Zombie games.. why do I love them?

Yeah, I've been playing a lot of zombie games lately. Played through the Walking Dead series, then started up State of Decay, and of course now The Last of Us is out and I've been playing that too. What is it about killing mindless dead people that is so enjoyable? Maybe I've been doing too much commuting lately...
So, in all seriousness, let's talk about these games a bit. I'll warn you though, I'm a connoisseur of video games; which is just a fancy way of saying that I'm extremely critical and picky when it comes to what I don't like about them.

The Walking Dead was a fantastic episodic game that featured characters and story over gameplay or graphics (although both of the latter were not lacking). It details the struggles of ordinary people as they fight to survive not just physically, but mentally and emotionally during a zombie apocalypse. It was a brilliant game that put players in charge of making some very difficult and meaningful decisions, full of memorable moments that will stand out to me among other game experiences for a long time to come, I'm sure. The fact that I can't find anything to complain about with this game is a testament to its brilliance.

State of Decay is not the same type of game. Although it does include some very small amount of character exploration and a very basic story element, neither of these are its purpose or primary feature. Instead, State of Decay focuses on the mechanics of surviving during a zombie apocalypse. Scavenging food, ammo, and other supplies, building a home base, and relocating when things get too scary, or when your base just isn't big enough for your growing society of survivors. It does these things fairly well, but there are some oddly broken or plainly missing mechanics. For instance, your society will consume an amount of each type of resource each day, supposedly dependent on its needs and your availability to extra resources through outposts, but these amounts seem to be arbitrary. I was consuming 6 ammo a day, and so I built 8 ammo outposts, each of which is supposed to provide an extra 2 per day. However, instead of going into the positive, after reaching 0 consumption per day, it started going negative again. Also, instead of this consumption rate being based on some type of in-game day cycle, it is based on the real world day cycle. Which means if you don't play your game for a week, when you finally return you will find your resources depleted accordingly. It's infuriating nonsense. The game features a day night cycle, why not base it around that instead? Finally, as for a missing mechanic, the game is constantly reminding you of the importance of relying on each other for survival, but completely lacks any mechanic to take a buddy with you when you go out scavenging. No buddy system? It's a wonder anyone in your society survives at all. Despite these problems, I have still found myself utter obsessed with the game, and can't wait for them to add a co-op mode. I will play that till my thumbs fall off.

Now on to The Last of Us. For the most part Naughty Dog has focused on characters and story over gameplay, but considering its pedigree (pun definitely intended!), it certainly shouldn't be lacking in gameplay muscles. Unfortunately, I find it lacking in all three areas. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I will not go into my complaints on characters or story, but as far as mechanics go, the aiming mechanic is, simply put, broken. I find it nearly impossible to hit anything, even at point-blank range. Given that there are some specific zombie types that don't seem to care when you shoot them in the head (even emptying an entire clip into one of these didn't seem to bother it), I guess giving you the ability to aim your gun wasn't high on their priority list. However, even when engaging other gun-wielding humans, I find myself resorting to beating people with bricks and 2 x 4's rather than bothering to try and actually hit them with a firearm. There are other ridiculous mechanics, such as the inability to carry more than three shivs, even when I can carry the resources to create far more than three even while carrying three. Add to that the fact that they can't be retrieved from downed enemies, that the resources for creating them are difficult to come by, and that there are a large amount of enemies which can only be killed by shivs, and there are doors that can only be opened with a shiv, and you start to see why I'm screaming at my PlayStation anytime I try and play The Last of Us. Who would have thought that the single most handy item in the zombie apocalypse would be a shiv? Apparently Naughty Dog thought so. And apparently knives have just disappeared from existence. Finally, the companion AI is awful. Often while sneaking around the aforementioned invincible zombies, companion characters will bump right into them, run around making lots of noise, talking loud, and generally breaking through the fourth wall every few seconds. The only thing that makes this "OK" is the fact that apparently Naughty Dog knew the AI was awful so they simply made the zombies not care about your companions until you got into trouble first. Well that's a relief, I guess. Despite its problems, I'm still mostly enjoying it, and I have hopes that it will get better now that I'm past the tutorial areas.

All in all, I have enjoyed playing all three of these games, and considering the new content coming for The Walking Dead, the fact that State of Decay is doing well enough to warrant some DLC, and the fact that I am still just getting into The Last of Us, I'll likely be enjoying them for a while to come. And I still haven't even started Resident Evil 6 yet. Oy... so many zombie games, so little time...