WORLD WAR Z

The zombie genre is back from the dead

Zombies are back in favour. It’s official. You may, like us, have raised a quizzical eyebrow last December when Saber Interactive revealed the first trailer for World War Z – a game based on a lacklustre film from 2013 that even Brad Pitt’s chin puff couldn’t save. But hold up. Look beyond the license and you’ll see an online co-op shooter featuring swarming AI zombies Days Gone’s devs would eye with envy.

Comparison’s to Sony’s long-in-development nonzombie swarm shooter are easy, and it’s one Saber embraces. But whereas Days Gone is a single-player adventure, with you against the swarm, World War Z is built around teamwork.

“To me the real fun with swarms is the online co-op experience,” says Matthew Karch, CEO of Saber Interactive, as we sit down to an exclusive look at the game. “WWZ is the only game to offer an online experience with such massive quantities of fastmoving enemies.”

THE PERFECT SWARM

The hook of World War Z is in the zombie swarm and its AI, plus the impetus on proactive destruction – you’re not playing just to survive another day, but to go on the front foot and take the ‘war’ to the Zs. “We tried very hard to replicate the feel of the film in this respect. The major difference is that in the film you would normally flee the enemy, but in the game, you will be forced to fight,” says Karch. The zombies have been designed to function in a similar way to swarming ants… human-flesh-eating zombie ants. They’ll climb over one another, piling up in co-ordinated movements to overcome your defences and pour into areas of the map you thought safely sealed off. It’s an experience like no other, leaving you constantly reassessing your surroundings.

The flesh-eaters adapt to the environment to find chinks in your armour, but you’re able to do the same. Each map – based on locations from the film, including New York, Jerusalem, Moscow, and the Korean airfield – features destructible objects and areas to use against the undead flood. Karch tells us: “You can blow up cars to kill hordes of zombies and destroy certain structures to alter their path. You can also build fences, plant mines and barbed wire, and place turrets in anticipation of incoming hordes.”

NEW MODEL ZOMBIE

Impressively, the game is entirely unscripted. The zombies’ attack patterns are procedural in nature, which means you’ll never know where the enemy will come from next or how they’ll charge at you. It ensures there is no set way to approach a map or mission, no defined plan or cast-iron method to defeat the swarm. Each playthrough of a map will feel fresh and will have you nervously questioning your decisions.

“The sheer quantity of swarming enemies on the screen and the way they interact by climbing over one another to reach areas that would be safe in other games is unique to WWZ. I would say it truly defines the game,” says Karch, adding: “Fighting the swarms that can be either one massive enemy or 1,000 individual ones is exhilarating and addicting.”

Played in third-person only, with an over-the-shoulder zoom enabling you to get closer to the action, missions are objective-based. This ensures there’s a heartfelt reason to wade into the zombie horde. These goals vary, and include protecting key assets or characters, and saving survivors on the map. The core purpose of each mission, however, is always to pop as many zombie heads as your ammo clip will allow.

If there is an emerging renaissance in classic zombie shooters, then World War Z could be a surprise leader of the undead pack. The game’s 1,000-strong procedural undead army could be marching all over our mustplay lists very soon.