
just mess around with those games, but I haven't got
around to it yet.

Speaker 2 (01:44:54):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:44:54):
Last mini shout out here is I love fire Emblem.
For the most part, fire Blem doesn't get too crazy
do with these enemy types, but Sacred Stones, which is
my favorite firing them game, and one of the things
I love about it is that there's like zombies and
like ogres and all these other crazy enemy types, and
the zombies are like a big part of a lot
of the missions. You'll kind of have like these undead
mission where it's very foggy, you know, you got the
fog of war in there, and then you got the zombies,

(01:45:16):
and like the animations for them are fantastic because the
Pixar in that game is fantastic, and going through this
tower where you just got to take out a bunch
of zombies as you're going up. So zombies are a
big part of that game. So those shows to that
and my last one we'll see if you potentially would allow,
is a game called Dead of Winter. This is a
board game, not a video game. That's where it like

(01:45:37):
maybe stretches the rules a bit. The setup of the
game is there's a little town. You got your like
home base, where you and your other survivors are the
sub survivors being the other players. You can play it
to four people. There's different locations on it, so there's
like the school, there's the gas station, there's the police station,
and so it's kind of like you're going around to
these different locations. You're searching for tools, food, equipment, that

(01:45:58):
kind of stuff, and then you're coming back to your
home base and you're trying to maintain the home base.
You're trying to make sure keep the boards up so
they don't bust in through the windows, making sure you're
stocked up on food, making sure people aren't sick. But
then the part that like puts it over the top
is that on top of all that, you all have
individual characters. You can kind of recruit multiple characters, but
then everyone has like a hidden agenda goal. So it
becomes like an avalon mafia thing where someone or multiple

(01:46:21):
people could be evil and could be trying to go
against the good of the people, and so sometimes that
could be obvious depending on who you're playing with, what friends,
how good. They're aligned, so sometimes they can just like,
you know, I'm just gonna screw over the base. I'm
supposed to be the one staying there defending the zombies,
but I'm just gonna let it flood and like get
all these people to die. Or they could be going
around creating all this havoc, shooting other players with like

(01:46:41):
guns and stuff. You know, you can do all sorts
of crazy stuff. It's a really really fantastic board game,
super duper well designed, tons of replayability because of just
how many characters are, how many objectives each character has,
because you'll have different roles and stuff like that. So yeah,
I love Dead of Winter. Super great game.

Speaker 2 (01:46:58):
Wow, I haven't heard of this.

Speaker 1 (01:47:00):
Yeah, we should play sometimes. It's really good. Hell yeah,
good game to play if we go camping. Maybe this
summer we can.

Speaker 2 (01:47:07):
Yeah, we need to assemble the time to do some
board games.

Speaker 1 (01:47:11):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:47:12):
It's it's hard to achieve that, you know, if you're
not living in like a household during lockdown or something,
that's when you have endless time to games play games
like that.

Speaker 1 (01:47:20):
Yeah. I'm actually just googling if there's like a virtual
oh on Steam Dead of Winter tabletop simulator. Oh, there
you go. In tabletop simulator they had they have a
Dead of Winter thing in there, so you can play
it online if you want to. Oh and it just
has a Steam page.

Speaker 2 (01:47:35):
Do they just have like first person mod? This looks
like a different Okay, it sounds like a generic title.
Not in the sense of like it's not a good title.

Speaker 1 (01:47:43):
It's just I mean, so many of these are if
you think about it, Dead Rising, Dead Island, Dead of Wind,
or the bar Very. It's the same sort of thing
over and over again.

Speaker 2 (01:47:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:47:52):
But anyway, that was my last I had other things
I wrote down, but like Zombie Army four. I played.
It's zo begin but like really, yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:48:04):
You mentioned fire Amblem. I remember Awakening having some sort
of zombiell oh no, they're risen so they're like skeleton people,
I think, not zombies. Loopiro had some zombies I think
in there as an enemy type shot out to Loop Heiro.

Speaker 1 (01:48:17):
Okay, Yeah, shows.

Speaker 2 (01:48:19):
Really not really put it on the list here, but
just just stretching into the back nether realms because I
feel like like we have a good sized list. But
in my mind, I feel like I've played infinite games
that have zombies in it, honestly, like it's just such
a popular enemy type across all media's or or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:48:37):
So all the way back to the House of the Dead,
like the Arcade game and all this kind of stuff too.

