The Sims 2 Zombies

[Juan Navarro]

InThe Sims: Livin' Large, if a Sim or pet dies a loved one can plead to the Grim Reaper and engage in a rock-paper-scissors game for their life. If the Sim loses, but the Grim Reaper is in a good mood, he'll bring back the dead Sim or pet as a zombie. Zombies retain all of their skill points, but lose all their personality points and gain a green tint to their skin. Other than that, zombies function like normal Sims or pets in every way. Children can also become zombies.

As zombies lack any personality points, drinking a yellow potion from the chemistry set will give them 10 points in each trait. With Unleashed, Miss Lucille can restore a zombie back to their normal state for 200, but this process will not restore the Sim or Pet's personality.

Zombiism is a life state introduced with The Sims 2: University, and also included with The Sims 2: FreeTime and The Sims 2: Apartment Life. In University, deceased Sims can be resurrected with the Paranormal career reward, the Resurrect-O-Nomitron. If a Sim bids between 998 and 4127 when using the Resurrect-O-Nomitron, the resurrection will fail and the Sim will be revived as a zombie. In FreeTime, a deceased Sim can become a zombie if another Sim makes a genie wish to resurrect them and the wish fails. In Apartment Life, the evil witch spell Vivificus Zombiae will resurrect a dead Sim as a zombie. Babies, toddlers, and children cannot become zombies under any circumstances. Pets can become zombies, but their appearance and walk style does not change so this state is not readily apparent with them. Sims who died pregnant will eventually give birth to their baby, though it will always be normal.

Zombies are immortal and will never age, except for one specific situation: Teenage zombies are eligible for the Undead Educational Scholarship (worth 1500) and are able to go to college, at which point they will become young adults, and will become adults when returning home.

There is no in-game cure for zombiism; the changes are permanent. Third-party mods and tools such as InSimenator or SimPE can be used to reverse the life state.[1] A zombie's personality can be altered with the Sim Modder debug object, and zombies can become pregnant through testing cheats, though any children they give birth will be normal Sims and not possess any zombie attributes.

The PSP port of TS2 includes a mini-game in which the player can whack zombies in a whack-a-mole style in Paradise Place called Smack-a-Ghoul which can make the player nauseous. Additionally there are zombies in the graveyard behind the Meetinghouse in Deadtree which will lower the player's sanity if the player gets too close. The player character cannot become a zombie in this game.

Babies, toddlers, children, and pets cannot become zombies under any circumstances. Most occults cannot become zombies either, but a select few occult species can become zombies through smaller sets of options. For instance, fairies can become zombies through elixirs, the Dream Pod, and the Peashooter, but not from bites.

Zombies have green-grey skin, distorted facial features, and black eyes. They move with a slow shamble and will attempt to attack and bite other adult and elder Sims. Zombies will also attempt to consume any plants on the lot. Zombies are unable to WooHoo, and will dance to any active stereos on the lot. Pets dislike zombies and will often exhibit negative behavior towards them.

Disabling the lunar cycle will prevent zombies from being randomly generated in the game. Zombies will also virtually never spawn inside fenced gardens, providing relatively wealthy households (i.e. who can afford fencing in almost an entire lot) with a way to control and limit the spawn points substantially.

The Peashooter is only available as exclusive content with The Sims 3: Supernatural Limited Edition, and is a reference to the PopCap game, Plants vs. Zombies.[2] They can be used to defend a lot, as all zombies will try to attack them first before destroying any garden plants. Peashooters can fail, resulting in the zombie destroying it and proceeding to attack garden plants and other Sims unimpeded.

Zombies are all at once an innocuous and highly annoying new race for The Sims 3 Supernatural. One of the only races unable to be created outright in Create A Sim (the other being Mummies), Zombies are a pain in the neck, but not nearly as bad as they could be. There is a game-breaking bug related to Zombies in unpatched versions of the game, so be sure to check out the end of this section for details.

