The world as we know it has ended as we try to survive the outbreak. Millions are dead, turned into these screaming beasts that track every sound they hear. They move at speeds that would shock and awe you under normal circumstances. We live by hiding and running. With the clothes on our backs and the weapons that we have, we must survive. This is our review of World War Z.
From Developer Saber Interactive and Publishers MadDog Games and Focus Home Interactive comes a game based on a movie, and that movie is World War Z. This is a third-person shooter in the same vein as Left for Dead. You have the ability to play the game in several different ways, co-op offline campaign, co-op online campaign, and multiplayer modes are the mainstay of World War Z. There is no solo player activity, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun with this type of game.
The campaign is pretty self-explanatory as it is online and offline. It gives your four “worlds” to play through. The worlds are New York, Jerusalem, Moscow, and Tokyo, and are all part of the story mode for this game. Each map has a big area to run through while you kill or avoid the zombies that are chasing after you. There are objectives you will have to complete on each of the maps as well. There are five difficulty modes that you can choose to play with, and all are level based suggestions. There is easy for starter level characters all the way up through insane for the pro type players. Meds and gear are more prevalent in the easy levels while they are scarce on insane mode. Choose, but choose wisely, for as the true level will help you with life, so too will the false level bring death.
In multiplayer mode, there are ten different classes that you can choose from. The classes are listed below.
- Survivor
- Trapper
- Specialist
- Warfighter (my favorite)
- Phantom
- Demolisher
- Striker
- Support
- Assassin
- Shadow
Each class has a specific weapon set that you can use. During multiplayer games you can get your primary and secondary weapons along with your equipment, however, the heavy weapons are only given to you if you capture one of the crates as they spawn into the world. Once you claim them they are only available for use for a short time. The different modes of multiplayer are listed below as well.
- Quick Match – will find you any random match as quickly as possible
- Swarm Domination – Capture zones to earn points and win a team victory
- King of the Hill – capture a single hill, then control it to earn victory points
- Swarm Deathmatch – two teams go head to head in a bitter fight to the end
- Scavenge Raid – collect resources scattered around the map or take them from fallen enemies to earn points for a team victory
- Vaccine Hunt – pick up a vaccine and hold it to earn victory points for your team
As you can see these modes are pretty straightforward and you won’t have to do any guessing about what you should be doing. The standard controls are pretty good to start with, however, I did change the crouch button to a standard c keymap. It was linked to left ctrl originally, and I guess I am just used to c when I play shooters.
Graphically speaking the character models are pretty good, the in-game levels are amazingly detailed, and everything you expect a game like this to be you will see when you play. Level interaction is one of the things that helps this game to move forward. You have to open this door here or turn on this switch there, and you will be given direction by NPCs that are there to help move the story along. Even the characters that you play as have backstories in the game that you can take a look at to see which walk of life they came from.
Note: Our copy was reviewed on PC with a code provided by Sable Interactive PR.
