chapotraphouse

I've loved zombie games my whole life, but when someone suggested this one to me i decided to give it a miss. Partly because I'm absolutely sick of playing games set in LA, but mostly because facial graphics have gotten to the point where the zombies actually look like people and not generic undead enemies. And I know the genre is already reactionary, has mostly always been reactionary, but it seems like lately the creep factor has kicked up a couple notches. Maybe I'm just not the target audience anymore, or maybe I'm still riding the high of Dying Light, but I do not feel drawn to the photorealistic bikini woman dismembering game.

Ah, you know what else? It's the hair. In Dying Light, it's a rabies virus so all the infected lose their hair. So whatever their gender or dress, they all have the same bald snarling face with open sores and bloodshot eyes, which makes them scarier and less empathetic. Seeing a zombie with a hairstyle though, reminds me that this is/was a person who chose to look this way to express something that was going on inside their mind. Yeah, now I've figured it out. Signifiers of interiority squick me out in the context of a game where you're supposed to have a rad, Dew-chuggin time crushing those character's skulls in 4K Liveleak detail. Idk, someone more versed in the language of cultural criticism could probably tie this very easily to the rise of gamer fascism.