Developer Undead Labs just officially unveiled themselves today. Yes, "Undead Labs," and, no, don't question what they are going to be making. The concept is one of the best that I've heard in a long time. Their sole reason for existence is to develop a sweet-ass zombie massively multiplayer online game that will fulfill every zombie nerd's dreams.
Awesome.
Since they've just announced their existence today, there obviously aren't too many details at this point. They haven't committed to any specific console (though it definitely will be a console game), there's no estimated release date yet, and they don't know who will publish it. The most important question, though, is: slow or fast zombies?! The answer from the Undead Labs website seems to be fast. Which we think is a good thing. Slow zombies may have worked well to create eery tension in movies of the past but the videogame environment needs some fast movement.
- Army of the Dead (Warner Bros., 2010)
How did this game come about? Well, that's pretty simple. Here's a quote from the founder of Undead Labs, Jeff Strain, formerly of NCsoft and ArenaNet:
“Every time I see a good zombie movie with friends, we spend days debating our strategies for surviving the zombie apocalypse,” said Strain. “The police station, or the supermarket? Garden rake, or staple gun? Bach, or the White Stripes? I’m a game developer, so I’d probably be useless for anything other than ghoul bait, but I’m excited to have the opportunity to build an MMOZ that lets us put those strategies to the test and find out for sure.”
The guys over at SCRAWL suggest that Jeff go and see Zombieland, since that movie is both awesome and suggests some excellent methods of zombie-apocalypse survival.
- Image via Wikipedia
Games like Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising are, no doubt, extremely sweet, but how much better would the experience be in MMO form? We'll soon find out.
Check out Undead Labs' website.
