The Immune Protagonist: Zombies, Game Overs, and Retries

This is a Minecraft Left 4 Dead mod. Isn't it amazing?

I've harped on about zombies in video games for every other blog post, so I figured I should continue my trend to the bitter end.

While the above image is from Minecraft, my topic for this evening is more of a concept rather than a focus on a particular game: in every video game I've played where zombies are either a side-enemy or the main enemy, never have I seen a protagonist become infected by any zombie that attacks them outside of a cutscene. That is, despite zombie hordes encroaching from all sides in Left 4 Dead 2 or in Dead Island, no matter how much a main character might get bitten, and no matter how many times they might die in combat, the player character -- or really, any "main" characters who might fight with you -- never rises again as a zombie.

Feel free to prove me wrong if this does happen in a game you know about. I would love to give it a play!

Now, Minecraft has two forms of zombies: "regular" zombies that appear in the overworld at night, and zombie pigmen who inhabit an area known as the Nether (I consider it to be Hell, myself, and I do not recommend vacationing there).

Regular, run of the mill zombies shamble around at night and follow you when you get too close to them. If they run into you, you take damage, but nothing else; meanwhile, if a zombie runs into a poor, helpless villager, they get turned into a zombie.

To be honest, they were pretty ugly to begin with. This is arguably an improvement.

Regular zombies travel alone and never come in "packs," unless you get incredibly unlucky and manage to run into a bunch of them -- generally, they're randomly generated. Zombie pigmen, on the other hand, are almost always grouped together, and if you attack one, they all come after you in a swarm of terrible rotting pork. But they only attack when you attack them first, otherwise, they remain docile. In a way, these two kinds of zombies remind me of the ones from Zone One: skels, who are always ready to dine, and stragglers, who will stand in one spot, unmoved by the smell of human flesh, until they're shot down.

Now, both of these types of zombies will drop rotten flesh, which is somehow so delicious on its own that you don't need to cook it before you eat it! There's a food bar in Minecraft that will go down over time unless you eat something to replenish it. Once it gets low enough, you won't be able to run anymore, and if it runs out, you start to starve to death.

Rotten flesh, if consumed, will give you more points in your food bar.

Sounds disgusting? You bet it is!

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However, for some reason, eating this flesh does not turn you into a zombie, though it does have an 80% chance of causing food poisoning. Gee, I wonder why. Food poisoning makes your hunger go down faster, thus nearly negating any good eating the flesh did in the first place!

But I do have to wonder -- the character you play as is, in theory, just a normal person out for a stroll in some mines. Why does your character not turn into a zombie when attacked by one? Why does the rotten flesh not cause a zombie ailment? There are potions you can make in-game; surely it wouldn't be difficult to make a zombie-heal potion before the sickness consumes you?

But perhaps that would make the game more difficult than it already is.

These poor, ugly villagers never stood a chance. Especially when I stole one of their walls for my own house...

Do main characters have to be immune in order to make zombie games work? In a way, doesn't immunity take away a huge part of what makes zombies terrifying to begin with? Just one bite or scratch, or even a bit of blood inside of you, might be enough to turn you into a shambling nightmare desperate for the flesh of your friends.

For instance, I've noticed a trend in many Japanese (and even Western) RPG games: zombies have become a low-level, almost everyday menace. In the MMO Ragnarok Online, you find zombies early on lurking in a series of caves, and it's easy enough to dispatch them with a cure spell -- zombies, as the undead, are weak to holy magic. Have zombies in video games become simple fodder for level 2 swordsman rather than the fearsome menaces they embody in many zombie horror movies? "Zombie," "Undead," and "Zombify" are status ailments in many of the Final Fantasy games, but inflicted characters don't start munching on their allies; instead, they become weak to holy magic and strong against physical attacks. This ailment can be cured, however, with a simple drink of holy water. In Demon's Souls, zombies are the first enemies you run into in the game.

A Ragnarok Online zombie. He's kinda cute, isn't he?

Fellow gamers and zombie enthusiasts, I would love to see a game where the main character is not given immunity simply for being the main character. What if, instead of a single main character, you had many? What if the one you started with became infected, and you had to pick another character to play as so you could neutralize the first one? What would it be like to have to kill the same characters you've been with throughout the game, or to know you were the one who let them become infected? What if you didn't have high-powered guns and rifles, but boards, pipes, and baseball bats? What if the focus was more on survival than action, where your characters slowly starved to death over time if you didn't get them food, but to venture out of wherever you barricaded yourself in means almost certain death?

Or would this type of game be too hard to play?