Speaker 2 (01:48:42):
Yeah, even like it's not Castlevania ghouls and goblins. Was
that it was called Cripson ghouls or something like that.
It's like a platformer ghouls and ghosts. Maybe, yeah, yeah,
that one. There's probably some zombies in there, but probably
I'm not fighting for it.

Speaker 1 (01:48:57):
I think our list is looking pretty health I think
we were like twenty or something here. Let's take another
ad break, though. We will be right back to whittle
this down to a top ten and then rank that
bad boy. We'll be right back. Okay, we are back.
Here is our current list as it stands. We have
and if you want to get onion on this doc

(01:49:18):
let me know is plans versus zombies? Minecraft, Left for
Dead two, Left for Dead, Back for Blood, Dead Rising two,
and Dead Rising. I made a game with zombies in it,
Last and Too Dying, Light Dead Island two. A lot
of two's on here, Killing Floor, Call of Duty, World
War Call of Duty, Black Ops, World War Z Aftermath,
Resident Evil two, Resident Evil four, Project's Enboy Days Gone,

(01:49:42):
The Last of Us, Red Dead On Dead, Nightmare, Weird West,
and Dead of Winter is the list, which is I
think that's around twenty twenty five ish games that we
have on here. So as far as our lists go, Kirkly,
it's not too bad. No, we often get well way
higher than that.

Speaker 2 (01:50:01):
So that's what I was saying, Like I thought, I
just had like a thousands of memes in my head,
so I think.

Speaker 1 (01:50:06):
Like I said, I had a bunch more written down,
but like, yeah, things that we can fight for are here.

Speaker 2 (01:50:11):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:50:12):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:50:12):
So like it's funny that there is a lot of
twos though, it's like it's like they came out the
first one and then the second one they really nailed it,
you know. Yeah, all right, so once again, we can
start with cuts, or we can start by moving things
up and do.

Speaker 1 (01:50:25):
A locked territory. I think we've got a few easy locks,
so maybe we can just pop those up right away.

Speaker 2 (01:50:32):
Honestly, PBS, for me, that's like top ten, Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:50:37):
It is, it is. And I also I think Left
four Dead two is that the safer one of the two,
because that's your favorite. I'm pretty muchol, so I think
that makes sense to put that one out there.

Speaker 2 (01:50:46):
Yeah, i'd put that one in.

Speaker 1 (01:50:48):
I think I mean Zomboy's going up here for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:50:50):
I was gonna say that that's like my life or
death one. I will trade any game with you to
make that one on there.

Speaker 1 (01:50:55):
You don't need to, I'll just I'll just give it
to you. Technically I've played it. Oh. I thought there
would be more easy softballs, but I don't know. Let's
see Call of Duty.

Speaker 2 (01:51:06):
Like, there's gotta be Call of Duty zombie game in there, right,
and I think it would be black ops.

Speaker 1 (01:51:11):
I would agree with that. Okay, so maybe that wasn't
so hard. Let's do that and then let's see. I
was just looking at one. I feel like like, I
don't know if me and me or you have as
much experience with Dead Rising, but I do feel like
one of the Dead Risings deserves to be one, and

(01:51:32):
I do have enough fond memories of this series. And
I also a GDQ. The speed Running event was on
this last week and they did a speed run of
the Dead Rising remake. Just hilarious because just flying around
on skateboard the whole time just smashing zombies, which is
hilarious but kind of reminded me of it too, So yeah,
so yeah, I would go one, but if two sounds
very similar to one, so it's hard for me to
also differentiate between them.

Speaker 2 (01:51:54):
Yeah, I mean I've never played the first one. I
imagine the second one implemented maybe just some more crafting capability,
so it might be like just objectively a better game.
It's tough for me to say that because I haven't
played the first one. The first one also just set
it on a path, and I feel like, although I
didn't love the gameplay of like, it was fun to play,
but I just remember it feeling a little bit clunkier

(01:52:16):
than I would have preferred, especially with games that I
played nowadays. However, I think it was just such a
like a pillar in the zombie era, Like there was
never a game like that before it. I don't think
there probably is, you know, some some weird Sega game
or something, probably, yeah, but just some like real niche one.
But I just feel like the crafting element, like the

(01:52:38):
freedom to kind of do whatever, Like there's so many
other games that have that element to it, right, Like,
like I'm sure Dead Island has like a lot of
crafting elements that were probably in spir.

