Zombie Hunters

The Good
The poor Buffalo Bills. You could cheerfully point out that they were AFC champions four times in the 1990’s, or you could point out the painful truth that the best they could ever do is second best. Every American will tell you (first by saying, “I tell you what...”): second best is not as good as the best.

That’s the B-List: the second tier of anything that is defined by its humble position as not being the best. An unpopular position, as everyone naturally wants the best of anything: why waste your time with anything else?

I tell you what: the B-List will always be hipper and more creative than the A-List because the while the A-List is preoccupied with staying number one, the B-List doesn’t have that pressure. The B-List would also like to be number one, but it has the freedom not to do so.

While this doesn’t apply to those Buffalo Bills chumps where being number one is everything, this does apply to other creative fields like movies and videogames. When a top tier game like a Mario or Metal Gear Solid or Halo gets released, expectations are high. A bunch of angry rich nerds line up over night to be the first to buy this game that is the same as their last favorite game but “better”. But when Zombie Hunters (The Oneechanploo) gets released, on the budget line Simple Series 2000 no less, no one is paying attention. With no pressure to satisfy any expectations but their own, Tamsoft has created this gem in the rough that actually hit the top 20 in Japan for awhile.

What hasn’t been mentioned so far is that there is one big pressure: money, the lack of it. The resources that gigantic companies can throw at a game are huge; sometimes, the result is that through the money trail something genuine and inventive comes out at the end (like Sony’s development of ICO, Shadows of the Colossus and God of War). When you are a small company churning out B-List games, you have to be inventive and creative: you have no choice.

However, the most creative game done on a budget won’t pay the bills if it doesn’t sell. This leads to the other connotation that a B-List game will have: it must pander to the lowest common denominator. B-Lists games and movies usually have goads of violence and sex. But rarely before have violence and sex been combined together so well that is titillating and thought provoking.

Zombie Hunters is the new black. It combines sex and violence so well that you’ll be kicking yourself why YOU didn’t make this game first. Zombie Hunters is a ultra-gory hack and slash game where you are a beautiful young woman in a bikini fighting zombies with a large katana sword. That’s it. Even though there are no robots and ninjas (you have Metal Gear Solid for that) this game is not lacking in giving a (male) gamer what he wants.

Yes, it’s the dream you’ve had in your head but could never describe due to its sheer beauty. It’s true that everything is this game is shallow: game play, story, levels (it’s three levels repeated, second time backwards a la Halo), music, AI. But this game never tries to elevate itself to pretentiousness that an A-List game has to feign at to justify being an A-List game.

This game isn’t about any of those things: if it was, it wouldn’t be a B-List game. It might never have been created. No, Zombie Hunters is about style and presentation of the highest caliber that gives it the cool Tarrantino had when he was on top of his game. After playing for hours you still can’t believe the makers had the audacity to combine these elements together. To illustrate, Aya’s or Riho(19)’s near nakedness wasn’t enough for the makers to leave alone. As her rage meter fills (like Devil May Cry and all the beat em’ ups) so does the amount of blood splatter on her body. This juxtaposition is oddly alluring as well as missing from other games that deem themselves cutting edge with attitude; Bloodrayne justified it’s silly existence by having you fight against Nazis. C’mon, everyone hates Nazis (well, except when they’re babies….thanks Sara Silverman)

Maybe you want your bikini babes in DOA Extreme. Maybe you want your zombies in Resident Evil. Maybe you want your hack and slash in Dynasty Warriors. All of those games do those things exceptionally well, but they don’t do anything else. They are a prisoner of their own success, and as such can’t be creative and take a chance on something new like Zombie Warriors.

The Bad
No robots. No ninjas. No outfit customization; videogame developers create awesome babes just to put them in really ugly shoes. It’s no wonder more women aren’t interested in gaming. Really, if this game had those you’d have the ultimate game kids would kill each other in the schoolyard for and give the ammunition Jack Thompson needs (because he’s a killa, yo!).

This game is shallow and poor in many areas as previously stated. So by the time it hits the big time and is Zombie Hunters VII with RPG elements and story branching elements in an open-ended wide environment with online play, it’ll be the Beegees. Everyone will love it but it won’t the fresh-tastic adrenaline shot to the heart that Zelda stopped being a couple of generations ago.

The Bottom Line
Everyone should play this game for five minutes, think about the lack of creativity in the state of gaming and all its many sequels, and realize money and state of the art graphics a good game does not make.

Ideas change the world; this idea of chicks in bikinis fighting zombies with a sword is not necessarily a genius one, but the fact that it took the videogame so long to come out with such a game, one done with such panache, just means that the idea is more genius.