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Ever since film director George A. Romero showed the world that mindless, stumbling, decaying, undead corpses wanted nothing more than to eat our brains, zombies have been source material for just about every industry in entertainment. Video games included. A black and white film, The Night of the Living Dead reached out to audiences in 1968 -- sixteen years later, a few of us were alive to play as Ash on our Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, defending a log cabin from zombies and limbs in Palace Software's The Evil Dead. Nearly thirty years later, our obsession has reached epic proportions.
This generation of consoles has brought zombies to Spain, the old West, a posh tropical island, and the endless streets of nameless cities. They've been as close as your own back yard and as far away as the moon, and beyond. With the zombie renaissance upon us, and Halloween fast approaching, we've put our brains together to pick out and rank the best zombie games available right now.

• 10: the house of the dead(PS3, Wii)
• We'll get this out of the way first: House of the Dead: Overkill is in not for children. It's rated mature for a reason -- in addition to the buckets of blood and unending streams of f-bombs, you'll also come across pretty strong sexual content. But for adults, this is some great on-rails shooting fun. It's a grindhouse movie come to life as you delve into the origin of the House of the Dead's zombie threat.

On PS3 and Wii, you're obviously not going to get the same level of precision you get at the arcade, but it's easy to forgive frame hiccups and cluttered screens when you're playing through with a friend. Overkill earned accolades as one of the most profane games ever, but in this zombie slaying world of unlimited ammo, it feels less like a gimmick and more like a guilty pleasure.

• 9
• Dead Rising 2 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

Up to 7,000 zombies can be seen on screen at one time. You can combine just about anything to make a bizarre weapon -- the "Hail Mary" is a hand grenade duct taped to a football, the "Dynameat" is a stick of dynamite duct taped to a piece of meat, the "Paddlesaw" is two chainsaws duct taped to a kayak paddle, and the "Spiked Bat" is a baseball bat with nails hammered though it -- plus the plot is camp gold. Dead Rising 2 is a classic in the zombie genre.
You play as a former motocross champion who's looking to help his daughter out after her zombified mom bit her. The only way to help her is to get your hands on the band-aid-on-a-bullet-wound medication Zombex -- which, if taken daily, prevents full zombification. But Zombex costs money, so you have to travel to a fictional casino town where you have an opportunity to make mad money on a reality show where people kill zombies. Nothing goes as planned, making Dead Rising 2 an amazingly enjoyable zombie-cluster-f*ck. It's as ludicrous as it is saturated with gore, always a perfect match for a zombie game.

• 8
• Call of Duty Zombies Saga (PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

In the world of first-person shooters, that are two kinds of enemies that never cease to work as excellent supply for slaughter: zombies and Nazis. We've killed plenty of Nazis in previous Call of Duty titles, so it's only fair that zombies are given a turn in the spotlight.
While Call of Duty features plenty of great zombie maps, Call of the Dead is one of the very best. You fight against a zombified George Romero and cameos from Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Nightmare On Elm Street’s Robert Englund, The Walking Dead’s Michael Rooker, and Machete’s Danny Trejo. It's a great way to fend off zombie hordes with your friends, but also functions as a brilliant excuse to make the grindhouse-style trailer (which you can watch below) with all of these characters. The trailer alone makes this a great zombie-slaying addition to your game library.

• 7
• Dead Space 2 (PC)

While you can argue that Dead Space's Necromorphs aren't real zombies, they're still resurrected undead who will come at you relentlessly until they've spilled your blood all over the space station. Unlike the traditional undead though, these guys don't go down from a simple headshot: Dead Space 2's creatures need to be completely decapitated and dismembered before they're good and dead. And even once they're down, you might want to give them a kick or two for good measure.
Dead Space 2 introduces freakish zombie children in addition to the first game' multi-tentacled fetuses. There are few things more disturbing than being overpowered by an army of screaming children out for your blood, and you're going to have to kill a lot of them in Dead Space 2 to make it out alive.

