How Many Zombies Does It Take to Ruin Your Fun?

More zombies aren’t always better, according to Dead Rising 2‘s co-producer – and he knows just how many zombies it takes to spoil the broth.

Between you and me, gamers love to kill themselves some zombies. With some gamers, there’s nothing like they like more than a carnage-filled orgy of zombie mayhem – and the more zombies the better, right?

Not necessarily. Speaking with Gamasutra, the co-producer of Dead Rising 2 – the sequel to a game that was all about throwing thousands of zombies at you – said that sometimes, you just had too many zombies.

“Last year at Captivate we did a demo,” said Capcom’s Shin Ohara. “We had a strip – It was probably like 10 meters wide and 200 meters long. We filled it with about 7,000 zombies. After about 3,000, you can’t really tell the difference because it fills up the screen anyway. Over 3,000, it ruins the experience. It’s not a game anymore.”

Ohara said that their technology certainly was capable of displaying 7,000 zombies all at once, but that it always ended up being too much for the player to enjoy.

“We didn’t want to fill a room out of zombies where you had to wiggle your way out.”

I don’t know, Mr. Ohara. Think about how many kills we’d get with 7,000 zombies and the bike-mounted double-chainsaw-on-a-stick! Can’t you let us turn it on in the options?

(Gamasutra)