The Dark

"The final battle to determine who controls the Zombies begins tonight. The Illuminati and their Allseeing Eye Forces have heavily fortified to combat the Inner Circle and the group. Not everyone will survive this battle... in The Dark."

- Level description

The Dark is the seventeenth map in the Zombies series, and finale to the Dark Tears storyline. It is set in Paris, France, immediately after the events of Recuperation. It features a new mode of fighting, round progression and advanced AI feature on Zombies to increase the difficulty.

Story
The Dark is set on the night of 23rd December 2013, the day after the Earth was struck with missiles and Richtofen took control of the Zombies. After battling their way through the world, the Original Group (Tank Dempsey, Nikolai Belinski, Takeo Masaki and Samantha Maxis in Richtofen's body) and the Celebrity Group (Sarah Michelle Gellar, Robert Englund, Danny Trejo, Michael Rooker) eventually met up with members of Group 935, and eachover.

The War between Group 935 and the Illuminati has escalated to full-scale on this day, and the Illuminati have learnt that something Group 935 built in Paris could strip Richtofen from his seat of power remotely. Under the command of a mysterious Illuminati Commander, the Illuminati members and their insidious Allseeing Eye forces have fortified Paris to prevent Group 935 and the Inner Circle from reaching this object to stop Richtofen. They aren't going to back down without a fight, and with a horde of Zombies between all of this, the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

Overview
The Dark is an incredibly large map, however it is cut into sections which the players can enter. It is mostly streets, but some buildings can be entered for camping or sniping, and some buildings can be entered which spawn Allseeing Eye forces.

The most notable feature in the map is the introduction of a new round feature. Due to the large amount of ranged enemies in the map, a round is completed by both killing all of the Zombies in the street, and killing any ranged enemies shooting down at the group. Besides the number of Zombies, difficulty is increased as rounds progress. Range enemies get more health, accuracy and damage. They do not, however, get an increase in any of these attributes after Round 20, unless the map would become too difficult. Each round, ten Inner Circle members will accompany the player. 5 will be standard soldiers, 1 will be a sniper, and the other three will be explosives experts. They target Allseeing Eye Forces before Zombies, which means unless protected, they most often get swarmed and die. Whilst there are no special rounds, Max Ammo can be obtained by killing The Thief or a swarm of Hellhounds which appear randomly at any Round after 4.

The Zombies AI has been improved slightly. They now often try to target AIs as opposed to players, to give them breathing space to kill ranged enemies. Zombies also no longer "train", and can't be funnelled into a line anymore, as they tend to run in a large group (akin to most Zombies series). They also double hit much less often, and they take much more damage from knife attacks to the head, and will pause for a moment when stabbed.

Musical Easter Eggs still follow the old system of being in groups. However, some songs (such as Monster, So Happy I Could Die, Speechless, Run to the Hills, Back in the U.S.S.R and Let It Be) are activated individually. All musical easter eggs also reward the player for activating them (for example activating Alejandro grants the player a random revolver, and activating Dark Side gives the player a Quantum Entanglement Device).

Mystery Boxes now spawn in couples, so two may be on the map at any given time due to it's size. Perk-A-Colas can be found in places which serve drinks (for example, Deadshot Daiquiri is found in a bar, and Speed Cola is found in a Supermarket).

The major easter egg of the map is Tears of the Dark, which focuses on the main battle at hand, and takes the player through parts of the map unavailable in normal play, and concludes the Dark Tears storyline.

Features

 * Upgraded Zombie AI
 * New round progression feature
 * Musical Easter Eggs give rewards
 * The Tears of the Dark major easter egg

Trivia

 * The Dark is the only map not named after some sort of sadness or act brought on by sadness.
 * The Dark's name comes from the musical easter egg Dance In The Dark, it was done because Dance In The Dark is the inspiration song for the storyline.
 * The body of Jeferson can be seen in the starting room, this was done to link the events of Vengeance to The Dark further.