Kris Wall reviews Zombie Army Trilogy…
Following last year’s bio-mechanical monstrosities in the excellent Wolfenstein : The New Order, the Nazi’s are back causing trouble again, this time from beyond the grave in Rebellion’s Zombie Army Trilogy. Starting out life as a DLC spin off from the Sniper Elite series on the PC, Rebellion have taken two enemies that gamers love to shoot, Nazis and zombies, and brought them together in a riotously fun multi-player dance of death and destruction all wrapped up in a gloriously trashy B-movie grindhouse package that does one thing and does it well. If you love killing zombies and are happy to do that for hours then Zombie Army Trilogy delivers !
There’s a story of sorts here in Rebellion’s take on alternate history. World War II has raged on and Nazi Germany is finally on its knees awaiting the deathblow. Sensing the end is near, Adolf Hitler launches his final counter offensive, raising a monstrous army of the undead to turn the tides of war. It’s up to you and your comrades to cut a bloody path through this undead horde to locate the relics scattered across Berlin in order to shut down the hellmouth and put a bullet in Hitler’s undead brain to end his reign once and for all.
I can’t really say I’m much of an online gamer anymore but Zombie Army Trilogy has got to be the most fun I’ve had playing online for quite some time. With up to 4 players working together to take on Hitler’s horde, Zombie Army Trilogy explodes to life in a maelstrom of bullets and bloody carnage as you fight your way through a Berlin gone straight to hell. Of course you can undertake this journey on your own, though you’ll be up against almost insurmountable odds and a gnawing feeling of repetition but Zombie Army Trilogy is all about rounding up your buddies and laying waste to the horde as a team.
Gunplay is satisfyingly visceral, machine guns will shred torso’s while a blast from a shotgun will see bodies explode into bloody chunks across the battlefields. However, as you would expect from the makers of Sniper Elite, it’s the scoped rifles that elicit the best response with Sniper Elite’s trademark X-Ray kill cam resurfacing here to show the trail of your bullet from barrel to body in eye watering grisly detail as it tears flesh, splinters bone and grinds organs. It’s a novelty for sure but it’s a delightful one at that and one that certain doesn’t get old. On top of your selection of sniper rifles, machine guns, shotguns and pistols you’ll also have access to trip wires, landmines, dynamite and grenades to lay down traps which can really help to get you out of a tight situation.When all else fails, you have a pretty harsh kick to lash out with that can create space and separate heads from bodies, the game being endlessly amusing when your squad devolves into a desperate bout of kung fu fighting in order to survive.
Having said that, there are times when the more slow paced and skillful mechanics of Sniper Elite’s system are at ends with Zombie Army Trilogy’s maniacally fast paced enemies which will force you into using your secondary rapid fire weapons in order to create space and stay on top of situations. To counteract this, there’s a skill system in place that rewards players for keeping their cool and sticking to single shot weapons. For each successful kill without missing, you’ll gain a score multiplier, coupled with a bonus for the style of kill such as headshots, two zombies with one bullet or an X-Ray kill. Your secondary weapons might be able to cut zombies down in seconds but you’ll lose your combo and be rewarded with minimal points, so your trusty rifle is your ticket to bringing in the big high scores.
Enemies come in all shapes and sizes, designed to test the skill of your squad to the absolute limit. Your standard zombies don’t pose too much of a threat in small numbers but when a horde of them are bearing down on your position, things can start getting tense. On top of them you have kamikaze types, dead eyed (literally!) snipers, armoured beats, chainsaw wielding crazies, fire demons, skeletons ripped straight from a Harryhausen movie and occult generals that can summon small armies to take you on. Then there are the dreaded super elites, absolute hulking beasts with heavy machine guns that trudge into battle and soak up damage like an undead sponge. One of these is enough to put you and your team through your paces but more often than not, the game throws a few of them at you at once and your chances of survival are quickly reduced to almost zero.
