So, I was killing zombies...

when I realized something startling. I have become entirely apathetic to the walking dead. As a matter of fact, I think I may have an active hatred for them. This is a huge deal for me. I have loved zombies since the age of 6. I have been a staunch supporter of the various "Living Dead" movies ("Return of..." being my personal favourite). I have played every zombie video game. Christ, I have multiple zombies tattooed on my body. Where did things go so wrong?

I'm gonna guess right around here.

I'm gonna put the onus on pop culture. Zombies have always had their place in pop culture, but as of late, it seems like the saturation level has reached an all time high. Look at this list of video games featuring the brain-hungry warriors (I literally just came up with that). It seems as if every game now has a zombie murder mode, or something of that sort. And this is my problem. It's just too much. Zombies have always been great; the shambling, the moaning, the...more shambling. They capitalize on our fears of becoming part of a faceless mass, and our fear of having to shoot a loved one in the face because they're trying to eat us (Man, if I had a nickel!). But pop culture is doing what it loves to do; take something that people like, and shove it down our throats until we just can't take it anymore.

I'm willing to admit that some games have benefited from zombification. Red Dead Redemption's Undead Nightmare was an amazing addition to an already stellar game.  Zombies Ate my Neighbors was great fun. I enjoyed the Dead Rising series. I'm even looking forward to Dead Island, as it doesn't seem like your standard undead game. But some zombie games should never exist. Take, for example, Plants Vs. Zombies. Yep, I went there. This game is beloved by millions, for reasons unbeknownst to me. It's just a standard castle defense game. There are dozens of games out that do this much, much better. Seemingly to me, PopCap chose zombies solely because it's guaranteed to get noticed, thus raking in more cash for them. I can't blame them; they want to make money; but all this does is load up the market with sub-par zombie games. Why not ninjas? That would've been pretty awesome.

And sexy.

There are many other offenders. Teenage Zombies was one of the worst platformers I've ever played, and it's made even worse by the fact that the children you play as are zombies. I'm sorry, but dead children don't really tickle my funny bone. Maybe that's just me, though.  The Typing of the Dead? What the hell? A Dreamcast game meant to teach typing, you have to type a given word in order to kill a zombie. I'm fairly certain that if this game had been popular, and a zombie outbreak did occur, there would have been an awful lot of blood on the developers hands.

How are you supposed to bypass Time Crisis for this?

I love the undead, and I always will. But I hate zombies right now. All I can hope is that people start to realize that there actually can be too much of a good thing. I would gladly give up multiple mediocre zombie games a year for one perfect game every three years. I love you, zombies, but I don't need you in my Call of Duty. Actually, I don't need Call of Duty, period. But that's another matter.