• 6
• Dead Nation (PS3)

Zombies are the perfect antagonists. Drop them into any game, and they'll fit right in. Take Dead Nation, where they prove to be excellent twin stick shooter fodder. As in Geometry Wars and Super Stardust HD, you can mow 'em down at a frightening rate, but they'll just keep right on coming.
But the main threat in Dead Nation isn't the zombies themselves, but the danger of running out of ammo. Flamethrowers and lightning guns will take out huge swaths of the risen dead, but they run out of gas alarmingly quickly. And the zombies have a few of their own, like the ability to explode. This is a taut action game that really takes the twin stick shooter in a new direction.

• 5
• Dead Island (PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

Dead Island places you in the role of one of four survivors on an island paradise overrun by the undead. You must band together with your fellow survivors to keep alive and find a way off the island, employing a variety of improvised weapons on the way.
Dead Island is noteworthy for not just its survival horror elements, but its RPG and FPS elements as well. As your character progresses throughout the story, certain skills will level up and become stronger, turning them from a frightened survivor into an unstoppable zombie slayer.

• 4
• Resident Evil 4 (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii)

There's a classic scene in Resident Evil 4, one that everyone who's played the game remembers. Why? Because it's terrifying.
Which is exactly what it would be like to run, lost, through the Spanish countryside with nothing but a pistol. Along the way you pick up better weapons, even meeting a mysterious merchant at certain calm areas that will sell you upgrades. But until you beat the game once and use your New Game+ data to start with ample weaponry, it always feels like you're one bullet shy of killing the next parasite-ridden monster in the next area. Which is exactly what makes Resident Evil 4 so exciting.
The Resident Evil series is a seminal beacon in the zombie-horror genre of video games, but it's with Resident Evil 4 that the series hits its peak. Although the usual streets of Raccoon City are replaced with woods and castles in Spain, the creepy-stressful-"where the hell are more bullets because I know there's more than five zombies on the other side of that door" vibe come at you like a bat out of hell.
An HD version of the game was released on PSN and XBLA in September, just in time for Halloween

• 3
• Plants vs. Zombies (PC, PS3, Xbox 360, iOS, Android)

Plants vs. Zombies reveals that the local vegetation can be the perfect body guards against the risen dead, and they'll do anything in their power to stop zombies from entering your house.
The zombies, for their part, come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Unlike other zombies, they will use actual tools to defense themselves, including buckets, screen doors, and newspapers. Your biggest threat though is the dreaded Zamboni; which is, you guessed it, a zombie that uses a zamboni to crush your precious plants.
It's a strange but fun concept for a tower defense game, and exceptionally challenging to boot. But what else would you expect from PopCap?

• 2
• Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare (PS3, Xbox 360)

Coming right on the heels of zombie oversaturation, no one expected Red Dead Redemption's Zombie pack to be any good. But Rockstar surprised us all by not only providing a fun extension of their Western world, but by adding a story that compelled us to see it through to the end.
New weapons, ammo that you cull from the bones of your undead foes, and a skewed world make this a zombie title that almost stands up as its own game. Add in hard-to-find legendary monsters and the rare "horses of the Apocalypse" and you have a title that ate up way too much of our precious free time.

• 1
• Left 4 Dead 2 (PC, Xbox 360, Mac)

The team-based survival horror multiplayer game was pretty much invented by Valve when they released Left 4 Dead. The premise of both games is simple: You and three of your friends must fight your way through hordes of zombies towards a safehouse or extraction point. But if you stray too far from your friends, you might be picked off by a “hunter” zombie or strangled by a “smoker” zombie. There are few games out there that make you rely upon your friends as much, or are as genuinely frightening.
With the sequel, you get a new set of locations in the Deep South, a new cast of characters, and the addition of melee weapons. Like all of Valve’s games, Left 4 Dead 2 is best played on the PC. The DLC packs are all free for PC users and help flush out more of the story and the overlap between the events of Left 4 Dead 1 and 2.

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