They See Dead People

The House of the Dead: Overkill features one of the funniest stories in all of gaming, and the characters are a big part of this. Varla Guns is a cool alternative chick who stands out in a sea of stereotypical cops and federal agents. She has a penchant for tattoos and motorcycles and also happens to be the hottest stripper on the Louisiana club scene. Fueled by revenge, Varla partners up with a pair of special agents in the hopes of tracking down a deranged crime lord who was responsible for crippling her younger brother. Varla soon finds herself in the middle of a love triangle and her brain is removed from her head and replaced with her mother’s somewhere along the way, but that doesn’t make her any less compelling. I guess it just goes to show that when you have a body like Varla’s, nobody cares about your brain.

The Onechanbara games are pretty one-dimensional, and the concept of scantily-clad women taking down hordes of zombies is a fairly transparent attempt to appeal to the sensibilities of teenage boys. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that Aya is a real go-getter. It’s a pretty bold move to take on swarms of zombies while wearing nothing but a bikini and a cowboy hat. As Aya slices through one zombie after another, her weapon becomes progressively covered in blood to the point that her attacks will be slower and inflict less damage. You know a game is violent when one of its primary mechanics involves cleaning blood off your sword between rounds of zombie killing. Whether she’s fighting alone or accompanied by other bikini-wearing zombie slayers, Aya is a fearless chick who is not to be messed with.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors is LucasArts’ homage to classic science-fiction and horror films from the 1950s. During the game, you’ll encounter classic archetypal movie monsters like vampires, zombies, werewolves, aliens, mummies, and mutants as you explore suburban neighborhoods. You’ll also run into characters influenced by more-recent slasher films like Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. No tribute to campy horror films would be complete without a reference to the red and cyan anaglyph 3D glasses that were all the rage in the 1950s. Zeke is apparently a devoted fan of 3D movies, and even opts to wear his 3D glasses when he’s not in the theatre. If I was ever in danger of being eaten by zombies, I probably wouldn’t put much faith in a kid who wears cardboard glasses; but you can’t argue with results.

Zoey is one of the most unassuming individuals on this list. As the daughter of a police officer, Zoey received gun training when she was younger, but she has no combat experiences and lacks any real survival skills. There are other characters in Left 4 Dead that are more capable and athletic, but Zoey has an everyman (everywoman?) vibe that makes her the most relatable character in the series. Besides, the fact that she needs to rely on others taps into the very spirit of Left 4 Dead. The games are built around co-op, so you can’t very well fault a character for needing someone to lean on. In college, Zoey made a habit of blowing off classes in favor of watching horror movies in her dorm. After the planet was overrun with zombies, Zoey was able to take solace in the fact that she had been studying the right subject all along.

Video game zombie hunters have battled the undead in mansions, police stations, shopping malls, and graveyards, but Isaac Clarke is one of the few who has battled zombies in space! Originally a ship systems engineer, his life took an unexpected turn when a routine repair mission was interrupted by a necromorph scourge. He was a man of few words in the first Dead Space, but he evolved into a corpse-slaying badass as the series progressed. His experience in construction has given him a knack for turning everyday tools into weapons, and it’s almost frightening to see a guy taking down alien zombies with a nail gun. If legions of undead extra terrestrials weren’t a big enough problem, Isaac is also hounded by irrational cultists and hallucinations of his dead girlfriend. I’m unsure how Isaac manages to keep his cool through it all.

The Prepper is an unconventional choice for this list. He’s not a playable character, his past is shrouded in mystery, and you never even see his face. He’s arguably the star of the game, however. His role in ZombiU is to safely guide the player through the streets of London in an effort to help them escape a zombie apocalypse. The Prepper is an ex-army, no-nonsense man who saw the apocalypse coming and prepared accordingly. Instead of trying to save his own hide, he selflessly takes in survivors off the streets and provides them with invaluable resources to help them escape. If the survivors are unable to make it to safety, the Prepper carries on with his business and finds another poor soul to help. The Prepper is one of the most thankless characters in video game history and his real name isn’t even revealed.

As a freelancer photographer and photojournalist, Frank West covered wars and other world events. While looking for his next big story, Frank stumbled upon a barricaded shopping mall in a small Colorado town. After learning the mall had been besieged by zombies, Frank took the opportunity to save the human hostages while covering the story at the same time. Frank turns anything that isn’t nailed down into a makeshift weapon. Frying pans, tennis balls, toy swords, park benches, and cash registers are all fair game. There are literally hundreds of items that can be used as weapons, making Frank one of the most resourceful zombie hunters of all time. Conceived as a “rough, tough, gritty character” aimed primarily at Western audiences, Frank West has gone on to appear in several games outside the Dead Rising series.

Joel is a survivor of a mutated fungus outbreak that ravaged the US and transformed its hosts into cannibalistic monsters. After his daughter is killed in an evacuation attempt, Joel becomes a cynical weapons smuggler. Joel is eventually hired to escort a young girl named Ellie who potentially holds a cure. He doesn’t want the responsibility of looking after the girl, but the two grow close and Joel becomes dedicated to her protection. As a hardened survivalist and a seasoned scavenger, Joel is the perfect man for the job. In combat, he favors long-ranged weapons like rifles and bows, but he’s also adept with handguns and melee weapons. Bats, bottles, and bricks are all used as tools of destruction. He can outbrawl his opponents when necessary, but he’s a smart man who prefers to use stealth tactics to pass by his enemies undetected.

When we were first introduced to Leon in Resident Evil 2, he was a rookie police officer on his first day of duty. As luck would have it, Leon’s arrival in Raccoon City coincided with the outbreak of the deadly T-Virus. Leon managed to navigate through a town overrun by zombies, stumbled upon an underground laboratory, encountered a plethora of mutant creatures, developed a relationship with a mysterious femme fatale, and eventually escaped the city alive. Six years passed before Leon re-emerged as the lead protagonist in Resident Evil 4. Evidently, his actions in Raccoon City had impressed the right people. Now working as a secret agent for the US Government, Leon was assigned to rescue the President’s daughter. The fact that he starred in the best Resident Evil game secures his position on this list.

Juliet is the captain of the cheerleading squad and a seasoned zombie hunter. When her school becomes infested with undead douchebags, she immediately pulls out a bedazzled chainsaw and goes to work. If the zombies weren’t bad enough, Juliet is also surrounded by unapologetic perverts. Her Sensai trains her to pole dance and tricks her into doing cartwheels while wearing frilly underwear; her enemies call her a “stupid cooze” and threaten to rip her taint out; and her classmates proudly share their masturbation plans with her after they are rescued. Lollipop Chainsaw is a self-aware parody, but Juliet herself is unfazed by the rampant chauvinism that surrounds her. Despite her absent-minded nature, she’s one of the deadliest ladies in gaming. She killed her first zombie at six months old and once wiped out an entire tribe of Frankenberries!