Speaker 1 (01:52:49):
Especially the sequel. I can't remember watching the first game,
but yeah, the second one has a lot of crafting
to it. Yeah, I think that's that's a great case,
I guess for some easy cuts, like I've I've already
that is. Yeah, I don't think we're gonna have the
other call of duty, so we can bump that one down.
I think we can bump Left for Dead and Black
for Blood out of here. Since we have Left for
Dead two, Dead Rising, I think we're fine with just

(01:53:12):
the one rep on there. I'll also sacrifice my boy.
I made a game with zombies in it. I love
the game very soft spot in my heart, but I'm
not gonna off there.

Speaker 2 (01:53:24):
Okay, we could take the Flash game off.

Speaker 1 (01:53:28):
Okay, who Yeah, as you said, we have five locked
in already, no order of course, but that's PVZ, Left
for Dead two, Zomboid Black Ops, and Dead Rising two,
which is looking pre pretty healthy. Top five.

Speaker 2 (01:53:49):
Yeah, for another one to acts, I would say take
Killing Floor off, just because I'm not one undred percent
sure it's only zombies, so maybe that like, and it's
just I haven't playing that a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:54:02):
Yeah, I'll do the similar there with Days Gone, just
because I don't have the experience with it yet. Once again,
it could live up to the hype, could end up
being a top tenor but I just I can't based
off a trailer. I got to base that off my
actual gameplay of it and only a few hours in.
So there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:54:17):
I would love to get rid of Last of Us here.

Speaker 1 (01:54:20):
Interesting, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:54:22):
Big reason being is like if I look up like
like best zombie game or something that's like top one,
two three on a lot of lists, a lot of
people's list, and I'm like, that's a game with zombies
in it, Like come on, like you're putting that above
Left for Dead or Dead Rising like these like Project
Zomboid even like I guess it's a little bit of
an early access game, but still, like I don't know,

(01:54:43):
that's just that's tough for me to put that so
high up. I am okay to hold on to it
maybe if you're on the fence, but.

Speaker 1 (01:54:50):
Yeah, I think I just want to see how this
square is out. And it's weird for me to say
that as someone who's kind of a hater of this game.
To be honest, I mean, I think the fact that
I really like the first season of the show is
I know, I like the story, it's just more of
the gameplay stuff. But yeah, I think I just don't
actually know looking at this list, like how many more
true big contenders there are? So well, you mentioned that

(01:55:12):
Diane Light was a top five for you lock, so
I'm very happy. I think we have enough spots to
easily jump that in there.

Speaker 2 (01:55:19):
Makes me happy.

Speaker 1 (01:55:19):
I'm not saying it's gonna make the top five overall,
but I'll just at least the top ten.

Speaker 2 (01:55:24):
I will say, I feel like a resident evil could
make its way on there.

Speaker 1 (01:55:27):
I've got it.

Speaker 2 (01:55:28):
I think, Yeah, which one are you like? What we
would have the most zombie element to it? I guess
to phrase it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:55:35):
You know, I feel like a big part of the
zombie fantasy is like being in a city that is
decayed and burning and coming down, and the fact that
the zombies in this game like that is the setting
that you're walking through the city streets and the fact
that it's like you're having, like I said, the construction work,
the police officer that like the people and just like
the regular shirt instead of these more freaky like just

(01:55:57):
regular sort of undead types that I feel like Residue
will war has that more energy of So I think
resid Evil too, because that's the one where you can
more obviously see like oh these were people that were
turned in his zombies were four once again, could be
like these could be like evil weird cultists almost, So
I think two is the way to go, and like
the mechanics are virtually the same between the two games,

(01:56:17):
So I think Resionable two would be would be the
one there.

Speaker 2 (01:56:22):
What was your favorite number? The two? What's this curious? Well,
like what one would you put over the other? And
you're just for.

Speaker 1 (01:56:29):
Game for sure? Way higher?

Speaker 2 (01:56:32):
Yeah, way higher?

