The Second Wave

CoD Zombies trudged back onto the scene in Call of Duty: Black Ops in 2010, one of the best selling games of the series so far. These maps seriously upped the ante. No longer were you defending a ramshackle house in no man's land, Treyarch's best creative minds had been put to work to ensure that the return of zombies was a major part of the game, and it paid off. To date, Black Ops has sold over 30 million copies. George A. Romero himself even made an appearance as an invincible villain, and let us not forget the small matter that you could tear apart zombies as JFK and Richard Nixon.

This series has spawned an obscene amount of lore about the zombies-related history of this universe (I guarantee you will not read beyond page 10 of that). However this hasn't helped sales that have been slowly declining since Black Ops in 2010.

Of course, we can't blame zombies alone for the declining sales of the CoD series, however it can't be argued that as an attempt to reinvigorate a series, it ironically doesn't have the ability to resurrect a title that many developers seem to believe it has. This is why, seeing the addition of a zombie mode can often be seen as akin to a death knell for a series. If you add it, it shows that you think you need it, and it won't work like you need it to - which won't leave you in a good place.

Still They Rise

The fad of course isn't over, and some of the most popular games in the world are introducing zombie modes. The zombies in Fortnite have been lukewarmly received, as it's been seen by many as unnecessarily adding a gimmick into a formula that works well enough already. Plus battling a parade of cartoon corpses whilst staying within the limits of a shrinking Battle Royale zone seems to be quite an ask for even big fans of the series.