By:
Kyle Fee
In this day
and age zombies are everywhere, and I don’t mean this by hide your wife and
kids and prepare for the undead horde, but in the sense that we see zombies in
everything ranging from video games to film, T.V and literature. So when the modern day gamer sees and hears a
new zombie game is out they no longer run straight to their local gaming store
to pick it up. Zombie games are almost
reaching the Call of duty stature where you can expect the same kind of game
play from a new title in the genre.
Except in a zombie styled game you usually run, gun and slay the undead
horde all while attempting to avoid being eaten. However this is where War Z changes the gameplay,
much like Dead Island did. War Z, though
under scrutiny for stealing ideas, is a different game than what the normal
zombie slayer is used to. It combines
both survival and zombie slaying into one and offers a unique motivation to
find the best gear and weaponry to bring to the apocalyptic world of War
Z.
Once you
begin, your character starts off in a random location and only starts with the
basic gear, a small back pack and flashlight.
On the side of the HUD on the screen you have your characters health and
the player’s food levels and water levels.
Again, in War Z, you are not focusing on just killing zombies and
getting from point A to point B but your ultimate goal here is to find food,
water and gear. The downfall with War Z
is you have no certain goal or story here, but like some MMO’s, your story is
what you make. You can travel to any of
the numerous locations on the games map and find gear because ultimately your
goal in the game is to survive and find the best gear you can find. However, like any zombie game you have to
best the undead horde and avoid them or kill them to find a possible rifle or
melee weapon to better kill them with. A
big change that War Z brings to the table is that War Z isn’t a game where you
can play with one or two other people to slay the horde but a big open world
were up to 100 people can be on one map, this brings raiding towns and cities a
fun experience when playing a another person or a whole gang but this can also
backfire and make you come to completely despise the game as a whole.
As you
go about playing War Z, you will notice the detail of the world that Origin created. It
does give a slight feel of a world that has been ravaged by a zombie
apocalypse. The graphics on the highest
setting are very good, not anything that hasn’t been seen yet, but for a online
P.C game is still very good. As for the
world you play on, the map is set in Colorado.
You will have small shacks to massive cities and abandoned military
bases, all ripe to be raided. What you
find will be different every time, you can kill hundreds of zombies in a town
run into a police station expecting to find a firearm and be disappointed to
only find a baseball bat. This is the
motivation that drives the player to keep searching the giant map of War Z in
search of that ultimate weapon or protective gear. However finding gear and items all needed to
survive is a fun experience but another exciting factor that I found fun to
find was just trying to find a new backpack or large military ruck to carry
more gear. The bigger pack you have the
more gear you can carry on your person.
Now the biggest thing that Origin was trying in order to get people into
this game was having many people working together to raid cities and kill
zombies. The zombies in the game do
react well to players and the AI isn’t bad.
The zombies lie down on the ground and sometimes I find myself
surrounded by several zombies that literally rise out of nowhere. You can run into a town and hear their moans
from around the corner and that would help me to know that I wasn’t alone. However there was much more to make them
scarier or different kinds of zombies, like the sprinting zombies we saw from
the Dawn of the Dead or zombie types that were made popular by Resident Evil
and Left for Dead. Overall, the zombies,
though not the scariest or must unique in gaming, were ok and difficult at
times when your first starting off.
Going back to other players in
War Z, you come to learn that the zombies really are not your primary concern. When you enter a town, your first concern is
not the dozens of zombies blocking your way to the buildings that may hold an
awesome amount of loot, but the possible other players lying in wait to ambush
you and steal your gear. After playing
almost twenty something hours into this game I can’t begin to tell how many
times me and another player would work together to sneak past hordes of the
undead to get a amazing piece of loot to be beat in the back of the head by a
player holding nothing but a flashlight. (Check out the link below to see such
Tom Foolery) This was a massive nuisance but when really looking at it and
thinking about it, this was an awesome concept.
The zombies that could easily overrun you in a heartbeat if you rush
into a town aren’t the only enemy in the game, but the dozens of other players
that could turn on one another and take you out for your gear. When all else fails and you lose your gear,
the game has a marketplace to allow for you to buy in game stuff like weapons,
packs, food, water, meds and ammo. So if
you don’t feel like finding gear again just quickly purchase something from the
in game market and go on your way slaying and looting.
War Z when
it first came out was bashed for stealing ideas from Day Z: an off game mod of
ARMA II. Another problem was that War Z
was released while still in development.
The main map was not yet finished and players who initially bought the
game could not even access the rest of the map that was still in
development. Since its initial release
the game has undergone several major updates to include the clans, in game chat
(which is still being worked on) and additional map details such as more cars
on a highway and small details. Overall,
War Z, when first played, can be an annoyance when you have barely any
gear. After acquiring more gear and
slaying the zombie horde with better weapons and fighting off gangs of other
players, you come to enjoy War Z for its simple game play. The game had many early issues that have been slowly been resolved
and the game allows for many players to play on one server to loot gear from
ravaged towns and cities, or go and kill the zombie infection, or even simply
kill one another as well. For $13
dollars, this game is a simple, easy to play game with many cool ideas for the
zombie genre in gaming (all debate aside).
Maybe with this game in mind game designers can use it as a template for
future zombie multiplayer games.
Good:
-
Interesting take on the possible post-zombie apocalypse world
- Need
for food and water, as well as survival gear, leads players to look under every
rock and twig to find good gear.
-Get a
lot of bang for the $13 price tag.
Bad:
- Still
a lot of bugs and issues to work out, but they are being worked on.
- No
missions or real objectives given, you just fend for yourself with no real
direction to go in.
-
Losing that shiny new item to some jerk that was camping outside with a rifle
can be a turn-off for the less serious players out there.
- At
times felt like a normal PVP game…with zombies
Scully
Rating: 5 out of 10