Speaker 1 (01:56:33):
Okay, Yeah, Resonal two a little too short. I wanted
more of the city stuff. It doesn't have multiple roots
like like I was hoping it would considering there's multiple characters,
has a kind of one more linear thing, and then
it deserves all the hype that it gets, like it's
it's so fucking good. I'm so glad I find to
play the game. Plus the dealc is super good. So yeah,

(01:56:55):
uh four is definitely my favorite. But I do think
actually for this list, Residon Evil two makes a bit
more sense if. I don't know if that doesn't make sense,
but to me in my brain it makes sense, even
though I just said I like that other game more.
But once again, it's not just the best zombie game,
because otherwise we'd last last one would probably be number one.
It's like the best game with zombie with the zombie
theme to it, right.

Speaker 2 (01:57:16):
Yeah, no, I like it.

Speaker 1 (01:57:18):
So that gives us a total of three more spots
and we have seven more games to weed through. I
think I'm okay to drop Weird West just because it's
kind of a minor part of the game, even if
it is a cool immersive semi element to it. Okay,
I have a questionure for you would be what's World
war Z like is? Are you Are you thinking that's

(01:57:41):
the top ten or right now?

Speaker 2 (01:57:45):
I think I'm not ready to get rid of it yet.
Just with like, I would put that well above Red Dead,
un Dead Nightmare, just just for like it being like
a like you know that that's a DLC, That's a
zombie DLC, So it makes sense that that is a
zombie game. But like World war Z aftermat like that
is a zombie slaughterfest, like you are, it's like Warhammer

(01:58:06):
forty K Space Marine, but just zombies. I don't know
if you've seen gameplay that, but like that's what it's like.
So sure, I don't want to see say goodbye yet
similar type of gameplay to like the Left for deads
or the Back for bloods. But I think it's I
think it's still uniquely its own in that let's.

Speaker 1 (01:58:24):
Chop Last of Us. I'm ready to do it, you're ready.
I'd rather have more unique fun things, and I think
we made we both made a good case against like
the zombie element of it is maybe not why you're
playing Last of Us, right.

Speaker 2 (01:58:41):
I might be controversial. I haven't played this game, but
I feel like Dead Island two could could definitely be
on that top ten.

Speaker 1 (01:58:46):
It's currently my highest of the five that we have left.

Speaker 2 (01:58:49):
I would support you on that, even though I haven't
played it. Just hearing your review of it from yeah,
whenever you did that episode.

Speaker 1 (01:58:56):
With the last January.

Speaker 2 (01:58:58):
I don't think it's a review. It's just a games
we've been playing, yes section exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:59:02):
It was good, all right, so we have two more
spots then, okay?

Speaker 2 (01:59:06):
I Diad of Winter still just silently.

Speaker 1 (01:59:09):
Dead Winter, Dead of Winter. I think Minecraft can come off.
I do think the zombie is a very iconic part
of it. But I honestly could make a case for
in top ten, but I think I'm okay to drop
it if you're feeling the same way, because it sounded
like you were kind of feeling that way earlier.

Speaker 2 (01:59:28):
I started pretty cold on it. But I will say
as the list was filling up, I was warming up.
I was it was on simmer.

Speaker 1 (01:59:36):
What about Red Dead? Because you said world was higher?
Then does that mean undead maybe drops out?

Speaker 2 (01:59:43):
Like you're just not talking about Dead of Winter right now.
You just you're just going the process of elimination here.

Speaker 1 (01:59:48):
You're like, I guess, yeah, that's left. How do you
feel about Dead of Winter? Considering it as a board
game V game? Like I said, it's in tabletop simulators
if you want to get really chinty about the rules,
it technically exists. But I I would I would like
it in the top ten. But I'm not offended if it's.

Speaker 2 (02:00:05):
I mean, you know, I mean looking at this list
the way the way that you described it, and like
the elements involved, and then from what I've seen on
just I call it gameplay, but just the d the
tabletop and use like some some still images that I've
seen of that it's surprising, especially that it's like the
whole theme is zombies' survival. Like it's not just it's

(02:00:29):
not just a game as tabletop that has some zombies
in there. I I like that idea a lot, And yeah,
I mean it would make it unique, right.

