Stickin it Reich to ‘em.
Zombies, or more accurately, Nazi Zombies are nothing new to video games or pop culture for that matter. And when Rebellion was looking to produce a standalone expansion for their Sniper Elite series, the vile undead of the Third Reich was more than ready for the approaching slaughter. While Zombie Army: Trilogy, released back in 2015 was a very enjoyable co-op zombie shooter, it lacked a great deal of polish across the board, making the title extremely fun, but rarely impressive. Half a decade later, Zombie Army 4: Dead War makes good on that polish and executes on exactly what this series needed to be.
Taking place a year after the events of the Trilogy, where Hitler was cast into the depths of Hell, you’ll play as a group of fighters looking to stop a legion of undead from resurrecting their Führer. You’ll encounter necromancers attempting to raise the dead, acid spitters hoping to melt away your skin, buzz-saw wielding juggernauts who can take some serious abuse, and even a zombified shark for good measure. Dead War has you traveling from Venice, to Milan, the forest of Sardinia, to even a Croatian Zoo, and more, all in the efforts to stop evil where it stirs. Each location is packed with new zombies, waves of undead, and a few interesting set pieces that set them each apart. You’ll push through largely linear levels to retreat to a safe room, fully stocked with health kits, more ammo, and a few interesting surprises.
The story of stopping such a resurrection is one that is told to you via voice-overs, the NPC’s you encounter, or cutscenes between levels. Being an online co-op shooter, it’s very possible to have people chatting over the dialogue, causing you to miss some crucial information. That said, the story is still one that matches the feel of what Zombie Army is going for, in many ways the same that another title by Rebellion, The Strange Brigade, had going for it as well. The presentation of Zombie Army 4 is through each chapter acting like a pulpy horror film, complete with fake movie posters used to select your missions. This presentation is obviously borrowed from Left 4 Dead, but it’s safe to say that Valve’s shooter has birthed much of what games like this will always continue to offer.
Apart from purchasing any of the DLC, you’ll have four unique characters to choose from at the start; Boris and Karl, who return from Zombie Army: Trilogy, and newcomers Jun, and Shola, making up the female half of the fighters. There are, at the moment, two DLC characters in Hector, a zombie pilot, and an undercover version of Karl decked out in a Nazi Commander uniform. Where Dead War separates itself from its predecessor is that it contains a pretty substantial progression system that looks to reward those who want to spend time in this world, ranking up and equipping perks, improving their weapons and so much more, such as takedown attacks that reward those close-range shenanigans with some much needed health.
As you gun down every threat that comes your way or by completing each chapter’s unique challenge, such as getting rifle kills while on the boat or completing a level in a set time, you’ll earn experience used to rank up your character. You’ll also have a score modifier that contributes to your overall earnings that can be increased as you keep pumping bullets into the undead. This makes pushing through hordes of zombies a fast and furious affair as you’ll constantly be trying to keep that modifier going and one-up your co-op partners for the higher score.
Each character has access to the same weapons, but will also have their own unique traits, such as Boris being able to charge his Special Melee faster, or Shola needing less kills to charge her Weapon Focus ability. Weapon wise, you can equip three different types at any given time, allowing you to wield a rifle, a specialized weapon like a shotgun or assault rifle, and that of a pistol. You’ll also find a hefty variety in the different grenades you can toss, such as incendiary, shock, or even healing grenades as well, which are mighty helpful as medkits are hard to come by during battle. There are also mines and trip-wires that are extremely useful for protecting your flank or simply to set a fun trap for an incoming group.
Each weapon has its own tech tree that varies on the gun, but more or less allows the weapon to have some sort of damage boost, magazine increase, alternative scope, as well as some sort of special ammo type. As you rank up or find them in each chapter, you’ll earn upgrade kits and each gun takes 12 of them to fully upgrade it, unlocking the ability to earn its mastery setting, which unlocks a special weapon skin and will boost damage to that weapon type. The weapon upgrade system can certainly make your favorite gun pack a wallop and really pushed me forward to keep with certain guns to get the most out of them, and leaves me plenty more to unlock on repeated playthroughs as more and more people I know get into the game. The only exception to the weapon upgrade system that I feel is poorly handled is that your upgraded loadout cannot come with you via the horde mode, which forces you to find the basic tiered default weapons as you push through the 13 waves, or more should you neglect escaping.
Weapons handle extremely well and shooting feels very precise. Getting a headshot has a very satisfying squish sound and the hit-boxes given to each zombie are pretty generous as well. You can pop in and out of a scope with the A button to line up your shot faster than moving the slower zoomed-in view around as you attempt to trail that sniper that is hopping from building to building. You can swap aimed-shoulders while aiming and holding X, giving you the ability to peek around corners a bit more efficiently. You also have a melee attack as well, should zombies get too close while you are reloading. That said, my only gripe with the weapons is that pressing Y to swap guns can be somewhat unreliable, especially when you are aimed up and needing to swap weapons as some undead have gotten the jump on you.
