Video Game / Day of the Zombie

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Day of the Zombie is a zombie-themed First-Person Shooter developed by Digital Extremes and made with the exact same engine as Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green, where it can be considered a loose Spiritual Successor if not outright sequel.

Unlike it's predecessor whose plot focuses on one single character, Day of the Zombie revolves around a trio of protagonists of varying backgrounds, each of them caught in the aftermath of a Zombie Apocalypse where they must fight their way through legions and legions of undead.

The game's story - whatever there is anyways - revolves around a trio of characters (whose stories does not intersect at any point:

• Johnny Anderson, a student of Fencott College studying for his midterms when the apocalypse reaches his campus, with his roommate/girlfriend lost in the chaos;
• Hogarth Morten, the janitor of Fencott who's trapped in the library during the outbreak and must fight to defend the campus; and
• Sergeant Daniel Travis, part of a SpecOps team sent by the US Army to contain the outbreak, only for his entire team to fall to the undead.

It started like any other day...

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: One of Hogarth's stages is set in the city's sewer system, a series of maze-like tunnels that goes on and on. It's also filled with zombie hordes.
• Action Survivor: Johnny and Hogarth aren't combatants, being respectively a college-age student and an elderly janitor. But when cornered by the undead, they still put up one heck of a fight.
• Almighty Janitor: Hogarth Morten, the elderly janitor of Fencott who's often subjected to being ridiculed by students, doesn't hesitate to clean the campus of zombies after realizing everyone in the building (save for Johnny, but their paths don't intersect) has fallen to the virus.
  Hogarth: Fenkott won't burn on my watch!
• Auto-Save: The game allows an auto-saving option that triggers after clearing an area, with the words "Quick-saving" popping onscreen.
• Batter Up!: Before leaving his dorm to search for Erica, Johnny tries looking around his room for a weapon. There's his trusty baseball bat in a nearby cupboard... Daniel and Hogarth can collect bats in their own scenarios as well.
• I Call It "Vera": After Hogarth escapes the campus, his next stage requires him to find his beloved "Bessie", that he claims will "easily take care of everything..." turns out Bessie is a Remington Model 870 that's far more powerful than the rifle Hogarth's currently holding.
• Convenient Escape Boat: Subverted in the final stage - Daniel, against all odds, kills his way to the waterfront where a speedboat is docked, after setting off the charges in the harbor blowing up the entire docks area. But just as he then drives off, two last zombies hiding in the boat catches up...
• Deus Ax Machina: Hogarth can obtain the campus' emergency fire ax as a weapon to bludgeon undead left and right.
• Downer Ending: For all three protagonists, precisely none of them actually escaped the zombie infestation with Johnny, Hogarth and Daniel all (presumably) killed in their final cutscene. Their fates all reaches Shoot the Shaggy Dog territory. Though this varies from character to character; Johnny is a clear case of All for Nothing ("some stories end in failure"), Hogarth's story ends on a Bolivian Army Ending ("some stories end in victory... or so it would seem"), and Daniel's ends on an uncertain note as two zombies catch up with him as he escapes.
• Face-Revealing Turn: Johnny's final stage, in the university auditorium, where after killing his way through a campus overrun by the undead he eventually finds his girlfriend, Erica, in a Troubled Fetal Position. He grabs her back, only for her to turn around and looking like every other zombie out there... then Johnny realized he's cornered on a podium with zombies in every corner.
• Gatling Good: The city stages has locations containing mounted miniguns, usually located near swarms and swarms of undead. Take a wild guess how you clear the subsequent areas. There's even a stage requiring you to maneuver a minigun and blow up a car in order to clear a route.
• Hedge Maze: Daniel's first area, after his attempts at sniping incoming zombies prove fruitless and they broke through his cabin hideout. There's a hedge maze (recycled from Fiddlers' cornfield stage) nearby that he must navigate through, and of course it's filled with zombies as well.
• Hit Flash: For all three player protagonists, the screen blinks red everytime they're clawed or chewed upon by zombies.
• Molotov Cocktail: Petrol bombs can be collected by all three playable protagonists, lit up and flung at groups of zombies with explosive results.
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: Taken to the extreme that every onscreen zombie design, environmental layout and weapons are lifted from Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green. The only thing new is that the cutscenes between stages are depicted as comic book panels, establishing that the characters you control isn't the farmer from Fiddlers.
• No Zombie Cannibals: Despite the hordes and hordes of zombies shambling around everywhere, they will not chew on each other. Nor would they pause to feast on another fallen zombie. One of the pre-level hints even lampshades it:
  Flesh eaters will, for the most part, ignore other flesh eaters.
• Pipe Pain: All three characters can collect iron pipes in their respective scenarios, useful for bashing zombie skulls and killing most undead in one blow if hit at point-blank, though lacking in range compared to using fire axes or shovels.
• Shared Universe: The game appears to be set in the same verse as Land of the Dead (both the movie and tie-in FPS game), using the same assets and setting, though you can't really tell since it's just another "zombie-killing game #345".
• Shovel Strike: Daniel's first melee weapon after the zombies broke through his cabin defense point. Reloading his sniper rifle takes time, but a shovel leaning against a nearby wall catches his eye.
• Skewed Priorities: Hogarth must be one of the most dedicated janitors out there; his objectives besides escaping also constantly requires him to save Fenkott's valuable "artifacts and treasures", like archives from the college library and both of the college's Opening Ceremony Photos. Nevermind how campus property is as good as useless now that everyone in it is a zombie...
• Sniping Mission:
  • Daniel's first stage involves him holding out in a cabin with his trusty Sniper Rifle, his subsequent mission requiring him to snipe every incoming zombie within a given time limit before he can be spotted.
  • There's another stage featuring Daniel, on some docks infested with undead. To clear an empty path, Daniel then sets up his sniper on a third-floor window.
• Sole Survivor: All three playable protagonists - Johnny, Hogarth and Daniel - are respectively the only survivors of Fencott's students, college staff, and military unit. And are alone in fighting their way through the undead. None of them made it out alive.
• Switching P.O.V.: While the entire game is a FPS, the levels randomly skips around between Johnny, Hogarth and Daniel, with no warning or indication and the player isn't allowed to pick which character to proceed next stage either.

Victories are fleeting however, for no one shall escape the Day of the Zombie...