Speaker 1 (02:00:36):
Yeah, I mean it's got the resource management and like
the survival elements. It's such a big part of Zombie
Dude and Ammo and like what I love about deadwords too,
you gotta like clean up your trash because if you
have too much trash, then like your people will get
sick and stuff and like that, like that's the kind
of like zomboid level. Like similarly, the worst.

Speaker 2 (02:00:52):
Way to die in Zomboid is by sickness. You just
slowly die, you don't know what's going on.

Speaker 1 (02:00:59):
So I feel like it really these succeeds that, like, yeah,
how can we make like a zombie sim board game
of five, but then like also make it like a
bluffing game, like it's it's checking a lot of boxes.

Speaker 2 (02:01:08):
I'd make the trade of Dead of Winter and World
Wars Z Aftermath gets locked.

Speaker 1 (02:01:13):
So okay, Lockworld is the end Dead of Winter at
the same time.

Speaker 2 (02:01:16):
I like it. I like it's even tabletop similar. So
it is a video game if even though you didn't
title this episode best video game rankings for zombie games, it's.

Speaker 1 (02:01:26):
I mean, I think it'll probably just be called best
zombie games of all time, so I did not say
not board games. So it's true. Okay, So with doing that,
that means that Minecraft and Undad Nightmare bite the bullet.
I think that's fair. I think it is fair. Minecraft
like the fact that it was like pretty much eleventh
is like pretty impressive considering that it's got like only

(02:01:46):
one touchstone to being a zombie thing. So I'm pretty
happy with that. As like the top ten. You're looking
at that and liking.

Speaker 2 (02:01:54):
It, Yeah, I love it, really really solid list.

Speaker 1 (02:01:59):
Yeah all right, so now we have to rank this
bad boy?

Speaker 2 (02:02:03):
Oh I forgot about this process.

Speaker 1 (02:02:04):
And we don't have to, but we I think we should.

Speaker 2 (02:02:07):
I think we should.

Speaker 1 (02:02:07):
Yeah, I think we should. What's see, what's some I
think fodder for dropping the bottom could be I'd.

Speaker 2 (02:02:13):
Put Dead a Winter down there just because I haven't
played it.

Speaker 1 (02:02:16):
Okay, that's fair. I think that's I think it's barely
snuck in by the skin of its teeth. I think
Dead of Winter at number ten is totally fair. Uh okay,
so Dead Winter's number ten.

Speaker 2 (02:02:27):
I could do World War Z next, Like, okay, just
because I don't know. You haven't played that.

Speaker 1 (02:02:32):
I have not, so I'm having to put my faith
in you. So that sounds good to me. Okay, So
it sits at nine. Get dropping. I this feels like
Dead Rising. I almost want to drop, just because, like
I actually have not played a ton of it myself,
and so it makes it hard. But like I do
have good memories with it, and I feel like it

(02:02:53):
is now I'm talking myself about about it, just said, well,
it's just I just feel like a little disingenuous, only
just because I haven't as much as I have some
of these other games.

Speaker 2 (02:03:02):
Right, I would fight for it just because it's it's
so zombie like it it's it's so zombie, right, something
like Resident Evil two is that so zombie zombie.

Speaker 1 (02:03:12):
But I actually think Residonavil two is a perfect number
eight on this list, to be honest, just in terms
of like the depth, the breadth of mechanics featuring zombies
and the fact that, Like, I feel like a lot
of the peaks of that game are not really about
the zombies, are about other things at those moments. So
I think that's a good number eight.

Speaker 2 (02:03:27):
I'm totally down to put Dead Rising two at number seven.
Then we got high enough for it, yeah, Like I
don't know, like because maybe we should put it above
Dead Island and then yeah, that that that that would
fall into you for that decision. It's well, I guess
it's two games that I.

Speaker 1 (02:03:43):
Think they're actually doing a very similar thing where it's
all about killing zombies, very similar title. Yeah. Over the top, Yeah,
over the top, like not trying to be serious, just
going for crazy kills. And I feel like to some
extent Dead Rising two even goes even zanier in a
way that I think really works for me.

Speaker 2 (02:04:01):
It was the blueprint. It was the blueprint for Dead
Island too, right, It crawled so that yeah, maybe that
island could walk.

