Seems like I end up getting just about every co-op shooter campaign game out there, even more so if its got zombies. I've been looking at World War Z for a couple years just because it seemed like a modern zombie game where you blast through a campaign with a friend or two, thats all you need to rope me in.
It doesnt take long playing the game to understand what the influences are and what its trying to be. It's basically Left 4 Dead. That's it. Thats the whole game. Well, except for the addition of RPG elements, like classes, experience, and leveling up your weapons. The base game with no DLC has 4 episodes, each of them with a few chapters. A strange design choice here is that each episode has their own exclusive characters, so you end up going through 16 different characters by the end of the base game, which sadly has the effect of making it feel like a sort of quantity over quality where none of the characters are really memorable or that fleshed out.
The game is pretty basic overall, theres not much in the way of cutscenes or story or plot, really, you work your way through the episode chapters with a short introduction scene giving you some context, and you have to do simple objectives that progress the mission. Usually its just something like, move forward and Reach a certain spot, then Defend a certain area for a couple minutes while swarms of zombies come at you. Other times simple objectives pop up like picking up objects or hitting switches, placing explosives, that kind of thing. But for the most part its very simple and even repetitive.
The gameplay is very similar to Left 4 Dead, youve got 4 team mates, and are controlled by AI if you dont have another human friend playing. I played with 1 friend so the rest were AI. The AI is decent to bad, the AI team mates arent even as good as Left 4 Dead for example, they dont heal you on their own or really give you anything or help out much, theyre just competent at killing zombies and mostly okay at reviving eachother. The actual shooting just feels okay, it kind of feels like all the guns are shooting pellets or has no impact to them, maybe its just because the sheer number of zombies you fight but you kind of just end up holding the fire button nonstop and only stopping to refill ammo at the various boxes. The main difference from the Left 4 Dead formula is really the attempted inclusion of RPG elements. There are a handful of different classes you can choose from, and once you pick one it really seems like you ought to stick with it because you have a limited amount of points you can spend on upgrades so why would you spread yourself thin by leveling multiple classes up? So I just ended up using the basic Gunslinger class the whole game, which gives benefits for things like simply running around and shooting and using automatic weapons. The other classes are things like specializing in explosives, Medic, and I guess characters that handle defensive equipment like turrets and things better, not sure because I never really had a chance to mess with the rest of the classes.
Not only does the game almost punish you for experimenting with different classes, it almost punishes you for using different weapons, too. Because each weapon you use gets experience based on how much you use it. So if you use the AK a lot, it will get lots of XP then level it up, but if you pickup another gun it will be a shitty level 1 so its almost like whats the point? This effect made it so I used the AK almost the entire game, partly due to there being a perk that lets you spawn with it, but also because I had just already invested a lot of points into it. Its kind of bad game design how the game punishes you for doing things differently.
As for the actual 'skill trees' and upgrades its very basic stuff. After each mission you get points depending on, I guess how well you did, like amount of kills and things like that, and you can get various passive perks like things like more ammo and health to more special things like being able to shrug off a zombie grabbing you, but otherwise minor upgrades. Still, its crucial you upgrade as much as possible and thats because the difficulty of the game is balanced in an awkward and clunky way.
Since the game tries to incorporate all sorts of RPG mechanics, its not really clear what difficulty you should play on. Sure, on the menu it tells you things like "Easy difficulty, intended for starting off" then "Normal difficulty, recommended for level 5" and "Hard difficulty, recommended for 15 level" and so on. The problem is it feels weird to expect the player to keep manually adjusting the difficutly depending on their perks and level, like awkward game design where they cant just make a well paced campaign but instead it wants you to grind like its Runescape or something. The effect this had is, well it said Easy for starting so we picked easy, but of course that was well, too easy. So the first episode of the game was pretty dull and boring without much challenge. The first episode also had the effect of probably having the weakest roster of characters and most boring city, just New York City inside office buildings and malls and stuff. Then, we got to level 5 so adjusted the difficulty up there, okay the game got a little bit better. This was probably the highlight of the game where everything felt appropriate. We were in Episode 2 by now, which took place in Jerusalem. Eventually though, we put the difficulty up to Hard because we hit level 15 as it said, and for the first bit it went okay but we started hitting stupid segments that were just near impossible to deal with, usually some Defend an area for 3 minutes section and we end up dying or failing. And this game has no checkpoints. So failing means we could play a mission for 30 minutes, get right to the last bit and then have to do everything all over again. This started happening multiple times over and over making the game really a slog to get through. Especially on Episode 4 where you have to defend that Bus and at the end you have to defend the parking garage gates from the zombies getting over. You automatically fail if too many zombies get over the gate, regardless if youre alive or not, something that was extremely frustrating. So we had no choice but to turn the difficulty back down to Normal for the rest of the game. But like, we should of just been guided to play the entire game on Normal from the get go - but no, it has to grapple with these shitty RPG mechanics and trying to balance around them, making the whole pacing and experience this clumsy clusterfuck.
