THE DEAD TIMES
DEAD ARE COMING...
2024: Preview of the Dead: Part 2 - Games
2024 is shaping up to be a wealthy year for the digital undead - a positive swath of Zombie games are on the horizon for release. In the list below I have chronicled all of them and, this year, I’ve tried to be more lenient on what I consider a Zombie game, allowing entry to some games I normally cast aside. However, the normal rules remain intact.
- Any game that graced last year's list that failed to see release, is relegated to the MIA section of this year's chronicle - hopefully, such horrors will bask in the mortal world soon enough.
- Following from the first rule of death, any sad beast, languishing in the MIA section of 2023's preview article shall be struck from the record, only being saved if it has had recent news, reporting progress, however slow.
- Many games, especially those from independent developers, hide away in the cave of Early Access while development progresses. Games can remain in this hermit-like state for years - some may not ever emerge, enveloped in stone, becoming part of the cave forever. Describing such projects in every year of their journey would be as wasteful as it is boring.
The new stuff
The Last of Us Part II Remastered
The Last of Us Part II is being remastered for the PlayStation 5 with reworked graphics, all new features, including some brand new game modes, and the restoration of cut content from the PS4 version. With a release date of January 19th, this one may even be available to buy by the time you read this.
John Carpenter's Toxic Commando
This one does not actually involve your traditional Zombies at all but, from the announcement trailer (featuring some actual gameplay), it definitely involves Zombie-like creatures, mindlessly charging into battle, swarming players to overwhelm them with sheer numbers. The game is a simple team-based shooter in the style of Left 4 Dead, Evil Dead, World War Z and countless others - its simplicity is part of the charm however. Heavily inspired by the all-out-action movies of the '80s, if it moves, you shoot it and keep shooting until it stops moving. You'll also upgrade your weapons and abilities - bigger bad guys need bigger guns.
Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days
This game looks interesting. On the surface, it sounds just like The Walking Dead; lead a band of survivors through a large-scale Zombie outbreak, crafting supplies, scavenging for food, fighting, planning and never staying in one place too long - there are worse threats than Zombies out there. The action takes place in a rural town in Texas during the year of 1980. What really draws me in though is the unique 2D/3D graphics and the whole side-scrolling nature of the game - we don't see many games like this in modern times.
Plants vs. Zombies 3
Plants vs. Zombies is back in 2024, and not any of that weird Call of Duty: Modern Warfare spin-off stuff; the actual 2D tower-defence mobile game. There's not much info at this point other than the fact that you'll once again be using plants, both new and familiar, to defeat the Zombie hordes threatening Neighborville.
Nakwon: Last Paradise
In the first weird game on the list, Nakwon: Last Paradise is an online, post-apocalypse, Zombie survival game set in Seoul, South Korea. The game obviously takes inspiration from the hit Korean Zombie movies Train to Busan and Peninsula. It looks impressive - like a Korean set DayZ - with development seemingly progressing without a hitch. It's not entirely clear however, if the game is an open-world MMO or a smaller-scale multiplayer extraction shooter; following the debacle that was The Day Before, nothing should be assumed anymore.
Kingdom: The Blood
The Netflix TV series about a Zombie outbreak in ancient Korea is getting a video game adaption in the form of an Action RPG. The gameplay is simple; as an ancient Korean warrior (in traditional clothing), you hack'n'slash at the Zombie menace with your trusty samurai sword and a range of skills, unlocking new Zombie slaying powers as you go. The game is full of stunning environments and highly-detailed, 16th century, Korean-style buildings, really immersing players in the old-world experience.
Echoes of the Living
Echoes of the Living is not hard to sum-up; it is a survival-horror game with fixed camera-angles that aims to recreate the glory days of the classic Resident Evil games, albeit with modern graphics and fluid animations. In a small, quiet town in 1996, a mysterious fog descends on an otherwise clear day. Soon people start getting sick and dying, but not staying dead. Before long, the streets are filled with mindless, shambling Zombies, ready to eat the flesh of whoever crosses their path. You, playing as one of two characters, embark on a journey through the eerily deserted town to discover why the dead are coming back and, more importantly, how to stop them.
Showa American Story
The second weird game on this year's list is set in an alternate version of the future where Japan has merged with America, integrating the two cultures and filling the United States with a mixed community of both Americans and Japanese immigrants. You take control of a young girl in this new hybrid world who, after waking up one morning, finds the place overrun by the living dead and other monsters. As you journey to find out the truth behind what happened, you'll engage in insane gunplay and Japanese-signature, over-the-top, hand-to-hand combat. Like John Carpenter's Toxic Commando, this game is also heavily inspired by the action movies of the '80s.
