World War Z is one of those games that, try as you might, it’s difficult to actually say anything about. So with this in mind we have broken the formula a little bit when it comes to this review and Luke and William will review the game together.
As said in the intro, I don’t really know what I can say about this game. Whilst I do have quite a bit of fun when Will and I play it, I can’t decide if I am having fun because I am enjoying the game, or if I am laughing AT it. On a base level, the game feels like a shameless rip off of the Left 4 Dead series, but with World War Z’s Zombie Towers as seen in the film, but really that’s the only tie-in to the film (I have no idea about the book I’ve not read it) that the game has. Ultimately you just end up fighting through a handful of stock levels that, after playing for about 3 hours, get really tedious and boring.
The game just pushes you through a plethora of cut and paste corridors with a few “Stand your ground” type areas where you need to take down a horde of Zombies whilst protecting Generic A, or Generic B thing. SOMETIMES this works really nicely, and when the horde kicks in, the tension rises substantially, but aside from these small moments, the game just feels flat and empty. It tries to extend the gameplay with the addition of specific classes you can level, but these just feel tacked on as the game never really feels like it pays off for the levels it gives you.
Another thing that feels ripped straight out of Left 4 Dead is the graphics, they honestly look like something taken straight from an Xbox 360 game, and this is not acceptable when remembering that the PS4 is nearing the end of it’s lifecycle at this point and graphics as a standard need to be stronger than this. As a whole, I do get sense of fun somewhere in the mediocrity of World War Z, but this comes from playing with friends and dicking about more than it comes from the quality of the game.
We said it once. Well more than once… This game is just Left 4 Dead but with a third person perspective, and less replayability. Without the A.I director that made Left 4 Dead famous and changed up the routine now and then, WWZ is just the same shit each time. Some zombies, objective, slightly more zombies, guard objective annnnnnd massive scary zombie horde that soon becomes more tedious than scary. It’s noticeable too that even with the decent length of time that I put into this game – more than most of my relationships really – I never seemed to make any progress in the “storyline”. I hit storyline with the quote marks there because the plot of this game is about as thin as poorly made soup; I mean we might as well not even have it there. However, unlike our time in The Division (An equally story thin game), World War Z tries often to force the plot down your throat.
Case and point, during the missions in Moscow, gameplay came to a grinding halt as a random women I’d just saved spouted exposition at me for 3 minutes straight. That’s what I want… A chat… Not zombie killing… I normally judge my opinion on a game like this if I can enjoy it without any friends online and honestly, I never played WWZ without Luke. I saw it on my playstation and just passed it by for other games until Luke would be online.
Overall it’s not a bad game, controls are pretty tight, gameplay is generally enjoyable if not repetitive and the characters you can play as will give you a few unintentional funny moments but really this game just… Exists. It is. And that’s all I can say on it. Oh wait I can also say. Fuck the bull zombies and their ability to charge around corners, just… Fuck that thing.
With this in mind, we give World War Z a:
For more World War Z antics, why not check out Luke and Will’s gameplay stream here!