Zombie Army Trilogy

 After beating the entire Sniper Elite series we moved onto the Zombie Army spin off.

The first zombie army game starts right into the action, no nonsense or cutscenes, however I noticed if you play on Co-Op you actually miss all the cutscenes, which is really strange and not good.  Every mission you pick your loadout on the loading screen, all the guns are unlocked from the get go, and then youre just thrown into the action. It has the same mechanics as the Sniper Elite series with the gunplay so everything is familliar there, the difference is that for the most part you are just fighting waves and waves of zombies. It is usually 'Go here, Survive wave, Go to safe house, Restock on ammo, Go here, Survive wave'  
 Thats most of the gameplay loop.

 Every kill you get scores you, and theres a fun competitive co op score on the top right, where all of your actions are scored differently and you can compete against your co op partner for getting more kills / combos. So shooting zombies with the sniper and getting headshots and not missing can chain a combo, and rack your score up. which is pretty fun to do.
 Sometimes there are various other enemies like big tanky machine gun zombie soldiers, which require more cooperation to take down.
 Every single level is pretty generic and has the same green mist fog so everything looks the same and blends together, cobbled ruined streets, some inside buildings, a factory, warehouse, etc, and then some boss where you snipe floating skulls and then shoot the boss between waves of enemeis. Overall its decent , but repetive, OK co-op shooter

6/10


Sniper Elite Nazi Zombie Army 2

The second time around, you hop right back into it. The same weapon loadout, you expect will anything change? and not really. Its exactly more of the same , and it feels really lazy actually. They didnt try to innovate at all, its the exact same "run here, ok Survive this wave, go to safehouse, Repeat" there is NO variation. Infact, you fight the same 'flying skull' boss multiple times, just rehashed over and over. This is where it starts to get really boring. As for the level design, I cant even remember and I beat it yesterday. I remember some bridge that you explode, thats about it. Very forgettable copy paste kind of game. Theres not much to say about it that hasnt been said for the first game, just that they lazily slapped together some more levels of wave based shooting. So for that, its significantly worse, because Im already tired of the forumla by this point

4/10


Zombie Army 3

The third game was released 2 or 3 years after the last, and this time around what has changed? Well you can definitely feel more effort has been put into it, as the first level even has some human AI that fights along side you, there are tons of things in the einviorment to interact with in Duke nukem 3d style silly humor way. This game feels like the most effort has been put into it because theres a lot of attention to detail and interesting / funny things to look at in the enviorment such as cool paintings and weird torture scenes, zombies watching satanic propaganda in a theater, cool bloodbaths where the ceiling falls down on you, new Chainsaw enemy etc... there IS some variation this time around and the level design is a lot more memorable. Such as some ww2 trench bunkers, an allied front fighting with soldiers,  satanic graveyard... etc..  
 
 This game feels a lot less "GO HERE, SURVIVE, GO TO SAFE ROOM, REPEAT"

 There is actual variation in the objectives such as having to push switches, find keys, interact with weird paranormal satanic things, go inside this huge castle etc... yes there is still a lot of 'SURVIVE" but its fine...

Unfortunately its the exact same guns as previous games and no variation there, for the most part of all the trilogy I used the exact same loadout because the guns really dont differ that much. Would have been nice to unlock new guns as you progress isntead of being given them all by default..theres no sense of wonder or exictement in this regard.

Towards the end of the game the difficulty really ramps up and introduces some more variation because the zombies now are wearing full plate armor and take way more hits to go down instead of simple headshots... definitely requires some more team work to procede and explosives start to be really important.. so its good that they keep changing it up, unlike previous games. 

 Definitely by this point the trilogy is wearing down its welcome and the biggest complaint is the overall length is too long and way too repetivie, but atleast by the third game they put more attention to detail with interesting things in the enviorment to look at and interact with, and some new enemies... and the last boss is a huge mega hitler which is actually pretty challengnig and fun and requires some team work to defeat and is memorable..

6/10