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Zombie games are a dime a dozen, but which of them are the most vicious? For this list, the games featured will include zombies that are super powerful, even if the game itself isn’t graphic. With that said, most of these games will explore gruesome and violent themes.
Resident Evil 2 Remake
The remake of Resident Evil 2 follows Leon and Claire as they fight off the hungry, T-Virus-infected zombies. The zombies are so realistic looking, you can practically smell them. They’re violent enough as it is, but then you have Lickers, which string you up and hang you or slice you up. Whatever they feel like on that day.
When you die, the violence doesn’t stop. Zombies will rip out your sternocleidomastoid, the long muscle in your neck, and chow down on your body. It’s sickening with its graphic content.
ZombiU
In most other zombie games, you can be hit, slashed and even bitten, and you won’t die. Your health bar will go down, but you can heal that. ZombiU laughs at those concepts.
If a ZombiU zombie bites you, you’re dead. No reruns. Most ZombiU zombies are more traditional in that they shamble around and aren’t very smart. But you rarely have to tango with one at a time. Special zombies, like hunters and armored infected, are worse. And when you die, you’re replaced with the other survivor. You can get your gear if you get back to the location where your other character died. Unfortunately, you likely have to kill your old character to get it.
Plants vs. Zombies
Yeah, yeah. Plants vs. Zombies is a kids’ game full of technicolor plants and zombies. But these zombies are vicious. They’re one of the few zombie types that can plan, use complex tools, dig mines, pole-vault, tame dolphins and defend themselves. They aren’t mindless.
Some zombies can pilot complex mech suits. They’re doing things most humans can’t do.
What’s worse is that the zombies in Plants vs. Zombies are reanimated corpses. They don’t have to infect living hosts. Any graveyard could suddenly come to life.
Dying Light
Surviving in the Dying Light universe is an exercise in futility. To stand a chance, you need parkour skills, and even then, you have to face some of the most violent zombies in gaming.
Biters are the equivalent of jobbers, but then there are the Virals and Volatiles. Virals are recently infected, fast, and capable of jumping at you. Volatiles can scale walls, leap over obstacles and take a huge amount of damage. Fortunately, Volatiles leave you alone in the sun.
With the Behemoth, that’s not an option. They’ll throw concrete at you and tackle you to the ground. That’s especially bad in a world with wall-jumping zombies.
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead was released in November 2008, and it completely changed the co-op shooting genre. And the violence scale is off the charts, here. Most zombies in Left 4 Dead are called “The Infected,” living humans infected by the Green Flu. These guys will run at you in a full sprint and won’t stop until they’re dead. And these are the easiest variants to beat.
Upgrades like Tanks, Boomers and Witches make your life way harder. You’re expected to avoid variants like the Witches because they’re so incredibly strong and violent.
The Infected take a lot of bullets, too, so prepare to empty out more than a few clips.
The Last of Us
The world of The Last of Us is bleak. A fungal infection causes humans to become Cordyceps zombies, including Clickers, who click their mouths to assess your location.
The viciousness of these zombies is what spreads the infection. Shamblers, one of the zombie variants, release spores into the air. If you breathe even a tiny bit of those spores, you turn into one of them, making a gas mask necessary.
What’s worse is that many variants are incredibly fast. And their screams alert the rest of
World War Z
They say there’s strength in numbers, and World War Z takes that to heart. In this game, zombies rarely travel alone. You’ll face waterfalls of them, and they’re highly aggressive. One zombie is easy to destroy, but when you have hundreds? You’ll have to get very violent. Zombies will literally crawl over each other to get to you. They’re very hardworking.
There are also special zombies, like Lurkers, which hide in corners to pounce on you, and screamers, which call for more waves of zombies. All zombies are very sensitive to sound, so shooting your gun by accident could spell death for you and your comrades.
Dead Space
The Necromorphs are pure body horror, and becoming one seems like a fate worse than death. Explaining how the first Necromorphs came to be is a massive spoiler, but they ‘reproduce’ via attaching themselves to a host and reanimating the corpse. One Necromorph isn’t difficult to fight. Just shoot their limbs a few times. In numbers, they can easily overwhelm.
What makes Dead Space and the Necromorphs so vicious is how they kill you because they want to. They’re not hungry like other zombies. They just woke up and chose violence. Necromorphs are brutal in how they kill you, too. Slicing you until you stop moving.
The Halo Series
The Halo games aren’t zombie games, but if we’re judging zombies on a vicious scale, then the Flood has to have a spot on the list. The Flood could be the most terrifying zombie-like infection in video game history. The Flood became such a massive threat that even the most advanced species had to resort to galactic-scale annihilation to stop them. And even then, they just go dormant until the fire bombing stops.
The Flood parasite is highly contagious, overwhelming whole space stations in hours. The zombies retain enough muscle memory to use weapons, and they’re incredibly strong. There’s no cure, and confirmed immunity is basically nonexistent in current Halo lore.
So, Flood zombies are incredibly awful. They’re basically a god-like race that’s nearly impossible to kill. They could destroy any other zombie on this list.
Mass Effect Series
Another non-zombie game, the Mass Effect series is similar to Halo in many ways. Both are sci-fi shooters that explore politics and put you in the middle of a war. Both also have terrifying zombie characters. For Mass Effect, it’s the Reaper soldiers.
Reaper soldiers are robotic corpses made undead by Reaper nanotechnology. Each race becomes its own terrifying variant, with human Husks becoming cannibals and Asari turning into psychic-powered Banshees. Husks will overpower you in numbers and climb structures to get to you, while Banshees bring the psychic-powered attacks. And since the Reapers control them, they’re capable of advanced tactics. While Husks die easily with bullets, other variants don’t.
These Zombie Games Are Violent, But Awesome
These 10 zombie games, or games that include terrifying zombies, are some of the most violent pieces of media you’ll ever play. Whether you’re getting through your backlog or waiting for Halloween, try out these experiences that will scare you to the core.
