When in doubt, exploit the Differently Animated. That seems to be the lesson videogame developers around the world have learned in the wake of best-selling titles like Resident Evil, Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty: Black Ops and so forth. Whether it’s Zombies in a cutesy tower defense game ala Plants vs Zombies, or inserted into a game about the Yakuza, or, well, half the games to come out for the iPhone in the last year, one thing is obvious: splashing Zombies into games has become less a marketing strategy than a compulsion, like trained monkeys pulling the food lever.

And, of course, because rote behaviors don’t tend to come with a lot of originality, almost all of those Zombie-infused games are Anti-Zombie, and violent to boot.

Therefore it came as little surprise to hear that an MMO from Korea, land of the MMOs-That-Aren’t-World-of-Warcraft, is coming out featuring both an alternate history of World War II and then, for some reason, a Zombie Apocalypse:

Developed in conjunction with Dragonfly, Prisons of the Dead is the
newest installment in the KARMA Online series, the first online
first-person shooter released in Korea. Choose to side with the Axis
or Allied powers and join the fight for global victory – with a zombie
twist. The apocalypse begins in the new screens including playable
characters and the locations they will visit, along with two videos
showing why nobody is to be left alive. Karma Online: Prisoners of
the Dead is the new official title for the upcoming FPS.

Yes, Korea was involved in World War II, toward the end, but watch the trailer; German fighter bombers are rather out of place, methinks. So I’m calling this firmly on the alternate history side. Alternate history PLUS the Zombocalypse seems to be straining credibility more than a tad, but what do I know; Call of Duty: Black Ops has Kennedy, Nixon and Castro fighting Zombies in the Pentagon.

Here we tragically see the scourge of Just Add Zombies spreading to yet another nation, as South Korea panders to the rising global tide of Anti-Zombie bloodlust. We find it both disturbing and tiresome, here at the ZRC. Don’t people ever get tired of the same old, violent, derivative thing?

Tags: Videogames, Zombie Flavored Creativity Substitute

This entry was posted by John Sears on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.