Zombie Army 4: Dead War

Review

Despite having defeated Zombie Hitler and sent him straight to hell in 1945, the resistance is still fighting a humungous horde of zombies, who are even stronger than before. Only the best marksmen/women can destroy them one by one, as every bullet counts. Welcome to Zombie Army 4: Dead War!

Zombie Army 4: Dead War is a third-person shooter game developed and published by Rebellion on the Epic platform on the 5^th of February 2020. The game is also available on PS4 and Xbox One. There are three editions for sale, from the Standard to the Super deluxe on all three platforms. 

I have been a fan of the Zombie Army and Sniper Elite series since the first games emerged, and I had the great pleasure of playing the demo as part of the media frenzy in June last year at E3 2019. I must admit that I didn’t want to leave my seat, and played over and over again!  The great news is that the game has now been released, and boy, I had some fun with it!

You can play the game solo or in co-op mode, which consists of 9 missions and 28 chapters in total. The goal in each mission is to reach the safe house at the end of each chapter and get the biggest score possible by maximising your killing combos to level up and unlock new items and perks. By maximising your combo(s), I mean keep the combo alive, as you have a certain number of seconds between each kill to keep it going, otherwise you’ll start all over again. Each chapter has collectables to find, as well as working Zombie hands which are cleverly displayed within each of the chapters, and quite funny at times. You’ll also discover some unexpected items, curious because of their bright colour in contrast to the dark atmosphere of the game. When you shoot at them, interesting things happen, which is fun. There are small and large crates that have a white glow that you can interact with. The small ones have grenades or mines while the larger ones usually have a weapon enhancer, such as electric bullets. Bear in mind, there are only 15 bullets available with these enhancements each time you pick them up.

The game is so much fun, and you’ll have the signature X-ray kill camera, which is always a pleasure to watch when you manage a top shot with your sniper rifle. The headshots are fabulous, and the teste shots are glorious (not my testes, don’t worry; they are zombies testes)!

As you reach a safe house and manage to find a weapon upgrade box in the last chapter, you‘ll be able to upgrade any of your firearms on the workbench. As I mentioned, you can unlock perks and items, as well as skins for your weapons, but it will take you some game time to unlock them.

One way to receive great experience points is to play the Horde mode (multiplayer mode), where you have to stay alive for up to 12 waves of zombies in order to open the safe house door.  However, if you are playing with another 3 good players, you can keep fighting more waves before entering the safe house.  It is quite a challenging mode in the normal difficulty to reach the 12 waves, and in the hard difficulty is noticeably tougher! 

At the time of writing this review, I have finished the game in the normal difficulty, and I am halfway through my second campaign on the hard difficulty. 

I really like the weapon progression and the character’s customisation. And the graphics and atmosphere are fabulous. The story is fun but ultimately you’re here to kill Zombies! The issue I have with this game is the multiplayer mode. I played several co-op and horde games on both DirectX 12 and Vulkan, and I must say that I experienced lag on both when I joined a game, but not when I hosted one. That said, I am using NBN Internet (highest speed available in Australia). And that’s after choosing my region servers for matchmaking. I am a bit disappointed in that regard. Apart from that, it’s a good game.