Speaker 1 (02:04:07):
It probably was, as you said, the title, the title
as well, so that that sneaks to your boy to
Dying Light into the top five, Yeah, we do it
that way. How do I guess? How do we feel
about Black Ops being this high considering that it's kind
of partially zombie. I mean we're talking specifically about the
zombie part of it at wonder.

Speaker 2 (02:04:30):
In my head, this is so iconic in my head,
like and like this is this is Black Ops. But
like still just think of that world at war, Like
that's cinematic that plays before you start the game, and
like that's chills. That's terrifying. It was so scary to
play at night with friends, like late in the evening. Yeah,
also random tangent shouts out. I remember a specific childhood memory.

(02:04:52):
I was staying at a friend's house. We were playing
Nazi Zombies till like literally the wee hours where the
birds were starting to chirp and the sun was coming out,
and I just turned my friend. I'm like, should we
go to bed? He's like, oh, yeah, we're gonna get
in trouble if my parents find.

Speaker 1 (02:05:02):
On the world. So we just put the controllers down, went.

Speaker 2 (02:05:06):
To bed, probably slept like three hours or something. But
shouts out to Nazi Zombies because it did that. You
just lose.

Speaker 1 (02:05:11):
Does that to a person for sure?

Speaker 2 (02:05:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:05:14):
So I guess we're already down to deciding on this
top five.

Speaker 2 (02:05:19):
I guess getting to the I'm happy Black Ops is
in top five at least, it's like, looking at everything
else on there, it's tough to make a case at
it's like better zombie game than that, you know, specifically,
because it is just a mode versus a game.

Speaker 1 (02:05:36):
I think, Yeah, I guess, well, how do you guys,
how do you feel about the Dying Light versus Black
Ops thing? Because it's just since I haven't played Dying Light,
it's like an easy choice for me. But if you
have a case of why Dying Light, I mean it
is more the focus of the game overall for sure.
It's just talking specifically like the zombies, right.

Speaker 2 (02:05:53):
It's just such a more expansive like zombie take right,
Like there's so manyferent ways to kill a zombie in
that game. There's craft, you know, elements like the parkour
like running and jumping like off of a zombie's head
to like project how you're yourself up, like okay, you've
so fantastics and many different areas of like quarantine zones

(02:06:15):
that are like way more intense for zombies. So yeah,
I would definitely put that over Black Ops.

Speaker 1 (02:06:21):
I think that's a great as a jumping off the
zombies head. That was the argument I needed, so that
did it? Okay? So that drops the top three of PVZ.
Oh sorry, go ahead, Well you just so.

Speaker 2 (02:06:34):
Is dyn Y two on PlayStation Plus because I I
haven't I wasn't sure if it.

Speaker 1 (02:06:38):
Was a month. I've seen it on there.

Speaker 2 (02:06:39):
Actually we got to play some co op I was talking.
I was talking. I haven't played the game yet, so
I don't know how much co opy it is. But
the first game was very co op heavy in the
sense you could do like the whole story with a friend.
We're talking to Taylor Field about this, and you know,
him and I really want to play that game together.
That'd be awesome. Four player, yeah, up to four players. Well,
the first game was, so I imagine it's the same
for the second one.

Speaker 1 (02:06:59):
It's got to be. I'd be down. I mean, i'd
also be down to play some Zomboide with you. But
we haven't even been able to manage that.

Speaker 2 (02:07:05):
So yeah, that's true, but yeah, too much.

Speaker 1 (02:07:08):
I'd be down for that for sure. I do think
that Dying Like Caps are at number four, though I
don't think it's gonna make it past this.

Speaker 2 (02:07:14):
Top's free. That's fair.

Speaker 1 (02:07:17):
So the top three is PVZ left for Dead and Zomboid,
which I mean that makes sense for top three because
those are the first three easy locks for us. Yeah,
I think Plans Versus Zombies should be number three.

Speaker 2 (02:07:32):
I agree in my mind, I'm like, that's gonna be
the number one. That's gonna be the number one zombie game.
But now that I'm being honest with myself, that is
the game I most.

Speaker 1 (02:07:39):
Want to play, like right now, in this second, to
be fair, after this conversation. So whatever that's going, Yeah, yeah,
download for five seconds. I'm sure it's small, small game.
I'm sure. Okay, that's it's very amicable list. We're not
not a lot of fighting to be had here, we're
fighting off the zombie Horde together. So yeah, Zomboid and

(02:08:01):
leftfodead two, you're showing me something.

