I just want to say I’m a diehard zombie fan I’ve watched every zombie from the Romero trilogy to 28 days (and weeks) to even return of the Night of the living Dead: Necropolis. I own the Necronomicon, World War Z and the Zombie Survival guide. I’ve played practically every Resident Evil game, even the god awful gun survivor series. Suffice to say Zombies are my favorite horror trope. Zombies are the perfect cannon fodder and I guess can really make you feel like a super hero when taking on hoards of them. They also have the eerie ability to remind us of people and society, a mindless hoard bent on nothing but consuming everything and giving nothing back (capitalism anyone). So with all my devotion to zombies I found it odd that I didn’t enjoy the zombie maps in Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty Black ops.

I mean when you look at it from the onset its wave based (like Gears of War Horde mode), building barracked’s and defenses (like The Last Stand), Zombie survival (like Left 4 Dead). All these things amalgam together should be an amazing concept but alas playing with my brother left me feeling annoyed, bored and often time wondering why I’m not enjoying blowing off zombie’s heads. Further thinking about it lead me to really breakdown what other zombie’s games give me that COD zombies neglect. Keep in mind the other games aren’t perfect zombies but they do hit what I believe is the benchmarks for zombie games.

When fighting zombies I expect never to let my guard down, always be tense and ready for action. If zombie movies have taught me anything is that they will pop out just when you least expect it, just when you think it’s all sunshine and happy ending one stray zombie will bite somebody leading to emotional rollercoaster with characters. 28 Days later did this the best when Brendan Gleeson character got zombie blood in his eye from a single drop and the other protagonists are suddenly moved from salvation to misery to sadness in a matter of minutes. Left 4 Dead to my knowledge has got closest to this with the A.I Director that changes the amount and types of zombies the survivors must faced based on their progress. Every game follows the same map but a multitude of variation on how you approach it. COD zombie’s has waves of pre-written code of zombies attacking a safe house, and you know right after finishing a couple rounds that there is no variation and the only thing that will help you is memorization. Zombie dogs will always show up X amount of times and you’ll always get a big wave after Y wave. It becomes boring and predictable.

When battling the undead you expect them to die (un-die?) like the undead. Facial deformation and missing limbs are a must. The feel of knowing your bullet is causing them one hell of a bad day. Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising and Techland’s new game Dead Island do this great with Dead Island well above everyone else to date. In Dead Island you can break zombie’s arms till all there doing is snapping at you with flailing arms, the level of damage you can do to the zombies in this game is incredible and all the damage has a real world effect as though it were a real human body. COD zombies though has a level of zombie deformation, but no bullet I fired really sent a zombie back or even causes a shutter. It felt more like an old school RPG with me ticking of life points from a hit box till the zombie fell. Without that tactile feel what’s the difference between shooting zombies and any other enemy type in a game. NONE.

When Pulverizing the Living disabled I expect to me scared, tense and frightened but never completely useless. In all zombie games you maybe low on ammo and health but never hope or at least a last ditch effort to beat down them zombies. Left 4 Dead has the infinite ammo on the basic pistol, Dead Rising does it by making everything a weapon, and even Resident Evil 4 did it with giving you the ability to strike zombies. COD zombies leave you with no ammo once you squandered it and unless you’re playing with friends once your down, you’re out. There’s no effective defense against them.

I hope these reasons are enough to justify my dislike for COD zombie’s because if you ruin what makes shooting zombies fun, I think your just missing the point. Hopefully the people at Treyarch will take a lesson with their next COD: cash grab: zombie edition.