It is exciting how many weapons are in the actual game, but the problem is the weapons are generated randomly. So one time you can find really powerful stuff, and other times you'll get trash. Kinda just like Left for Dead, yet again. So that made me just use the strategy of mostly using my starter weapon the AK for most of the game because why not? Its decent enough and its fully upgraded. This RNG factor is especially bullshit at times, though, when it comes to defenses such as turrets that you can place down during the Survive objectives. The game is very repetitive and you constnatly encounter objectives where you just have to holdout and survive, and the best way to do this is by placing down many turrets. The problem is that sometimes they just wont spawn, and instead give you shitty barbed wire fences. The fact that winning or losing a mission can come down to simple RNG felt pretty bullshit, especially when the game has no checkpoints.
As for the special zombie types, its again mostly stuffed ripped from L4D. You've got the spitter type, that just spits acid at you that you need to hold E to disinfect after. Then youve got a Screamer that spawns more zombies. Theres a lurker that hides around corners and grabs and pins you down , punishing you for being far away from team mates. Then theres a zombie with explosves strapped to himself that you have to carefully blow up away from team mates. Then you have the tank guy, its this guy in a big body suit of armor thats a bullet sponge and he charges at you and grabs you. The charger guy has a shit hitbox where you can be what feels like really far away from him, but he'll charge towards you and still somehow pin you down anyway. The controls also dont feel great because you cant sprint or cancel your reload, so frequently you'll start reloading, then he'll charge at you, and you'll try to sprint to get away but your character wont cancel reload, small things like that make the game feel so much shittier. The special enemy types are for the most part besides that, just okay. Nothing revolutionary or anything.
At a few points I was rather enjoying the game, sure, its mindless and the characters have absolutely no depth or impact, the game would of faired a lot better if it just had 4 characters for the entire game so you could develop and get to know them better, at times it was cool mowing down hundreds of zombies and it is impressive how many enemies that are on screen, and it is just a simple straight forward zombie co-op game which is always a decent time. Even if the networking code can be a little shoddy and the animations look shitty if your ping is too high (I'm guessing) the graphics are still decent with some impressive textures and intricate architecture. Though, saldy the game has an almost complete lack of horror or atmosphere to it, you would think being a zombie game it would be very tense, dark, grim, and scary but theres none of that here. Pretty much the whole game takes place during the broad daylight with not an ounce of atmosphere or horror, you have these absolutely shitty awful electronic almost techno music in the background that completely ruins any vibe the game could of had, but even still the game kind of feels rather 'soulless' almost at times like a cheap Mobile game, shocking to say. Episode 3 took place in Moscow and it was all wintery and snowy and that had some semblance of atmosphere and horror but it wasnt much. Episode 4 takes place in Tokyo which, while the setting was interesting and different, didnt really offer anything exciting there either. The last mission is on a boat which is a pretty classic zombie trope and I guess it was kinda cool but really not much of a final showdown or climax or anything, you just do yet another Survive objective and the campaign just .... ends, with no cutscene or "The End'. Still, the game is decently fun, but the shoehorned in RPG mechanics coupled with bad pacing and clumsy difficulty settings really knocked the enjoyability down a magnitude. As for why its called "World War Z" and has the same name as a movie, or WHY its a 'movie game'. I have no idea what the relevance is there. The game barely even has a story. Whats that all about? Where's Brad Pitt?
6/10
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