So lately when my mind hasn’t been riddled by the soul devouring horror that is finals at my college, another soul devouring horror has resounded in my mind.  That of the coming zombie apocalypse…Anyone with the internet should know by now that this whole swine flu thing is really a government front for the dead rising and devouring the living.  At the same time anyone on the internet have probably heard numerous claims that in an actual zombie outbreak gamers would be better prepared than most.  Up until just recently that claim was something that I wore almost like a badge of honor, however when confronted with the same question on my school’s ACB numerous people cited different games as their training for the coming pandemic.  This is when I realized that how prepared gamers are could depend on what pop culture source they learned from.

Why does this matter you say?

Many people think “a zombie is a zombie regardless of what popculture reference they come from.” Yet, I am sorry to say that this is just simply not true.  In games like Left 4 Dead and the Resident Evil franchise the zombies are caused by a viral outbreak and can be killed in a very similar fashion to a human, needless to say a headshot isn’t a bad thing here just that it isn’t exactly necessary.  Then you have movies like anything that George A. Romero has made, where the zombies are rotting shambling creatures that have no ability to run and simple overwhelm you by pure numbers.  There are no mutated monstrosities with ridiculous special abilities, just a shambling mass of undead who mirror you in many ways.  This representation of the zombie is where the need to destroy the brain originated, these monsters you can only kill using a headshot and that’s part of why they are so frightening (to me at least).  Furthering the dilemma is games like Dead Rising, which while fun also confuse and merge the two previous examples into something even worse.

This leads to more confusions like which weapon should you use to most easily take care of the undead.  For people who have played games where the zombies can run and are generally less resistant to other representations of zombies they may claim that a shotgun is ideal to use.  Using the logic of the situation this is just common sense, if the zombies can run as well then your going to be close with them so the massive punch of the shotgun is ideal.  However, if they are the shambling, slow moving creatures that come at you in hordes then you will want a light and accurate hunting or semi auto rifle so you can pop enough of them in the head before you make your get away.  For those who are used to the ones that come in hordes and are supported by things like Tanks and Hunters then you might as well just not even have a weapon because I guarentee you that we are all screwed regardless.

The situation becomes even more heavily clouded when you come to the realizations that if you are to have any possibility of surviving then you have to plan ahead.  Plans would be so different depending on the situations and kind of zombies that arise due to the outbreak.  In a Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil situation your ideal chance for survival would be to fight your way to an army base or group up with more people.  Inversely, in a Romero ruled zombie apocalypse you would search for the most remote outpost possible with maybe a handful of other people to wait it out.  In this situation you especially disregard all civilization as people are likely to bring their infected loved ones with them into any refugee camp and the infection will just spread from there.  I am not even going to include a plan for super powered zombies because it would be impossible to survive such a situation anyway.

Now however, for the fun part.

I propose a contest where people interested send me their plans for the coming apocalypse.  All of these plans will be emailed to me and I will judge who wins the right to have their plan put up here on AmpedGaming.  There will be three categories, Romero style outbreak, Left 4 Dead and Resident Evil style outbreak (note this doesn’t include anything like the monstrous mutated zombies, its just assumed that the zombies can run) and the joke category where you have to try and make us at AmpedGaming laugh as much as possible.  Later in the post I will provide the opening circumstances that you learn of that persuades you to put your “plan” into action.  However we must first go over a few rules.

1) No racial, ethnic, or any kind of slur should be included in an entry, the inclusion of one will automatically disqualify your entry.

2) That being said, keep the bad language to a minimum.

3) Try to stay in character.

4) You may enter at least once for all three categories.

5) Email all entries to FreeGameSpeech@gmail.com, please specify which category your entry is for.

6) All entries must be emailed to me two weeks from today to be entered into this contest.

7) Be creative and have fun!  I tell you all now that the level of detail you go to will definitely help your entry.

Now that we have gone over the official stuff the opening of the scenario goes as follows.

“Over the past few weeks the news has been rife with stories about the so called “swine flu”, however, recently the swine flu has been absent from the news, instead replaced with stories of mass violence in certain city’s all over the world.  Here is where you begin to become suspicious, with a little research coupled to gather with some common sense you are able to figure out that all of this so called mass-violence is taking place in areas where cases of swine flu had been confirmed.

Now you begin to get real nervous as you notice that you live a mere 50 miles from the most recent area of activity, and just when you pick up the phone to call your relatives and loved ones you are startled from your daze by an agonized scream very close by.  You look out your window to see your neighbor being attacked by a psycho who repeatedly tries to bite him and apparently has no ability to speak, you run out your door to….”

And that’s it, you guys take it from there, you have two weeks to send in your entries and I encourage you all to enter as many of the categories as you want to.

I will also pass my verdict on how ready gamers are for the zombie apocalypse on the two realistic categories based on your entries.  And yes, I did just refer to zombies as realistic….

-Ichi

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