Zombie Army 4: Dead War

Rebellion has for awhile now been making sequels upon sequels of the same similar game. First it was the Sniper Elite series, which they made a handful of games. Then, it was the spinoff Zombie Army series which is basically the same game, just more close quarters and now with zombies. But after that, they made another spin off of a spin off, Strange Brigade, which was basically the same thing as Zombie Army but more wackier and cartoony. Well now we're at Zombie Army 4 so let's see whats new this time:

The very first thing I noticed is that it seems to have gotten a bit of an engine upgrade, its using the similar engine version as Strange Brigade and Sniper Elite 4, so things look more polished and better graphics than previous games. But then the real first thing that stood out is the weapon unlocks system/DLC. The game really only has 3 primary weapons, and 3 secondary weapons. That's it. For primaries its got sniper rifles: M1 Garand, Gewer 43, and Mosin Nagant. Yes, that's it. You have them all unlocked at the beginning of the game, you'll be using one of these 3 primaries for the whole game. The fucked up part? Theres like another 12+ DLC guns. But it really seems like all these extra DLC guns were actually developed alongside all the rest, but last minute they realized they could just make them all DLC and make more money. Really lame. Like imagine in Doom you could only use the Shotgun or Chaingun, and last minute they cut all the other guns and sold them as DLC instead. Just stupid. Then you have the secondary guns, you have two machine guns: Mp44, and Thompson, then you have a shotgun. That's it. Theres no unlocking guns as you play the game. The other sad part is once you choose a gun, you're basically forced to use it for the entire campaign, because the guns have upgrade trees and the upgrade kits are limited, so once you start upgrading a gun, it would be really stupid to drop it and switch to another non-upgraded gun. So they basically force you to use one gun for the entire campaign. Yeah, it kinda starts to make the whole experience a bit lackluster and repetitive.  

It's got this notable and sort of satisfying Challenge system where you can do all sorts of challenges like get 200 headshots, or kill them in weird ways, apparently these challenges are directly attached to the perks system where you do certain challenges it like tiers up the perks but overall its more like a sidenote or novelty more than anything that really impacts the game in a very meaningful way.

So you're bascially using one or two guns the whole game, and the gunplay for these feels pretty good, I like the hitmarkers and gore, it feels impactful and has a lot of feedback that makes it feel fun to shoot, its got all those complex Sniper Elite mechanics with holding your breath for more accuracy, Kill cams when you get really nice shots (which barely ever happen, because the game is so close quarters)  but it's also got these awkward shoehorned in abilities that never really made much sense, you can swap your Perks in and out at the beginning of every level, these give you some passive upgrades but it all feels so uninspired and forced in, none of it felt very substantive difference it was more just busy work and they just put it in the game because its like.. "modern games need skill trees and perks, right guys?"  The weapon upgrade system is really trivial too, its just a tiny little tree that gives marginal upgrades like reload speed and some weird explosive damage system that was hard to figure out, at one point you can unlock "vampire scope" which says it gives you health on "critical hits" - which you'd think means headshots, but no, not really. Never really figured out how it works, that whole system seemed convuluted and didn't make any sense.  The game also has a bad grenade mechanic where you can hold all sorts of different explosives, but the way the grenade inventory system works sucks and youll frequently find yourself trying to throw a grenade but you accidentally start putting down a tripmine and your character is dragging around a tripmine while youre being swarmed by zombies. The games got inconsistent and annoying controls sometimes with a lot of "Hold E to open/use"  but then other times it will be "Tap E"  and you frequently can fuck this up and feels really janky and clunky, especially when trying to revive your team mate.


How's the actual campaign and levels though?
It starts off quite promising, it mechanically feels more complex and involved than previous games in the series. For example you have all sorts of abilities and perks now, the UI is very complex theres all sorts of shit all over the screen, press space to use some melee ability, it's got a pretty satisfying combo system where in big numbers and colors it tells you what your combo multiplier is, on the right side of the screen it details what kind of kills you're getting and scores you - all that stuff is fun and satisfying. Graphically it can be technically impressive too, nice complex lighting , dark visuals and misty atmosphere, the atmosphere is mostly good and immersive except for the music... the soundtrack is this baffling mix of groovy techno and whimsical jungle melodies or something, it doesn't really match the mood of the game and more often than not just detracted from the experience and made it feel cheap and stupid.  None of the levels really stand out that much, it all blurs together as this dark hazy, black and white green tinged big stretch. Typical places like boat yards, trainyards, sewers, villages, nothing really standout.

But yeah the first few hours of the game are promising, its got a fully fledged co-op campaign which of course I played with a buddy, so you spend the first few hours going through these detailed levels with hordes of zombies and everything seems good. But sooner than later some problems start to crop up. For instance the objectives start to be really repetitive, annoying, and predictable. The game basically only has 4 objectives:
1. Walk into arena - Survvie.   
2. Pickup object, drag it to location, defend it
3. Get on the boat/refuel boat
4. Escape

Seriously that's like 90% of the game. They just couldn't be very creative with the variation of tasks you're required to do. Overall the game has a problem with frequently being kind of...boring. It's boring in the aforementioned lack of weapon variety, its boring in that the enemies are frequently not very engaging, like most of the enemies on screen are just filler generic zombie mobs that barely threaten you as you stand still and mindlessly take them out, its boring in the objectives are just uninspired and repetitive, its boring in that the level design and color palette overall is frequently just very grey, green, and black - while the game may be technically  graphically impressive, sometimes the art design and color palette is just drab and dull to look at. Other examples of the artstyle being hit and miss is the use of satanic symbols and actual zombie designs are pretty awesome, the environmental storytelling and corpses on spikes and stuff like that is creepy and cool to look at, but the UI and onscreen prompts almost makes it feel like I'm playing a mobile phone game or something the way the UI looks, especially at the end of level reward screens.   

The game isn't that hard, and its very forgiving when you fail the mission, usually you respawn at a checkpoint right where you left off. Your character has a rank and as you rank up to various points like 5, 15, 20, 30 etc you unlock new perk slots, so its kind of fun seeing your guy level up I guess.

I do appreciate how the game has a sort of Left 4 Dead episodic format, with saferooms acting as the level separators, it makes the pacing feel bite sized and manageable. At least its got a wacky sense of humour, like you fight Hitler himself a few times, and the last time you fight him hes in this gigantic gigtank and its kind of an epic boss fight, then the game ends with you killing hitler and beating his face in or something. The story is complete nonsense but its just dumb campy fun in like B horror movie way I guess.
The game could of been better if it had a better arsenal, better upgrade system, more varied objectives, more memorable level design etc. It suffers from similar problems that Strange Brigade had, just this game has a way better tone, but it has the same similar gameplay letdowns and has many things in common, even down to the environmental traps is like straight out of Strange Brigade. But as it stands its just a decent co-op campaign to play with a friend for a few days.

6/10