Speaker 2 (02:08:05):
On Plans Versus Zombies. It's still it's terrible quality right now.
Oh on the app store there, okay, so like the
like the legit first game, it's still on there. Perfect
five out of five, Like it's just a perfect game,
like perfect ratiing.

Speaker 1 (02:08:18):
Five out of five out of and I'm sure there's
like thousands and thousands of ratings on that, so that's cool.

Speaker 2 (02:08:22):
It's still number thirty seven on the actions.

Speaker 1 (02:08:25):
That's actually super crazy. So kids, I assume kids are
still into that game, then that's cool. I mean, like
I said, there has been other games in the series,
so I guess like the ip has been kept alive.

Speaker 2 (02:08:37):
Well, like the number two game is number twenty two
in Adventure, so they're just they're killing it with this. Honestly,
I'm surprised it doesn't have like a movie out in
the sense of like Angry Birds or Minecraft. Like it's
not quite as big as Minecraft, but still like Angry Birds, right, Like,
that's that's a phone app that really expanded over.

Speaker 1 (02:08:56):
It's true Angry Birds not on the list today, but
maybe someday. Uh, I'm gonna put that on my backlog.
I don't know if I have Angry Birds in my
backlog list. Those are the kind of games I forget
to like try it in there. I Kirkland, how are
you feeling about this? Leftfo Dead and Zomboid? Like, yeah,
I feel like for you, the obvious answer might be Zomboie,

(02:09:18):
but I don't know if the hype for Left for
Dead or the the nostalgia for it carries it above Zomboie,
Like Where where does that go for you? Oh, I
was going about to do my backlog. Yeah, Like.

Speaker 2 (02:09:37):
I think my is weird. I think my head is
telling me Project Zomboid is my number one that saw
me game of all time. But I think my heart
is actually telling me Left for Dead too here, And
I think a big part of that is Left four
Dead is the type of game that I feel like
I've gone through eras of my video game career of
Like remember like when we had PC bangs here, like

(02:09:59):
you could like we've literally had like an internet cafe
you could just go and play games. Why is that
not a still thing? Well, I guess now for sanitary reasons,
COVID probably would have killed that pretty hard.

Speaker 1 (02:10:07):
But anyways, I'm sure it exists in some places.

Speaker 2 (02:10:12):
Well like Japan, Korea, Like they're huge, but you know,
like we used to have them but no longer. Anyways,
first time I ever played Left foro Dead was at
a PC bang with my father. We played that game
together and it's just like I must have been like
twelve or something maybe like like around the area, so
like really young, just loving the idea of it. And

(02:10:32):
then we got on Xbox thirty sixty play the shit
out of it again with my father, with my friends online.
Like it just had so much. It had like a
versus mode where like, you know, you could like people
would be progressing through a level, but then some people
would be playing as the special zombies. I don't know
if you ever played that mode, but super super fun.

Speaker 1 (02:10:50):
Oh you mean yeah, just like playing as the zombies.

Speaker 2 (02:10:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, super super fun, just just a different
take on it.

Speaker 1 (02:10:55):
That's actually a great point for that above almost any
game on this list. How many of these games and
you actually also play as the zombies and it's mechanically interesting,
literally zero, I think I don't think any of these
other games on our list have that, or even nominations.
I don't know. I didn't even think about that until now,
And that's something that back for Blood, I don't think
that had. I think that was ka if I'm correct.

Speaker 2 (02:11:17):
I mean, we're kind of just making a case right
here and now, but I'll just keep telling my life
story here. So yeah, that was like the first era
playing Left for Dead one and then Left for Dead
two came out and got that on Xbox three sixty
playing it again Xbox Live with my friends. But like
I swear within the last year, like my dad and
I have played Left for Dead two again like couch
co op on his Xbox three sixty, like that same

(02:11:39):
copy that we got way back in the day at
ev Games, and like it's just still so fantastic. I've
I've had it now on PC as well, Like it's
like it's uh, I played a lot on Steam with friends,
and like just it's been across so many different consoles,
It's been so many different eras, and like you already stated,
like which games can you actually play as a zombie,

(02:11:59):
Like that's a perfect zombie game, but you can do
both aspects to it. So yeah, I would say Lefforted
Too is probably the pinnacle for all those memories, all
the hours I've played, hundreds of hours I think now
a Project Zomboid, but I still think Lefforted Too has
it by like by like a hundred times, honestly, like
like the gameplay rate. So that's my closing argument on

(02:12:20):
how No, you.

