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Crispy™ Games with Unrelenting Undead

Maggot

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
I was watching Night of the Living Dead (1990) last night and it got me thinking about how few games really have durable zombies that keep getting back up. The only games that came to mind are:
Thief series where you need holy water or fire arrows to destroy zombies

Arx Fatalis where you need to pin zombies to the ground with a limited supply of stakes or they get back up

Resident Evil Remake where zombies that have not been decapitated or burned turn into crimson heads

Siren where there is no way to permanently dispatch shibito.

Are there any other games that do undead right?
 
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SumDrunkGuy

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Resident Evil 2 Remake. If I remember right damage is RNG based so there's a lot of instances where you can unload multiple clips into a zombie without it dieing. I personally wasn't a fan of this...
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
There was a game (can't remember it 100% right now) where you had to pick up and 'remove' a part of a skeleton after downing it, or its scattered pieces would just reform themselves and the skeleton would get back up.

Ultima 8 also had really annoying skeletons.

(The two above examples may be related.)
 

Naraya

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Quake - only a rocket or grenade can dismember (quite literally) a zombie.

edit: actually with Quad Damage you can use any weapon.

SumDrunkGuy Agree 100%, I dropped the game because of this.
 

Atrachasis

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There was a game (can't remember it 100% right now) where you had to pick up and 'remove' a part of a skeleton after downing it, or its scattered pieces would just reform themselves and the skeleton would get back up.

Ultima 8 also had really annoying skeletons.

(The two above examples may be related.)

Indeed they may. I believe it is Ultima 9 that had the reforming skeletons.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Thank you for scratching that itch! I firmly remember picking up ribcages and placing them in my inventory to prevent skeletons from popping back up.

(Now I'm horrified by the fact that it's been TWENTY YEARS since I first played Ultima 9...)
 
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Resident Evil 2 Remake. If I remember right damage is RNG based so there's a lot of instances where you can unload multiple clips into a zombie without it dieing. I personally wasn't a fan of this...
There's no RNG for damage. The game does have rank which can lower your damage depending on how well you're doing, and there's naturally a pretty big variance in how much HP zombies have so sometimes you will get super tough ones, but it's not random. The only random element is that sometimes you can get critical hit headshots which instant kill, but those just make things easier.
 

Wunderbar

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Severance Blade of Darkness - zombies can be dismembered and killed, but they will keep raising again.

Silent Hill 4 - ghosts are immortal, but you can pin them to the ground with a rare magic sword.
 

Dr Skeleton

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Battle Brothers
Zombies (wiederganger) can get up after getting killed unless they're decapitated. If there's a necromancer they'll just keeping coming back until you kill him. When one of your squad gets killed by a wiederganger he often comes back as one. Undead are slow and only have one attack a turn so a fight typically starts very well for the player, but undead never run out of stamina and keep coming back, while the player keeps exhausting their fatigue, morale, armor and eventually units (that then come back as more undead). BB might have the best turn-based depiction of a fight vs a horde of zombies that won't stay down.
 

Beastro

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Are there any other games that do undead right?

Soul Reaver 1 made all vamps effectively invincible unless properly done in.

Even if you mess them up enough to release their spirit, if you don't eat it up quick enough it reenters the body and they get back up.

Game kinda plays with the undead aspect in a way stereotypical way in that the first vampires you mean are ones rotting apart and are effectively zombi-eish if still intelligent: https://legacyofkain.fandom.com/wiki/Adult_Melchahim
 

Tehdagah

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Resident Evil 2 Remake. If I remember right damage is RNG based so there's a lot of instances where you can unload multiple clips into a zombie without it dieing. I personally wasn't a fan of this...
There's no RNG for damage. The game does have rank which can lower your damage depending on how well you're doing, and there's naturally a pretty big variance in how much HP zombies have so sometimes you will get super tough ones, but it's not random. The only random element is that sometimes you can get critical hit headshots which instant kill, but those just make things easier.
Return to the roots they said
 

Mexi

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Dark Souls. Those skeletons that come back unless you kill them with holy weapons... or maybe just a mace... or did you have to kill the head necromancer? Been a long time since I played, and I think they weren't in Demon's Souls either. I've not played Demon's Souls even longer.
 

Maggot

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
Dark Souls. Those skeletons that come back unless you kill them with holy weapons... or maybe just a mace... or did you have to kill the head necromancer? Been a long time since I played, and I think they weren't in Demon's Souls either. I've not played Demon's Souls even longer.
You have to use a holy weapon or kill the head necromancer.
 

DJOGamer PT

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Resident Evil 2 Remake. If I remember right damage is RNG based so there's a lot of instances where you can unload multiple clips into a zombie without it dieing. I personally wasn't a fan of this...
There's no RNG for damage. The game does have rank which can lower your damage depending on how well you're doing, and there's naturally a pretty big variance in how much HP zombies have so sometimes you will get super tough ones, but it's not random. The only random element is that sometimes you can get critical hit headshots which instant kill, but those just make things easier.
Return to the roots they said

And they did.
If you don't remember, zombies in the OG RE games were bullet sponges. A shotgun blast to the head was the one of the few reliable ways to kill them
This mechanic in REmake 2 is reminiscent to that aspect, and it probably was the best way to translate that to a new camera and control scheme.
 

Momock

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And they did.
If you don't remember, zombies in the OG RE games were bullet sponges. A shotgun blast to the head was the one of the few reliable ways to kill them
This mechanic in REmake 2 is reminiscent to that aspect, and it probably was the best way to translate that to a new camera and control scheme.
Yes. In the old REs you had a random chance to "hit the head" while shooting with pistol and insta-kill, so since in REmake 2 you can aim for the head manualy the only way was to make random if it was going to blow up or not.

They did an incredible job in general at the ressource management department and the annoyance of the zombies.
 

Neanderthal

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The Skeleton Warriors under Temple Darkmoon in EotB 2 were something else, they just keep fucking coming and if you're unprepared then God fucking help you. The occasional cleric casting hold person or such doesn't help either.

If you've imported from the first game though you'll have far less problems.
 

Tehdagah

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And they did.
If you don't remember, zombies in the OG RE games were bullet sponges. A shotgun blast to the head was the one of the few reliable ways to kill them
This mechanic in REmake 2 is reminiscent to that aspect, and it probably was the best way to translate that to a new camera and control scheme.
Yes. In the old REs you had a random chance to "hit the head" while shooting with pistol and insta-kill, so since in REmake 2 you can aim for the head manualy the only way was to make random if it was going to blow up or not.

They did an incredible job in general at the ressource management department and the annoyance of the zombies.

I don't recall the old RE games punishing good players by increasing the zombie's HP.

The best way to adapt RE2 to a new camera and controls would be making the enemies more capable. A 14 years old game called RE4 did this but Capcom today doesn't know to make good games anymore.
 
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Sort of the case in Dead Space. More in the backstory than the game itself, I think - the idea was that they can't actually be killed, so you have to disassemble them to the point that they're no longer a threat despite still being alive and hostile. In practice they did stop moving after losing most or all of their limbs. This might have been for performance reasons or engine limitations, or maybe it was just a design decision.
 

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