Blight: Survival
There is not a whole lot of information on what Blight: Survival actually is. It appears to be a simple four-player co-operative game involving Zombies in the style of Left 4 Dead, set in Medieval times. The action definitely looks brutal (and agonisingly pretty) from the gameplay clips and announcement trailer - capturing the unique 14th-century setting well. No release window has been set but, with the gameplay videos already surfacing, showing an impressive degree of quality, I see no reason why this game will slip beyond this year.
MIA
Wanderlost
This cute-looking 2D survival game is progressing - it's a very small development team so the wait can be forgiven. Do not let the simple Super Nintendo style graphics fool you; this is a very big game indeed with all the usual survival-game mechanics such as base building, scavenging, crafting and, of course, Zombie bashing. The latest news is that a playable Beta version will be released soon for those eager to get in on the action.
The House of the Dead 2 remake
The state of the remake of the legendary sequel to The House of the Dead is a bit of a mystery at this point. The remake of the first game was released to Nintendo Switch initially and, later, ported to PC but no news of a similar release structure for the remade sequel has been given. In fact, no news about the game surfaced at all in 2023.
Projekt Z: Beyond Order
Development of this First Person Shooter game set in World War II - now sporting a snazzy new subtitle - is taking forever but hopefully, 2024 will see a full release. On a remote island, the unscrupulous Nazi forces have been, not only trying to raise the dead as ravenous flesh eaters but also control the dreaded beasts and use them to help win the war. From an allied hideout on the island, you can launch missions, each contained within a self-contained story-arc and put a stop to this Nazi meddling. The order you complete these missions influences events later in the game. For example, if you take, and successfully complete, a mission to unblock the islands sewer systems, a later mission will contain all the Zombies that were trapped in that sewer system. If you don’t care about the stories though and just want to blast some Zombies in the face, the game also features an open-ended, wave-based, survival mode set on the island.
Taviana: The Origins
This standalone game inspired by one of the cities in DayZ keeps trundling along in the development treadmill. The game features basically the exact same features as DayZ; a huge explorable world, base-building, scavenging, crafting, dynamic weather, Zombies to kill, other, potentially-hostile, players to contend with and so on. It has been in the preview articles of the last few years and full release is still nowhere in sight, despite the near-monthly updates on the project's facebook page. What concerns me however, is that now the hype surrounding DayZ has long since dried up and because the current gaming world is positively bristling with survival games, does anybody real care about this new one?
Urban Strife
This promising looking turn-based strategy game from developers White Pond Games, missed its release window last year. Taking command of a shelter in a world overrun by undead, you recruit anyone left alive, some joining as fighters, to take the fight to the hordes, while others stay back, managing supplies and doing menial tasks behind the lines, whatever they can to help. The delays to the game have allowed more features to be added however, such as your command shelter visibly changing depending on the additions you make and having individual dialogue options that only appear depending on your standing with another survivor group, possibly allowing you to defuse tense situations without bloodshed.
Killing Floor 3
I do not consider Killing Floor a Zombie game for the plain and simple reason that the enemies you fight in this multiplayer, all combat, first-person, action game are not Zombies. However, the popular opinion is that Killing Floor is, in fact, a Zombie game so I’m including the 3rd instalment of the franchise in this year's list. In the game, monsters (many of them augmented with cybernetic components) have broken out of the containment units owned by the company that created these foul beasts, Horizon. To be honest, the game is not big on story; it is all about buying guns, killing enemies, grabbing cash and using that to buy better guns. While only a cinematic trailer has been released for this game so far (with very brief glimpses of gameplay at the end), Tripwire Interactive have shown that they can churn out quality games like this quickly - I don't see this game falling out of a 2024 release.
Early Access
- Pine Harbor
- Infection Free Zone
- Dead Matter
- Fargone
- Cepheus Protocol
- SurrounDead
- Mist Survival
- Project Zomboid
- 7 Days to Die
- The Black Masses
- No More Room In Hell 2
DESCRIPTION:
The article series previewing the Zombie things of 2024 continues in this second part - this one focusing on those most entertaining of electronical delights; video games. 2023 saw a fair few quality releases in the Zombie genre, will 2024 follow suit?
CATEGORY:
Preview of the Dead
WRITTEN BY:
DATE UPLOADED:
21/01/2024