ZOMBIE ARMY 4: DEAD WAR
There are two versions of the Second World War that exist in fiction: the war-is-hell one, a venue for telling stories about what it means to be forced to kill your fellow man; and the pulpy, boy’sown-adventure version. As WWII-set shooters increasingly gesture towards the former, Zombie Army sits firmly in the latter camp – and camp really is the operative word. You’re not just going to war with Nazi zombies, but undead sharks and zombified Panzers with fleshy innards tucked away under their armour plating. There’s a resurrected Hitler in there somewhere too. It is, in other words, pretty much exactly what you’d expect and hope for in a game titled Zombie Army 4: Dead War.
The Zombie Army series grew out of Rebellion’s Sniper Elite games, and the link is clear, especially in those moments when you’re squinting through a rifle’s scope, lining up a headshot and then being rewarded with a cutaway of your bullet rearranging, in gratuitous slow motion, the contents of your target’s skull. The big difference, apart from the simple matter of your enemies’ immortality, is that Zombie Army is designed to be played with a full complement of four players. Which might not be the most natural fit with a gimmick that stops the action every minute or so for a brief anatomy lesson. The solution, lead designer Ryan Baker explains, is just to play down this aspect a little: “When it comes to fourplayer co-op, we’re a bit more strict on what shots qualify for an X-ray killcam.” The ones that do play are a little quicker, and you can even turn them off entirely.
The truth is, though, it’s less of a problem because, in the heat of battle, sniper rifles tend to get shouldered quickly anyway. If you’re meticulously lining up individual shots, you can never hope to compete with that one friend who just charges forward with a minigun. Luckily, the rest of the armoury has been given the same love and attention as the sniper rifle, and whatever weapon you’re using to remove zombie heads from shoulders, it’s pretty much guaranteed to feel good, especially after you start adding elemental damage and other perks to your weapons.
This might be the fourth Zombie Army game, but it’s intended to be something of a new beginning for the series – a fully standalone release, with no repurposed content, that steps entirely out of Sniper Elite’s shadow. “A full-blown sequel,” is how Baker describes it. “It’s about the size of the whole of Zombie Army Trilogy.” Beyond extending the length of the campaign, Dead War’s big enhancement is the addition of a progression system, with 100 ranks to level through – and this is where the weapon perks come in.
“Every rank will unlock something, and each time it will be something slightly different. You may get a weapon upgrade token, you may get a perk, you might get cosmetics that you can put on your characters, you might get different special melee attacks.” The end result is a breadth and depth of customisation options that – at least dropped in, as we were, at a midlevel rank – is frankly intimidating. Every weapon has its own skill tree, offering everything from a bigger clip to electrified bullets that will send out arcs of lightning to stun nearby enemies. Even medkits and grenades can be modified to add bonus effects such as Divine Blood, which heals any teammates while doubling damage on any zombies it splashes onto. Again, realism is not chief among Dead War’s concerns.
All told, it’s about as smart as a zombie whose head has been separated from its shoulders, and gleefully so – with zombie sharks and ever-bigger guns and firework shows located entirely within some poor zombie’s ribcage – but this is the kind of dumb that requires some careful artistry to actually pull off. Dead War has the pleasure centres of your brain in its sights, and it’s ready to pull the trigger.
You’ve a hundred ranks to level through – and this is where the weapon perks come in