The game can be almost overwhelmingly tough at times, testing your patience to the limit when even your best planned defense is destroyed in seconds for the 10th time when the game decides to throw a couple of super elites in your direction on top of the 50 standard zombies that are also swarming your position and the zombie snipers that are keeping your squad pinned down. At times it starts to feel downright unfair, surviving most battles by the skin of your teeth then limping forward to the next only to be cut down by an even bigger wave of enemy types, the odds are never in your favour here. It really pays to play Zombie Army Trilogy with a bunch of friends as communication is absolutely key to prevailing in this game as the undead horde are absolutely merciless and will overwhelm and shred a poorly organized squad in a matter of seconds.
Zombie Army 3 is all new, specially created by Rebellion to round out the trilogy. Unfortunately Zombie Army 1 and 2 suffer for its inclusion. Zombie Army 1 is somewhat of a chore to play through, all long corridors and square arenas to face down the hordes in, like Serious Sam or Shadow Warrior but minus the nuance of their respective pacing. ZA1 stands out as the most obvious that it was a DLC spin off to the Sniper Elite series where its levels have been re-used and had zombies thrown in for added measure. Zombie Army 2 fares much better with tighter level design and more layouts and environments to play through but you’re still doing the same thing in retooled Sniper Elite maps, moving from corridor to corridor, safe room to safe room, re-arming and re-tooling before moving out and mowing down hundreds of zombies and then doing it all over again.
Zombie Army 3 begins in the apocalyptic aftermath of a nuclear solution to the zombie problem infecting Berlin, obviously it’s failed otherwise this would be an incredibly short game. ZA3 is worth the price of admission by itself, despite being largely linear like the episodes before it, the game world is full of NPC’s to interact with, survivors to save, side quests to complete on route and challenges littering the levels. The game world is also far more intricately detailed than the previous episodes with many sections containing interactive objects that just help to give the world a bit more of a tangible depth. It also benefits hugely from having much better level design, pacing and variation in the environments making it glaringly obvious that this is the one that Rebellion created specially for this package, it’s definitely the highlight.
If there’s one thing Zombie Army Trilogy really suffers with its repetition and there’s only so many zombies you can mow down before that starts to set in. This is mostly due to repetition by design of the game as it funnels you down corridors and passageways to another open area where you’ll set up your traps and defenses, fight off another horde and then advance on to the next area. Levels tend to be quite long as well which doesn’t really help with the pacing of the game, though as with everything else in this package, it does get noticeably better as the episodes advance and Zombie Army 3 doesn’t suffer with these issues due to being the newest and most varied of the bunch.
Zombie Army Trilogy isn’t pushing the power of your console visually but it’s no slouch either and the graphics get progressively better as the episodes roll on with the new Zombie Army 3 obviously standing out as the best looking of the bunch as you race through a burned out Berlin, across a speeding freight train, storm an impregnable keep and march forward to the final showdown with Hitler himself. Thanks to a near cacophonous sea of groans and roars from the undead, Rebellion have done a great job of making your team feel constantly under threat at all times, constantly checking your corners and looking over your shoulder. Much like the recent Dying Light, there’s also a brilliant score in Zombie Army Trilogy that will thrill horror fans as it sounds like a fusion of classic B-movie shlock with the soundtrack that John Carpenter or George Romero and Goblin never made.
While there’s not much here to recommend for the solo gamer, if you love co-op gaming then you’ll definitely want to experience Zombie Army Trilogy with a group of friends, it really is a huge amount of fun with a well-coordinated group playing together. It can get ridiculously tough at times, would have benefited from tighter level design in the first two games and repetition can set in like rot when played for prolonged sessions but I’ll be damned if I didn’t want to get the team back together and wade further into the dark heart of Berlin. Zombie Army Trilogy is bloody good fun !
Pros
+ Insanely good co-op action
+ Fun B-movie / Grindhouse vibe
+ X-Ray kills just don’t seem to get old
+ Zombie Army 3 looks great with loads of neat touches and extras
+ That great Romero / Carpenter inspired score
+ Horde mode
Cons
– Overwhelmingly tough on anything above easy
– Zombie Army 1 & 2 haven’t received the same love as 3
– Not much here for the solo player
– Can get repetitive quite quickly
– Early episodes suffer from design and pacing
Rating: 7.5/10
Kris Wall – Follow me on Twitter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMekjOsexHs&feature=player_embedded&list=PL18yMRIfoszH_jfuJoo8HCG1-lGjvfH2F
