Despite setting the premise for countless video games and movies zombies are still wrecking havoc all around us (virtually, that is). If you’re one who loves zombies you may be happy to hear that a zombie-themed MMO will be coming to the Xbox Live Arcade developed by Undead Labs.

Codenamed Class 3 this XBLA title will face players with an open-world overrun by zombies. These players will then be tasks with collecting food and ammunition along with creating shelter and fending off the zombies.

According to these reports, Class 3 will feature only local multiplayer while a sequel, codenamed Class 4, will feature completely onine play with thousands of players.

We’ll keep you posted as more information is made known.

via undeadlabs

I’m a big fan of zombie movies, and by extension, games that act like them.  And I may well have found the toughest challenge I’ve ever taken on in the form of Days 2 Die.

Newgrounds offers me up an incredible zombie apocalypse scenario–it’s just like a whole lot of others.  No one really knows how it happens, or when it’ll end, but man, is it ever a brutal one.  You’ll be dispatched to survive a legion of the walking dead engaged in attacking you in several different locations, and each wave will get steadily more difficult.  But you’ll have a variety of weapons to choose from, and be able to place barricades to help fend off the waves of walking dead.

In early levels, you’ll be able to set up a simple KZ (kill zone) with the help of your barricades, then just stand behind them and blast away.  But in the later levels (I found it started around the police station) even the best gun you have is downright insufficient to deal with the dense mobs of highly resilient zombies.  Thus, the difficulty level may be just a bit too high for the casual zombie blaster, and even experienced shooter players could be in for a bit more fight than even they can handle.

But either way, you should have plenty of fun with this one, so go on out to Newgrounds and take on Days 2 Die.

I have to admit that, when I started playing Left 4 Dead, I thought I was going to be offended by its very existence.  I snarled at that game box for what must have been ten minutes before finally grabbing it up and hauling it up to the counter like a small child forced to take medicine. And medicine without the flavor shots added to it–man, we never had THAT kind of thing back when I was a kid unless it was the over-the-counter cough syrup.  Kids today.

Geriatric mutterings aside, I sat down to take my Left 4 Dead medicine, slapped it in my Xbox, and was surprised by the way it actually went down.  Surprisingly smooth, as a matter of fact.

Left 4 Dead basically puts you in a group of four survivors of a zombie apocalypse and gives you five separate scenarios to try and get out of Dodge in as rapid a fashion as possible.  You’ll fight your way through freeway underpasses, through churches, through hospitals and various other scenic locales in a desperate bid for survival.  Along the way, you’ll take on zombies that explode in a cloud of bile when you shoot them (boomers), zombies with enormous tongues that burst into smoke when you shoot them (smokers) and gigantic roid-raged zombies that can throw cars (tanks) along with female zombies that break down sobbing when they’re alone, but if you disturb their mourning they will burst into a homicidal rage and rip you apart with their bare hands.  These are called Witches.

I have been killed by Witches several times now.

I hate Witches with a fury formerly reserved only for child molesters.

But I was surprised at how much fun I had blasting my way through zombie hordes.  Sure, the gameplay is a bit monotonous–go here, shoot that, repeat until your thumbs fall off–but it just felt better overall.  I think it has something to do with the relatively open floor plans of the levels in which I was blasting all those zombies.

I had fun, yes…and I wasn’t enraged by the game itself, but that’s not to say that I’m letting Left 4 Dead off the hook just yet–no sir.  In fact, I’m pretty upset with it, and here’s why.

1. Track Star Zombies.  When the game actually has the characters say, in canon, that “zombies aren’t supposed to be this fast”, they’re RIGHT.  The walking dead are not supposed to be able to sprint without tiring and climb chain-link fences in a couple of bounds.

2. Shoot It In The…Um…Anywhere’s Good, I Guess.  Zombies are not supposed to go down after a couple of rounds to the center of mass.  You’ve got to shoot it in the head, Cooper…not anywhere you please.  Okay, sure, if you shoot the legs you’ll knock them down.  Shoot them in the chest for ballstic impact and some stunning.  But if you want to kill a zombie, you have to destroy the brain or separate the brain from the rest of the body.  Anything else is just a crock perpetrated by people who don’t understand the work of zombie master George Romero.

3. Where The Hell Did They Get All The Steroids?  I’m not sure I even want to know who thought it’d be a good idea to have bloated zombies that throw up on you as a battle tactic, or smoking zombies with tongues that make Gene Simmons’ curl up in the fetal position and whimper.  Don’t even get me started on the tanks.

But if you’re willing to ignore, or at least forgive, still MORE Romero blasphemy, then you’ll probably get along pretty well with Left 4 Dead.  I did, essentially.

Must be some kind of theme I’ve got going here, because I segue from one action-heavy mindless shoot-o-rama into another one, this time called Zombie Shootout.

With a name like Zombie Shootout, you can probably guess the plot almost instantly–yes, you will shoot zombies. Lots of them. You will be in a boarded up house with three open, interconnected rooms, and zombies will approach those barricades and attempt to get in.  You, meanwhile, must kill them all before they can kill you.  You’ll get a variety of upgrades, including better weapons, better barricades, and the ever popular sentry gun, that opens fire on any zombie (thankfully, not you) that happens to wander in front of it and will do so until it runs out of ammo.

You’ll have to survive twenty waves, and failure is met by the ever-popular “you failed at life” slogan (what’s next, epic fail?).  It’s definitely a fun little time waster, if a bit monotonous, and I don’t think I’m overstepping my bounds saying that the ending you get really isn’t worth the twenty rounds of time you invested, but if you can’t get enough of peeling zombie heads off zombie necks, then this is definitely a game you’ll want to try.

Whether or not it was designed in imitation of or in direct competition to Gears of War 2′s Horde mode, the Nazi Zombie mode that Treyarch included in Call of Duty: World of War is incredibly popular. As with most online-friendly FPS titles there has been discussion of DLC for the most recent World War II title.

In addition to more commonplace levels that will be included in the upcoming map pack, there will be yet another zombie level coming. On the game’s forums community manager JD_2020 confirmed the rumors circulating that there would be a new zombie level included in the first map pack, adding a tongue-in cheek comment regarding the zombie warning on road signs.

Many games seem to have lost the sense of fun and humor that titles often had in the past. I can recall many games where a cheat code or easter egg would break up the seriousness of a battle against monsters or the forces of evil aliens. There has been less and less of this in recent years but some developers seem to be realizing again that throwing in a bit of the ridiculous and incongruous can be a delight. The often super serious Call of Duty series has taken a step towards the absurd with the inclusion of the much discussed ‘zombie mode’ where players can fight off hordes of Nazi undead.

Daniel Suarez, executive producer on the title, told MTV Multiplayer that they’re aiming to put out some ‘untraditional‘ content packs. Treyarch is aiming for two or three of these content packs, which could include anything from a map editor to more multiplayer modes that take the gritty real-world game and propell it in another strange direction. Announcements regarding the DLC will begin next year.

The system requirements for the PC version of Valve’s upcoming cooperative multiplayer shooter Left 4 Dead have been released. This post on the Halflife2.net forums claims that they have received these requirements from Valve marketing VP Doug Lombardi.

• OS: Windows Vista, XP or 2000
• CPU: 3.0 GHz P4, Dual Core 2.0 or AMD64X2 (or higher)
• RAM: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
• Disc drive: DVD-ROM Drive
• Hard drive: At least 7.5 GB of free space
• Video: Direct X 9 compatible video card (Video card must be 256 MB or more and should be a DirectX 9-compatible with support for pixel shader 2.0)
• Sound: Direct X9.0c compatible sound card

The zombie shooter is set for release on PC and Xbox 360 on November 18.