Dead Space + Left 4 Dead

[This week is Zombie Week. In anticipation of the theatrical release of Zombieland, which may or may not suck, several zombie-related articles forthcoming.]


The compass of the zombie is full of anger. The fundamental appeal is the idea of beating your neighbor to death with a club. That bastard had it coming, you see, because he's a stupid drone like all the others, shambling to the omnipresent tune of banality and injustice. You either fight or shuffle in step. Probably they'll overwhelm your resistance in the end.

Vampires aren't nearly so angry; petulant maybe. Disdainful. More often than not glamorously depressed: the inward obsessions of narcissism. The old superstition that vampires have no reflection is ironic, because in every depiction they only see themselves. The fascination with bloodsuckers is world-fleeing; the urge to slip away into a morphine bliss and leave a pretty corpse. Braineaters are the grim meat hook reality you face every day. The two monsters provide opposite forms of catharsis. I suppose we need them both.

But this is Zombie Week, dammit. Those dead-eyed fuckers are clawing at the door and you've got a twisted ankle, one shotgun shell and a garden hoe. Let's rock.

Suffering from extreme undeadicide withdrawal months after shelving my beloved copy of Dead Rising (best.zombie.game.ever), and forlorn in the knowledge that Dead Rising 2 is much too far away, like a health kit at the opposite end of a zombie-clogged mini mall, I hit the dealer for a quick fix.

The choice was between Dead Space, a sci-fi survival horror shooter set aboard a derelict spaceship infested by alien bugshit affixed to human hosts, and Left 4 Dead, a slick multiplayer shooter featuring the classic scenario: band of survivors versus wave after wave of hungry zedheads. The thing is, I do most of my killing solo — a partner is just a ghoul waiting to happen. I went with Dead Space.

It was the right choice. The zombie experience lives or dies by aesthetics; bone must crunch with a satisfying sound and blood must splatter with a certain joie de vivre. Atmosphere and tone must be sadistically controlled to instill paranoia and bring you regularly to the desperate blind-firing-your-last-five-pistol-rounds edge of panic. Dead Space succeeds inasmuch as it faithfully copies every page from the playbook of Doom 3, a stain-yourself terrifying game. The Alien-inspired art design is gorgeous to behold, especially during the soundless sequences on the airless ship exterior in view of drifting debris spotlit by a cold white star, as a tentacled fetus latches on to your head.

The game's primary selling point, emphasis on methodically dismembering your foes limb by mutated limb, is wicked fun*, at least until you acquire bigger guns that render precision shooting unnecessary and thereby undermine the mechanic. A major disappointment were the zero-g sequences; the prospect of floating around under attack from all 4π steradians had been a huge draw for me, but the actual implementation has your feet firmly planted on a stationary surface at all times. This is a missed opportunity: imagine in a dire situation wherein ammo is already scarce, and you've no jet pack, having to squander precious rounds to propel yourself through space, and hence every time you fire at an enemy push yourself off course. That'd be sweet.

Truth is I'm not going to finish the game. Despite initial immersion the gameplay stagnates by the halfway point with repetitive go-here-and-push-a-button missions and no compelling characters or storyline. Still, it was more enjoyable than the few minutes I recently had playing Left 4 Dead. The high-end shooter engines it uses is just too smooth for a horror game; you move and aim with unnatural fluidity, as if massless. The action is too bombastic and the environments under-designed. It's a shame, really. So few understand the art of the zombie.


* Expression not used in the Boston manner.