Zombies typically make their appearance only during full moons. When that happens, up to four Zombies will pop out of the ground on any lot of the currently controlled Sim. This likely will happen at your home lot, unless your controlled Sim is in the criminal career track. However, if you're having a late-night party, be warned: they can pop up on any community lot, which will cause you some headaches outdoors. Zombies will spawn on any terrain tile randomly, so fencing off an area won't stop them (but it will trap them for the night because they can't operate gates or doors).

Zombies have few of the powers they have in conventional fiction. They can't run, they can't enter houses (unless it's a controllable zombie), they can't spread the Zombie curse, and they can't do any real damage to Sims. They can and will destroy crops, however, thus showing their real threat in The Sims 3 universe.

Assuming normal circumstances, when Zombies appear, they will immediately seek out nearby Sims to attack. Such attacks can be interrupted merely by canceling the action in the action queue if it's happening to your controlled Sim. If a zombie targets a townie, you can still interrupt the attack before it starts by performing literally any social interaction you wish against the zombie.

If all the Sims on the lot are engaged, or all the Sims are indoors, the Zombies will then target any crops that happen to be outside. All growable things can be targets, from simple tomato plants to money trees. If the zombie starts to attack it, you'll have about 30 seconds (30 in-game minutes) to interact with the zombie in any way. Any command will force the zombie to stop, even if you immediately then cancel whatever you wanted to do.

That said, it's pretty tough to play defense if you're attacked by the full horde of four. Unless you have as many controllable Sims in your home as you have zombies, it's tough to try to interrupt them all. If the zombies are allowed to fully consume a crop, the crop will die and cannot be restored; it will need to be replanted.

The Zombies' obsession with crops can put a serious strain on several different careers. It can completely shuts down a self-employed gardener, and it can make it tougher for Alchemists to gather their ingredients. However, you can purchase the new plant pots in Buy Mode to allow you to grow crops indoors. They cost at minimum $200 apiece though, so you probably can't afford too many of them with a Generation-1 family.

As a less expensive alternative. You can surround your garden with the Graveyard Fence and the Graveyard Gate, lock the gates to everyone but those in your household. This will prevent them from getting to your crops. The other fences I've tried didn't work.

Unfortunately, there is no other way to stop the Zombies. Magical spells have normal effects but nothing special or different. For example, if you have a Witch cast Fire Blast on a zombie, its skin will change to the "Signed" skin, but it doesn't actually hurt the zombie. Zombies, strangely enough, can die from old age, and you'll see on occasion a zombie pop up during a full moon just to immediately die.

Your one saving grace can come in the form of Alchemy or high-level Spells. Using a Potent Cure Elixir or Sunshine Charm on a zombie will convert it back to a normal human Sim. However, the game will continue to spawn new Zombies during full moons if there aren't enough.

Zombies can be controlled through a couple different means. If you have a Genie in the family, you can order the "Ensorcel Sim" command to add the zombie to your family for a few Sim hours. If you have Free Will off, you can at least keep the zombie from causing too much damage.

If you want to intentionally control a zombie, you can convert a Sim (i.e., a family member) by throwing a Zombification potion at them. The change is immediate, and they'll take on a different physical appearance.

Unlike all the other Supernatural races, Zombies have no benefits. Though they can operate any object, they're slow, and all social interactions are replaced by zombie attacks or scares, thus shutting them down for any social activities.

If you save your game at night during a full moon phase, zombies can permanently over-spawn and appear every night, completely shutting down not just farming and gardening, but your ability to have any healthy plants at all. Worse still, this bug is permanent to a corrupted save file.

HECKMAN: To get all the uninspired preliminary questions out of the way, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about yourself as a writer, your history with writing, influences, etc.

I went to college out west at Pomona College, where I studied with David Foster Wallace and this poet and novelist named Aaron Kunin. I spent a couple years out of college writing on my own, then came to Iowa for grad school.

Researching undeath in this way confirmed my suspicion that zombies had an interesting relationship to consciousness: that they occupied this interstitial position between what we think of as human consciousness and what we think of as post-human or non-human unconsciousness. I wanted to write a novel where characters could be as interested in these ideas as I was, so I put them in a world where zombies actually exist.

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