World War Z

[h1][b] TLDR: The massive zombie hordes are genuinely thrilling, most other mechanics are a shameless Left 4 Dead imitation that brings nothing new to an already crowded co-op horde genre. [/b] [/h1] [h1]PROS: [/h1] ➕Classes and talents for build options ➕Graphics - levels look immersive ➕Hordes are cool ➕Crossplay helps playerbase [h1]CONS: [/h1] ➖Paying money for first-person mode (Aftermath DLC) ➖Audio/design/gun sounds are poor ➖AI NPCs in co-op are stupid and buggy ➖Can be hard to find players for levels, even with crossplay ➖Repetitive content with major grind [h1] [b] Content (Game world/Narrative) – [6/10] [/b] [/h1] The game world takes place in multiple cities around the world. There’s around 10 free levels, each with 3-4 areas within the level telling a continuous story throughout the city. You’ll visit places like Tokyo, Rome, Jerusalem, New York, and Moscow. The levels are mostly linear with small branching sidepaths that can reward some supplies or weapons, no real secrets to be found. Furthermore, exploration is limited due to the linear nature of the levels. The story is simple and often contained to the city you're in. It’s basically how each city handles the “War” against the zombies. I played through all levels and didn’t find any stories to be particularly great, though some of them were more interesting than others. For example, I like how Tokyo handled the evacuation with a cruise ship and the issues around that. [h1][b] Gameplay (Mechanics/Difficulty) – [5/10] [/b] [/h1] The gameplay loop generally consists of navigating through a level until you reach a defense point, and then killing waves of enemies while completing simple objectives. I would say the gameplay is very similar to other co-op horde games like Vermintide/Darktide and Left 4 Dead. The zombies require teamwork to overcome as they can debilitate your teammates, so you will need to get your teammates up when special zombies crowd control or regular zombies damage takes them down. There is some nice form of progression through multiple classes and weapons. You get currency at the end of each run which you can use to unlock a new talent or upgrade a weapon. This gets quite costly as you progress when you start needing multiple runs for an upgrade. Aside from the campaign levels, there is a horde mode which is just endless waves of enemies to see how long you can last. These games take notably longer than a campaign run The difficulty ramps up pretty quickly. When starting out, Easy mode can even be a challenge with dumb humans or the dumb AI. There is a stealth component too - you can use silenced weapons to skip entire hordes which makes the game much easier with a coordinated group, a rule that humans tend not to follow, but thankfully NPCs do. I played up to hard difficulty and a good group made it through, while a poor group died, so the difficulty can vary greatly based on how good your group is. The NPCs are great for getting you up, but terrible for killing zombies and often make the game much harder. NPCs are nigh useless on anything above Normal mode. [h1] [b] Technical (Graphics/Performance) – [7/10] [/b] [/h1] Graphics are great. This is easily a PS5-gen game when playing fully maxed. Performance is good for me. I played fully maxed and stayed around 110 FPS. Animations can be very buggy, as I did notice they seem tied to the network connection, so a host with high ping can make zombies and players rubberband around the level and just generally have awkward animations. Other than that, I didn’t notice any bugs. 1440p @ 240hz | installed on SSD [h1] [b] Audio – [4/10] [/b] [/h1] Music is average at best, nothing noteworthy. Good voice acting, no issues here. My complaint and the reason for the below average score is the sound mixing. I have to turn the volume up much louder than normal to make the volume sound normal to me. Also, the sound of guns shooting is poor, though the atmosphere of small things like bullet casings hitting the ground is good. [h1] [b] Replay Factor (Longevity) – [5/10] [/b] [/h1] There is solid replay value here with the online component, though the campaign seems to be poorly populated, at least on levels Normal and below for difficulty. There is a PVP mode, but I didn’t see anything like L4D where players can play as special zombies, which is a big missed opportunity. Really, the bulk of the time spent seems to be on horde mode, which can get old quick. There is a massive grind for progression classes, including prestige resetting, so I don’t think the variety of content is there for the amount of grind required without getting repetitive. [h1] [b] Final Verdict – [6/10] [/b] [/h1] World War Z (WWZ) takes your traditional co-op horde shooting game, like Vermintide/Darktide, Left 4 Dead, and Killing Floor, and...doesn't really innovate much. The thing that separates itself from other games in the genre is the hordes of zombies, which is really cool, but aside from that, it doesn’t really offer new or interesting ways to play, and the grind requirement is a bit much. Let's start with the bad. Compared to the other co-op horde games that I mentioned above, WWZ can almost feel like a cash-grab in that it just borrows what the other games have already done without bringing the mechanics to the next generation. At some points this feels like such a shameless L4D copy that it’s surprising to me not only how the devs can legally get away with it, but also how they managed to somehow not improve on any of the concepts. At least the Vermintide/Darktide variants have more of a fantasy vibe with the WH40k setting. But as I played, I just couldn’t help but feel that I’ve done all this before, and multiple times at that. It really doesn’t help that the playerbase is either not doing campaign mode, or on higher difficulties, as I struggled to fill groups so I ended up playing with bots most of the time. It’s not all bad though, the zombie hordes are where WWZ shines. The only thing that differentiates WWZ from the tons of other zombie IPs is the hordes and the climbing up walls, which can be easily seen in the WWZ movie trailers. It’s here too and it’s spectacularly done. Fighting literally hundreds of zombies at once is thrilling and especially satisfying when I’m playing as the explosive class and blowing them all up with grenades. THIS is the main selling point of WWZ and what it does very well. But I personally don’t think that the amazing hordes really lend itself to the oversaturated co-op horde gameplay. I think it may have been better served as a single-player game, like Dead Island or Dying Light perhaps. It just really lacks any sort of innovation that separates itself. Overall though, I will still give it a thumbs up because I do enjoy the RPG-like talent points, the leveling up of weapons, and the satisfying hordes, but games like Vermintide and Darktide have held my attention for much longer. [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/Synikx/recommended/1361210?snr=1_5_9__402]Darktide review[/url] [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/Synikx/recommended/552500?snr=1_5_9__402]Vermintide 2 review[/url] [h1] [b] Recommend? (Price) [Y/N] [/b] [/h1] [h1]Yes[/h1] $30 base price is a bit much, though the repetitive content is there if you enjoy the grind. I’d say sub $15 is a great point. It’s a shame that the Aftermath DLC costs os much too, when the first-person mode is good. You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR