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why do so many insist on calling any savage monsters in games as zombies.
every 28days/week there infected humans not the undead
same for left 4 dead and prototype
there not zombies
same with the last 2 resident evil games
please explain
is this some sort of dump attemt to revive a dying genre?

Well, you can hardly expect zombie to only be used to describe the servants of voodoo priests.

"Zombie" generally refers to the fact that the people are mindless and don't feel pain, not the fact that they've been raised from the dead. Since both having been raised from the dead and being mindless slaves are part of the whole zombie thing, I don't know that it's unreasonable.

Especially since there's not very many other words that conjure the same image. A person with the flu is "infected", that doesn't mean much.

It's a mistake to look at straight definitions and ignore historical context. 28 Days Later was a deliberate effort to make a zombie plague a plausible, terrifying scenario. The isolation, the need to survive in a collapsing society, the horror of seeing people turned into monsters, it was all there, just explained away with a virus, and made more terrifying by making the zombies fast. Given the film was very successful, others have followed the model and so 'zombie' has expanded its meaning.

What he said

I can live with fast 28days-like Zombies. I wouldn't call the guys in RE4 or 5 zombies though.

@Orkeosaurus, I liked your old Avatar better.

I thought in the 28 days franchise they were "infected" not zombies. And in L4D they were infected, and in RE4 and 5 they were Las Plagas not zombies.

28 and L4D as Sebster has said are trying to make things seem more scientific and make it bother people that with, with horror that seems logical due to what we have as far a chemical weapons go. I believe that in 28days/weeks the infected were turned by exposure to an altered strain of rabies, thus causing the Rage, that give the virus its name.

In RE they had the viruses which were man made, the T, T-V and G viruses. All of these Viruses were created for the purpose of creating Bio Organic Weapons, or B.O.W.s a side effect of a human receiving a non-direct injection or not having the required genes was a death like state in which the body was rendered lifeless before re-animating. Even this kind of exposure lead to further mutations in which a Human Zombie would "evolve" into a Crimson Head, and then further "evolve" into the Lickers.


EDIT: Forgot to touch on Las Plagas and Uroburos.

Las Plagas is a parasite which takes control of its host and follows the instructions of a Queen which Osmund Saddler possessed and used to control the infected in Spain and I would assume the Wesker used a similar method though his Plagas was slightly altered.

Uroburos was created from the T, T-V, G and Las Plagas and was to be used as a Bio-weapon to cleanse the Earth leaving on people of a specific gene type alive. When it affected someone not of the gene type it took control of them and would try to absorb any biomass.


EDIT2: Oh and garret, I do think you mean; "Zombies? No they're not." for the thread's title.