Speaker 1 (02:12:21):
Know, coming in this, I was prepared to I was
prepared to like give you Zomboid as the number one,
just because like the way you've talked about it. No,
I'm kidding, not anymore. Not after that argument, not af
that heartfelt argument of PC bang and playing with your dad,
but like I was prepared to give you because like
the way you've talked about that game, You've talked it
up so well, and like that sounds like the exact

(02:12:43):
kind of experience one I mentioned, just like as a
game in terms of the mechanics, but the fact that
it also is the zombie element of it and just
bringing that fantasy, that sandbox, that simulation to life seems
super great. And I'm obviously I played a little bit
of it now so I can kind of see how
it works and like, oh, yeah, this game, this game's
got it going on. So yeah, I was I was
prepared to drop that too, But I think I think

(02:13:05):
we found some good arguments here for leftfored Dead at
the end, like that deserves to be number one in
any list that because you mentioned I looked at some
of those articles too, best zombie games of all time,
anyone that had like leftard Dead like number five or six,
that you're crazy. Yeah, And I have not played every
zombie game ever, but I think I've played all the
ones that they had ranked higher, and it's like no
chance as leftfod had not like an immediate like top
contender for this, so I think that is definitely worthy.

(02:13:28):
And I think, yeah, to your point, like they don't
even need a three because they just nailed it two
and like the infinite a player replayable, like they've had
a lot of new levels and there's like you know,
community made stuff as well, Like it's just it's just
a game that you can just keep on playing and
even just go Like for me, I just want to
go back to the levels that I know and love
I'm nostalging for and that is still fun to go
back and do. And like, I don't know, strategizing as

(02:13:49):
zombies is a really fun part of it. That's not Yeah,
that's like an untapped market of this list. It is
like that element to it as well. So I'm feeling
very good about that being number one. Yeah, all right, Kirklen,
you want to read off this list from ten to one,
the final list here.

Speaker 2 (02:14:06):
Sorry. At number ten, we don't even have a video game.
We have Dead of Winter.

Speaker 1 (02:14:10):
The tabletop simulator.

Speaker 2 (02:14:11):
You got an asterisk next to that one for sure,
and then we got World war Z Aftermath. I think
Aftermath actually was the title that I was. I was
looking for thing, I think, yeah, yeah, And I don't
know if it was just the base game just because
I like jumped into it in that Game of the
Year edition, but it was also like a movie World
war Z with Brad Pitt, so I feel like in
my mind I thought it was the same thing. But anyways,

(02:14:34):
Number seven we have resen Evil Wait, number eight, Risen
Evil two, number seven, Dead Island two, number six. We
got Dead Rising to two, and we're almost done with
the twos, but we're not. Number five we got Call
of Duty Black Ops, specifically zombies mode, and then we
got Dying Light the first one. We got plants versus zombies,

(02:14:57):
the first one Project Zomboid, and Left four Dead two
number one, the best zombie game of all time.

Speaker 1 (02:15:06):
I love it. This is the kind of good nonsense
that I love to do on side Quest. Super fun time.
And yeah, like I said, we have like some games
on our horizon here that like more zombie games that
we're gonna be playing, So who knows, Maybe we'll need
to revise this list someday, but I think for now
this is a pretty damn good list.

Speaker 2 (02:15:23):
Oh yeah, I have.

Speaker 1 (02:15:25):
No complaints about it. So thank you for joining me.
Kirklas is a fun one. Thank you everyone for listening.
Let us know what other kind of crazy, weird rankings
you want to see from us here on side Quest,
let us know what your favorite zombie games are, and
uh yeah, we will see you next time. Have a
good one.

Speaker 2 (02:15:40):
Bye bye bye

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ranking the Best Zombie Games of All Time, Gravity Rush, Days Gone, Sniper Elite 4

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

All Episodes

Ranking the Best Zombie Games of All Time, Gravity Rush, Days Gone, Sniper Elite 4

Stuff You Should Know