As part of an ongoing set of articles about Irrational Games, Game Informer has posted information and a video about a zombie game Irrational pitched back in 2005. But before production got underway, the studio was acquired by Take-Two Interactive. The zombie game was a casualty of that acquisition, but you can see here a video of a demo put together using Irrational's SWAT 4 engine.
A couple of things stand out in that video. First is the pace. You move slowly and the zombies move slowly. It adds a whole different kind of tension that's lost in a lot of modern zombie mythology. Left 4 Dead, for instance, is so fast. You're fast, the zombies are fast, the guns are fast. It's one part horror, three parts action.
The second thing is watching the SWAT 4 interface in action. In that game, you had a smart AI team tagging along with you, and you had meticulous control over what they did and where they did it. Imagine the tactical finesse this would give a standoff against zombies that moved slowly enough to give you time to think. Imagine what a great single player game it would be. Right now, in the slower zombie games like Killing Floor and Call of Duty's Nazi zombie mode, there is no friendly AI. Instead, you need other players to fill in for the AI. And in a game like Left 4 Dead where you do have a friendly AI, it's entirely out of your control.
It's worth pointing out the two main characters in George Romero's 1978 Dawn of the Dead, arguably the single most important zombie movie, the two lead characters (pictured above is Ken Foree at Peter) are members of a SWAT team. It's a shame that Irrational didn't get to take what they accomplished in their SWAT game and apply it to the American pastime of zombie killing.
Tags: video