World War Z Review

World War Z Review – 3rd person co-op shooter with swarm zombies in test (by Zap zockt)

Zap zockt World War Z – A World War Z Review – The new 3rd Person Co-op Shooter from Sabre Interactive in the test. I show you some World War Z Gameplay and tell you how the game feels, if it is fun and if you should buy World War Z (Xbox, PS4, PC).

This post exists here as text, but there is also a YouTube video (German voice-over and subtitles in many languages). So you can choose if you want to read or watch.

Video: World War Z Review

World War Z Review – Intro

Hi there, this is the Zap, in this episode, I introduce you to the game World War Z. I show you how well it plays, try to give you an insight, if it’s fun and if the game could be something for you. World War Z was developed by Sabre Interactive and was released on April 16th. It currently costs about 35 € and more free content is already announced.

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What is World War Z?

World War Z is a third-person zombie shooter based on the 2013 action movie of the same name, which starred Bratt Pitt. It is about a worldwide highly infectious zombie epidemic that is spreading at an enormous speed. Within seconds, bitten victims turn into violent zombies. The game can be played solo or with up to four players in a co-op.

The game starts in New York with a small group of survivors who more or less randomly flocked together to fight against the zombie hordes. And hordes is meant literally here because the undead sometimes comes in waves of hundreds of moldering people at the same time. These swarms of zombies can, for example, overcome height differences by forming mountains or pyramids out of their bodies, on which subsequent zombies can then crawl up.

In addition to New York, we also travel to Jerusalem, Moscow, and Tokyo. In each city, you play different predefined characters, or you create an adapted character class. Either way, you can level these classes with experience points throughout the game and then select new skills from a skill tree to improve the class. I will give more detailed information about the progress system and the classes in a later section.

Our group not only has to shoot around a lot, but also has to destroy these hordes partly through good teamwork and some tactics, and sometimes it’s just a matter of escaping alive when the masses simply get too big.

World War Z – gameplay and game modes

World War Z offers a map-based 4-player co-op campaign, which consists of 11 missions at release. The episodes, which usually last about 20-30 minutes, can be played in any order. If you can’t get 4 players together, missing player slots in the group can be filled with bot-controlled heroes. So you can enjoy the game solo, or only with 1 or 2 friends. Of course, you can also simply look for online players.

The campaign lasts about 5-6 hours, but all missions can be repeated at any time and in 5 different levels of difficulty. Apart from the co-op PvE, there are also different PvP variants, such as King of the Hill, Team Death Match, Resource Hunt, Conquer Zones or Zombie Battles.

World War Z – Graphics

The game is based on the Swarm Engine developed especially for this game. The name says it all, because this engine was developed specifically to animate and move hundreds or in some passages probably more than a thousand zombies at the same time, without them all doing exactly the same thing. These mass zombie collections are also the outstanding feature of this game and that was really well done.

The player characters, as well as the NPCs and zombies, are very chic and realistically animated. The textures are very sharp and detailed, at least in the PC version. Unfortunately, I cannot contribute to the console version, but as far as I have read and seen on screenshots, the graphics are very good.

The individual missions are varied in design and the different types of enemies are also interestingly designed.

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World War Z – enemy types and zombie types

In World War Z there are different types of zombies. Besides the normal average zombies, which also have a lot of different looks, there are some special enemy variants.

For example, there is the lurker, a type of zombie that crawls around almost silently on all fours, likes to lurk in corners and tries to jump at a member of the group. The one who jumps at a member is then completely helpless and loses his life permanently, maybe even to death. The only thing that helps here is teamwork and taking care of each other and getting rid of the creeper in case of emergency.

Next, there are the screamers or screamers. These are zombies that attract attention with loud and annoying screams and thus attract other zombies in large numbers. Here you should immediately make sure that this screamer breathes its undead life, otherwise, you can quickly drown in the hordes that are summoned.

Sounds are a general problem, by the way, because zombies are attracted by them. And so every shot or other noisy activity can summon new zombies. That’s why it’s sometimes helpful to have weapons with silencers or maybe even to do without the grenade, even though it’s, of course, helpful against groups.

Another special variation of Zombie is the Hazmat, a zombie in a yellow poison gas protective suit. When this opponent dies, he spreads a very unpleasant cloud of poison gas that drains everyone in the area of life energy. It is therefore advisable to kill these striking yellow guys at a distance.

The last special variety is the football player, this is a big zombie that also has a lot of resistance. Dressed in football gear, this zombie storms towards a member of the group and lifts and chokes him. Again, the lifted player is defenseless and only his companions can save him. So if you like to scurry around outside the group, you’ll soon be proven wrong in World War Z. Team play and staying together is an important factor in this game.

It’s quite possible that there are already more zombie types and I missed some enemy variants. In any case, it is clear that the already announced content updates, the first of which was promised for free in May 2019, will include more enemy types.

World War Z Review: Gunplay and combat feeling

Our characters can take a light hand weapon, the main weapon, and a heavy special weapon. For each of these slots, there are many types of weapons, which also feel very varied when playing. Each slot has its own ammunition supply.

There are different types of pistols and also light shotguns for the handgun slot. For the main weapon slot, there are many variants, shotguns, single shot and automatic rifles, in different calibers and designs.

For the slot with the heavy weapons, there is always special armament with little ammunition for a short time only, so these weapons are quickly used up. But there are not only rocket launchers or other heavy guns, but also nice things like a thick chainsaw.

Of course, a melee weapon should not be missing, so that in quieter moments or when the ammunition is completely used up, you can also snip through the enemy with a machete. Here, however, there is only the standard machete, no other variants that one could find.

