How will you survive the inevitable zombie apocalypse? After 40 years of zombie movies, from Night of the Living Dead to 28 Days Later, your first line of defense should be clear: Don't get infected. Then run.
In movies like George Romero's Dead series, zombies often serve as a metaphor -- for conformity, consumerism, government paranoia or other social ills. Horror games rarely betray such ambitions, usually aiming just to scare you out of your wits. But when a game can make you feel like you're the one who's under attack, it can be more effective than any other kind of terror.
Ratings are based on a four-star system.
• Condemned 2: Bloodshot (***; Sega; Xbox 360, PlayStation 3; $59.99; M for Mature; www.condemnedgame.com/): Poor Ethan Thomas. His investigation of a serial killer in the original Condemned really messed with his head, and he's sought refuge in the bottom of a liquor bottle. But his old colleagues need his help with another case, so they prop him up and send him back out into a city where half the population has gone homicidally insane.
Ethan is still so woozy that he needs a shot of booze before he can fire a gun. Fortunately, he's got plenty of other choices for weapons, from his bare fists to your basic nail-encrusted two-by-four to a toilet seat. The hand-to-hand combat is some of the best ever seen in a first-person adventure, and it's grisly.
Some cleverly executed crime-scene investigating sequences break up the mayhem, and the story offers plenty of jolts. Not only does Ethan have to deal with hordes of murderous homeless people and track down a new serial killer, he also has to confront his own alcoholism and discover his role in a supernatural conspiracy.
• Dark Sector (**; D3; Xbox 360, PlayStation 3; $59.99; M for Mature; www.darksector.com): Early on in Dark Sector, black-ops agent Hayden Tenno is infected with a toxin that turns other men into vicious, crazed killers. Fortunately for Hayden, he's affected differently: The substance gives him superpowers, chiefly a three-bladed ''glaive'' that he can sling from his right arm.
The glaive may be the coolest new video-game weapon in years. It works like a boomerang, so it zips right back after you've used it to slice off some monster's head.
The downside is that the rest of Dark Sector doesn't live up to the groovy weapon. The environments are boring, the enemies are repetitious and the plot is nonsensical.
• Obscure: The Aftermath (*; Ignition; Nintendo Wii, $29.99; PlayStation 2, $19.99; M for Mature; www.obscureaftermath.com): In the original Obscure, from 2005, a group of teens discovered their classmates at Leafmore High had been turned into mutants.
In The Aftermath, the Leafmore survivors are now enrolled at Fallcreek University, where more strange things are happening thanks to a trendy drug that all the cool kids are using.
The Aftermath nails one aspect of the teen horror movie, in that the characters are every bit as grating as the dimwits in a Friday the 13th sequel. And the vision of a frat party being overrun by drooling, brain-dead brutes comes pretty close to my own college experience.
But the graphics are about 10 years out of date, diminishing the effectiveness of some of the game's gorier moments. Obscure: The Aftermath is good for a few cheesy laughs, but feels too amateurish to be scary.
