There’s been post-apocalyptic MMO games in the past, but the apocalypse in those games has never been of an undead nature. Undead Labs is looking to fix that with the first MMOz, and the Z stands for zombies.

ArenaNet co-founder Jeff Strain, who’s resume includes Blizzard and NCsoft, formed Undead Studios to build a new MMO game from the ground up for consoles. He assembled a crack team of zombie-loving developers in Seattle, Washington, and set about creating a game that quite frankly begs to be created.

“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.”

This is the single best idea for an MMO game that I’ve heard in the history of the genre, and I’ve played a lot of MMO titles. To be able to work together with other players to survive a zombie apocalypse, without having to worry about the government simply nuking everything before the credits roll? That’s love right there.

Undead Labs plans on being pretty transparent throughout the development process of the game, so you might want to keep an eye on the official website for further apocalyptic developments.

Borderlands’ first DLC add-on “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned,” releases Nov. 24, promising to add another six to 10 hours of gameplay. Here are the foes you’ll face, in their natural habitat.

These shambling, staggering, crawling bastards look like outstanding cannon fodder, and I’ve got just the toolset for dealing with them – level 39 incendiary revolver and a level 37 shock SMG with a 10.9 fire rate. Should be like feeding mannequins into a woodchipper. Oh, wait, they’ve got wereskags in this, don’t they …

Borderlands Zombie DLC Video [Hot Blooded Gaming]

Attribute it to rampant zombie madness or just plain love. The second map pack for Call of Duty: World at War saw more than one million players forking over cash or points to download the four new maps to their PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. Of course they are counting the weekend as June 11th through the 14th, and my weekend certainly didn’t start on a Thursday last week, but still, mighty impressive numbers.

So who here picked up the pack, and how many of you only did it for the new zombie map?

The Georgia Tech Augmented Environments Lab has come up with a game that combines the joy of shooting zombies with the deliciousness of Skittles.

The cleverly-titled ARhrrrr is a concept demonstration for an augmented reality mobile phone game that pits players armed with guns and Skittles bombs against an invading army of zombies, all superimposed over a real-world map. Through the magic of the NVIDIA Tegra GPU, the map springs to full 3D life when viewed through the phone’s camera, allowing the player to circle the map in his helicopter, shooting zombies, saving humans, and using different coloured Skittles as explosives.

It’s yet another intriguing example of augmented reality gaming at work, though we must ask… who wants to play a game associated with Skittles?

ARhrrrr! [Georgia Tech's Augmented Reality Lab - Thanks Tiago!]

The second Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack drops tomorrow for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Here’s the trailer for the most interesting bit – the Shi no Numa zombie map.

Shi no Numa is the map that proves that Japanese World War II soldiers can be the living dead, as can dogs. Consider it the great equalizer. Everything dies; and everything can rise from the dead. This, along with three not nearly as interesting normal maps will be available tomorrow for $US9.99 on the PlayStation Network and 800 Microsoft points via Xbox Live Marketplace.

Dead Rising. Left4 Dead. Nazi zombie mode in Call of Duty: World at War.

More Nazi zombies in the first World at War map pack.

And next, in June, Imperial Japanese zombies in a swamp shamble through he second map pack for World at War.

Gamers love their zombies, but maybe they’ve been smothered by one too many? Enough with the zombies?

At 6:56 seconds of the 5/12 Giant Bombcast gaming podcast, Treyarch community lead Joseph Olin, who is hyping the June map pack, says:

“Out of fear of showing my zombie nerd-ism I will contend that zombies aren’t saturated at all. I could play zombies for the rest of time. But people thought that about the World War II genre, right — that that was saturated? And I think that with World at War at least our hope was that we would come out with something that was new and different that people haven’t been used to playing before. Hopefully that’s been proven by the success of these map packs.”

Zombies are forever?

05-12-2009 Giant Bombcast

Says Alex: “I just received the following as a birthday gift from my sister in law. She’s been a mere spectator while my brother and I play through numerous Left 4 Dead campaigns…”

The zombies are, IMHO, the best of the bunch. But no offence to Alex or his sister-in-law, the Louis doll might need a little explaining to someone not hip to games.

Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 2 delivers three new multiplayer maps and one new zombie map to Treyarch’s World War II shooter. Fight for control of a river bridge in Banzai; battle across a run-down Russian train yard in Corrosion; or fight claustrophobia as well as the enemy in the close-quarters map, Sub Pens.

That’s nice, but what about the zombies? Shi No Numa (Zombie Swamp) is a brand-new co-op experience, with fallen Japanese troops rising to attack players in a misty swamp environment. The level features traps, flaming Hell Hounds, perk machines, and the new Wunderwaffe DG-2.

All of this, plus 10 more achievements and trophies for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 respectively.

I’m a little curious as to how the Japanese will take this new development. Previously we were just killing virtual recreations of their ancestors. Now we’re bringing them back to life and killing them again? I suppose I should be thankful we’re not forced to eat them afterwards.

And no, that is not an image from the map pack.

Konami’s dual-stick arcade-style shooter Zombie Apocalypse will be infecting Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network this quarter, the publisher has announced. No, they’re not re-announcing Burn Zombie Burn!, it just sounds like it.

The Konami version of dual-stick, arcade-style undead shooting looks to be taken a bit more seriously—minus the teddy bear packed with C4 explosives used to fend of hordes in Zombie Apocalypse. It also looks to have the raw numbers that few press releases can match: 11 weapons, 55 “days” of plays, 7 environments, 4 players, 7 unlockable game modes.

Just look at all these officially approved bullet points…

• Killer Environments – Use the environmental hazards to crush, burn, slice, or cause many other types of destruction on the zombie masses
• Trigger-mortis – 11 devastating weapons are at your disposal to blow the heads of the living dead or when your trigger finger is tired use the chainsaw to eviscerate them in a more up close and personal manner
• 55 Days Later – Survive 55 days of battles across 7 environments and you will be rewarded with not becoming a brainless zombie
• Slaughter Zombies as a Team – Play with 4 players locally or via the internet and work as a team to rescue survivors and put down as many brain eaters as you can while competing for high scores
• More Zombie Modes – Re-live the apocalypse with 7 challenging unlockable game modest

At first blush, Konami’s Zombie Apocalypse looks like a top down Left 4 Dead, somewhere between the Valve version and the more simplified Left 4K Dead version. I believe AJ played it at Konami’s Gamers Night, so I look forward to her impressions.

There’s just something about Nazi zombies that brings players out in droves, as the first Call of Duty: World at War map pack saw a million downloads during its first weekend of availability.

Call of Duty: World at War players flocked to the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace to download Nightfire, Knee Deep, Station, and Verrückt, the four new maps included in Map Pack 1. Between March 19th and March 22nd, more than a million players purchased the pack, which when converted to actual money equals around $10 million in sales.

“I’m proud that the team at Treyarch delivered an experience that so many people are enjoying,” said Mark Lamia, Studio Head for Treyarch. “We’re excited that the success of Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 1 will continue to drive the popularity of the game’s Nazi Zombie mode, competitive multiplayer and chart-breaking success online.”

In a separate press release, Microsoft revealed that Map Pack 1 had set a new record for first-week downloads via Xbox Live, with more that 150 million multiplayer sessions played since the pack was released.

Just another step closer to having my dream Call of Duty: Just Nazi Zombies game released. Fingers crossed!