And then, of course, there are also grenades that can be thrown at the enemy hordes. There are different types, normal explosives, Molotov cocktails and also gas grenades, which have a camouflage effect.

Last but not least, there are also in the missions still findable guns, which you can pick up and then set up at different selectable locations. On the one hand, there are automatic guns, where it only depends on the fact that you place them well. On the other hand, there are also stand-up machine guns, which you not only have to position cleverly but also someone has to man this MG nest.

However, with all this variety of weapons arsenal, there is always an important factor to consider. There is friendly fire in World War Z. So if you shoot your colleague indiscriminately in the back, place grenades in the wrong way or wave your chainsaw around too much, you can also do damage to your colleagues. And since the med packs are sometimes scarcely distributed in the missions, this can quickly become a problem.

World War Z – classes and progress system

After each successful mission, you get experience points. This is for the character class you have played and also for all types of weapons you have used. The latter, of course, depends on the weapon you used, how much you used and how well you used it.

With better weapon levels you can then unlock improved variants of the respective weapons so that you can find better equipment in later missions or repetitions at higher difficulty levels.

As the levels of the character classes increase, you can unlock mainly passive advantages for them in a skill tree. These improve the respective class enormously so that you can also unlock additional bonuses for later replays at higher difficulty levels.

The disadvantage of these levels of character classes is probably that they are also active in PvP, so you’re at a disadvantage in PvP with an entry character without these bonus attributes from the skill trees. Here you should probably level up a bit first if you don’t want to go into player vs. player combat with disadvantages.

There are currently 6 different character classes. There is the gunslinger, who mainly gets advantages for the different firearms. The lord of hell, who specializes in explosives, while the doctor gets all kinds of advantages for team-supporting stuff. The Tinkerer has as biggest advantage several improvements for camouflage gas grenades, the Slasher is specialized in close combat and also gets extra life energy and last but not least the Pest Controller has special advantages in fighting with Molotov cocktails and increased fire resistance.

World War Z Review: Puzzles, tactics, and level design

World War Z is an action game of all first cabin, nevertheless, it offers here and there some tactical moves and also smaller search puzzles. Of course, you shouldn’t expect role-playing puzzles, which make you think deeply, but nevertheless there are here and there also smaller moments, where you should switch on your brain for a short time besides shooting and zombie slaughtering.

This starts with switch puzzles, where you have to press several switches in a very short sequence to open a door. Or there are poison gas contaminated areas, which you should either enter only after you have turned on the appropriate ventilation at other places. But sometimes there is no ventilation and you have to get through the poison gas as fast as possible and maybe you have to search for certain things under time pressure thanks to the life bar ticking down.

Then I found the findable guns at some places in the game very nice. Because here you can find 2 automatic and 2 manually operated guns as an example in one place, but then you have about 15 or more places where they could be placed. Here some tactical intuition is necessary, where you then position the guns so that they can be used as effectively as possible in the following fight.

Apart from that, the different zombie species are always good for luring you into traps or demanding quick decisions under time pressure. Often you have to choose between fleeing, fighting to reduce your enemies, or killing the scream-zombie first, which causes even more enemies.

This is of course not a real-time strategy tactical depth, but still, the game here sometimes has nice moments, where you don’t just have to slaughter, but can gain advantages with less thinking.

InGame Shop, InGame currency, Item shop, Pay2Win in World War Z?

This only briefly, because I think it is a very nice point in this game. In the current version, World War Z does not contain any buyable in-game currency and no item shop.

All characters, weapons, skins, etc. must be played in the game and there is currently no Pay2Win in this title. I think that’s very nice and wanted to mention that in praise. Of course, this can change later, but I think that’s unlikely.

World War Z Review: Further Development, DLCs, Roadmap

The game will continue to be supplied with new content after release. DLCs for the game are already announced. The first DLC should be released in May already and will be free of charge. It will then bring a 12th mission and a new enemy variety.

Whether later DLCs will also come for free or will be sold, I can’t say at the moment. A roadmap for the game has been announced, but it is not yet available.

World War Z conclusion and rating:

As a solo game, it already offers some very exciting hours and absolutely entertaining action fun. This is especially true because the AI-controlled players don’t act as stupid as you are used to from other games.

But World War Z can really flourish when you play it as a multiplayer co-op. Teamwork and matching the characters to a group playstyle are definitely much more entertaining. And also the replay value increases enormously by playing with friends or random players. The latter is, of course, a matter of taste, I would definitely prefer friends.

The graphics are upper-middle-class, the zombie hordes partly act zombie-like stupid as expected, but have quite varied behaviors and know how to surprise you. And when the big swarms come, which have never been seen in this form in any other game before, there is at least with me a special thrill.

For the introductory price of about 35 Euros, World War Z already offers a lot of fun for co-op action players. Whether the purchase is worthwhile for pure single players, I doubt. But with upcoming expansions, the game will surely increase in size and since at least the first DLC will be free, the offered game value will improve even more.

I had a lot of fun testing and I think I will continue to play a round of World War Z in the future. For fans of zombies and zombie games like Left for Dead or Save the World, the PvE part of Fortnite I think it’s absolutely worth a recommendation.

In terms of values, I give the game in the release version an 80% rating, with supervision for more, if more content increases the game volume and variety.

World War Z Review – Outro

I hope you enjoyed this performance, thumbs and subscriptions are a joy to my little Creator heart. And if you are thinking about buying the game, I would be very happy if you would like to use one of my affiliate links to do so. Then I’ll get a small commission from your purchase, without it getting more expensive for you. With this money, I can then buy future games for testing or improve my hardware, which will also mean even better videos. You can find more tests and reviews on the main page ; with that, I wish you a great day, have a good time, ciao ciao, your zap.

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