By Will McCurdy

Modern culture has taken an odd spin on the idea of horror, particularly monsters. It seems to be a mad whiplash that goes between reimagining them as brooding anti-heroes, turning them into sexual icons or in the very rare case these days of actually being afraid of them.

It is the last category that is the subject of this video game review regarding the Call of Duty series and its near consistent homages to George Romero through their zombies game mode.

Call of Duty recently might be considered great advocates for environmental conservation. They have guns, new abilities for using those guns and a plot that amounts to “insert potential United States conflict here.” But by far, the part that fell most into the compost heap is the zombies mode which is quite a shame as the story began as quite intriguing, if not slightly innovative. After fighting a brutal war across Germany and the Pacific in Call of Duty: World at War, the game showed a plane crash viewed by a man, recovering from a head trauma induced slumber, when he sees wandering shadows shambling like wraiths in the foggy evening. Suddenly, you see one moving with an inhuman sprint coming closer until the screen cuts to black and the title written in blood emerges.

It was the last time the zombies mode surprised anyone.

Since then, they’ve included new abilities, perks and giant steam powered robots but the formula remains the same: fight zombies until you die or start questioning where all those fairly well preserved bodies are coming from and why they seem to have a serious case of hating kids who are on their lawn.

It’s survival mode, that much is understood, but they made an error from the beginning by giving it a story. Survival mode is not supposed to have a story. It’s merely an exercise in pretending to be a war criminal against a race of pixels. Once it is given a plot, however, it becomes subjected to the criteria that are used to scrutinize the rest of the game. If it is implied that there will be a conclusion to the plot, then there had better be one. Otherwise all those hours were for nothing and the player is worse off for being played as the dunce in the bullfighting ring that is gaming. Unless Activision and Sledgehammer games are recycling their developers, then the mode amounts to what the franchise has become; namely a repeating piece of propaganda about American military exceptionalism that can barely try to recapture the magic of its glory days.

So, fellow gamers, feel good about your game choices and slap an “environmental friendly” logo on the next copy. If the developers are going to feel alright about recycling plot and gameplay, players should feel good about perpetuating their attempts at video game conservationism.