As you rank up, you will unlock a variety of new content; weapon skins, gun charms, melee attacks, and perks. As you unlock perk slots, with the fifth and final slot being unlocked at rank 35, you can equip a variety of perks that range from offensive to defensive, to others that simply boost your score modifiers or affect your stamina. Perks get better stats as you complete certain tasks once unlocked, such as getting 500 offensive grenade kills, reviving your teammates 30 times. or reaching a 100 combo modifier. Perks let you essentially create rudimentary classes, as you can prioritize certain traits like boosting your trap damage, performing melee takedowns faster, or gaining health on headshots. The perk system is really fleshed out and it’ll take more than a few playthroughs of the campaign or completing each horde map to unlock everything, let alone leveling up each perk.
Despite its undead setting, the variety in each level is remarkably superb. You have some interesting moments such as surviving on a boat in Venice, navigating the lush vegetation in the Zoo, to leaping over the volcanic heaps of lava that have erupted from Mount Vesuvius. I was consistently impressed with how good this game looks and the variety Rebellion has injected into this new iteration. While I still feel the human characters have less than impressive models, the zombie threat is rather well crafted with a slew of interesting foes. As you push through each location, you’ll be introduced to new and more menacing zombies that operate in a tiered structure. You have simple threats such as the more traditional shambling undead, to officers like the necromancer who can constantly resurrect newly killed zombies, to heavies such as the flamer, who packs a massive flamethrower, or the heavy gunner who wields a bullet spewing machine gun.
The campaign contains nine levels that should take you roughly around 8-10 hours, depending on the difficulty you’ve chosen and if you’ve joined alongside other players or went about it on your own. What’s really interesting about the difficulty options is that you can choose the zombie output within those difficulties such as going solo on its easy setting but with the output of zombies meant for four players, making the game highly chaotic. While you can set up lobbies and wait for other players to join, you can also just have them join mid-level, or seek out other games in progress. My only issue with the matchmaking is that while you can create a game to start via a certain chapter in a mission, you can only search games through their respective mission. All that said, the matchmaking features here are far better than what we had with Zombie Army: Trilogy and go a long way in making or joining or creating a game vastly intuitive.
As you progress through each chapter, you’ll have a variety of collectibles to track down. These include comic book covers created for the game, documents that further expand the lore, to zombie hands that are roaming around Evil Dead 2 style that you can shoot down as they scamper across power lines or train cars. There are also heroic actions that can reward you with upgrade kits or weapon attachments should you save an NPC in need of rescuing in time. There are also a ton of other things to track down that I’ve still yet to see pay fruit as you’ll encounter a slew of dead rats, crows, horrific dolls, or in the case of the sixth level, a colorful chalice that erupted into a flashy light when I shot it. That aside, there are also several nods to other properties such as the cellar door propped open from Evil Dead 2 to receiving a message on the 140.15 frequency that gave me quite the chuckle being a Metal Gear Solid fan.
Apart from the insanely fun campaign side of things, Dead War also ships with a horde mode through four maps that start to expand a bit further as you progress through the waves. You can escape at the 13th wave, or push through further if you want. The four maps offer a decent amount of variety in their layout but are simply sections offered up already in the campaign, so their inclusion does feel a tad less impressive here. As you start your initial wave, you’ll simply have a pistol and new weapons will arrive as supply drops periodically, allowing you to wield weapons offered throughout the campaign. Again, as I mentioned before, you cannot bring your upgraded loadouts into this mode, which for me, sucks out a lot of the fun and progress I was making in the campaign. One aspect of the horde mode that I found rather fun is that your teammates will resurrect as zombies themselves if they are killed during combat.
Being adapted from the Sniper Elite series, X-Ray kill shots are back, letting you know when you’ve successfully punctured a skull or another body part that explodes in glorious slow motion. In multiplayer, these moments are sometimes short or sped-up, and while not entirely distracting, their purpose is more suited when playing alone to let you savor them. That said, there are lots of settings to make them very apparent during combat or lessened so they don’t distract you or your friends from the countless undead up in your grill.
Overall, I was really impressed with Zombie Army 4: Dead War as it is easily the game I wanted from it. The matchmaking is far better than we received before, and the variety in the zombies, the weapons, and the locations are remarkably impressive. Horde mode is a bit lacking and certainly needs some variety there, and maybe some levels that are solely built for the mode. As far as the campaign goes, it is very enjoyable and vastly replayable with several moments that really stand out. With Valve not looking to dive back into Left 4 Dead anytime soon, it’s certainly opened the door for copy-cats to shine, taking over the genre and offering their own unique spin on things. While Zombie Army 4: Dead War doesn’t really lead the pack in innovation or originality, it is currently the best of this style of game due to its engaging gameplay and solid progression systems. We’ve all killed thousands of zombies in our life prior to this game releasing, and thankfully, for this game’s sake, it never once gets old.
A review code for Zombie Army 4: Dead War was provided for the purpose of this review and was played on an Xbox One X/S
All screenshots were taken on an Xbox One X/S