Review for Zombie Army 4: Dead War. Game for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 04/02/2020
Although time has passed since its release, Left 4 Dead remains one of the playful cornerstones of the modern era. Fast, fresh, incredibly funny in its repetitiveness and focused on a reasoned yet quick and painless cooperation: enter the lobby, go from point a to point b and in the meantime massacre everything that moves. This formula gave way to a real playful vein, the “surgical” rib of the classic CoD-style shooter which, more and more often, offered a single and cooperative sector.
Zombie Army 4: Dead War, in this sense, follows exactly this path: the saga, which first started as an extra mode of the Rebellion focal series, Sniper Elite, soon began to be equally played and followed as the single player campaign.
Such a large following, with a formula not too dissimilar to the one that Valve packaged for his personal playful homage to the ever-rotting world of the undead, lived with the same devs to make it a saga of its own, separate but not too much from Sniper Elite. . Zombie Army 4: Dead War, last (and in some ways first) chapter of the saga, is probably the emblem of how a ludic vein in its own right is created completely and unexpectedly from "nothing".
Over the years, however, Rebellion has not been able to completely renew the saga, which has essentially offered the same playful-mechanical movements with negligible novelties after all. Will Zombie Army 4: Dead War be able to shake off the dust? Let's find out with our review!
Zombie Army 4: Dead War is a zombie-themed third-person shooter, heavily influenced by the classic trappings inaugurated a decade ago by Left 4 Dead. The title, as already done by its predecessors, will be based considerably on the last chapter of the Sniper Elite saga, especially as regards settings, weapons and, less clearly, narrative events while maintaining the usual mechanical-playful "independence-dependence" . that the two parallel sagas have consistently maintained over time. As happened more or less similarly in the other chapters, recently remastered and included in a collection available for the current gen, in Zombie Army 4: Dead War we will face an army of Nazi undead, who devastate Europe despite Hitler, in the undead version and leader of this supernatural army, was finally defeated during the events narrated in the trilogy.
This time, however, we find the one that increasingly assumes the connotations of a real campaign, complete with a plot (surprisingly pleasant in its simplicity), related missions and so on. All seasoned in a sauce that tends to be "over the top", not too far from some classic American stars and stripes B movies, with tragicomic situations and lines of conversation that clash, in a sufficiently pleasant way, with the overall "realistic" aesthetic. .
Of course, the play center of the title is obviously the four-party cooperative campaign on which the game is based: each single mission is divided into different phases but usually it remains in a limited geographical area to achieve certain objectives, facing hordes of zombies with the swastika that attack us. Once the stages are completed, we will arrive at the classic safe house, in full Left for Dead style, in which we will be able to restore health, regain ammunition and enhance our character, who, based on the chosen class and performing actions in the game, will be able to unlock different passive characteristics and / or active.
Speaking of the protagonists of this "rotten" adventure, at the beginning we will have the possibility to choose between four heroes available (others can be unlocked later), each of which will possess peculiar passive characteristics, in a sort of attempt to create a role differentiation between the classic clichés (the tank, the murderer, etc ...), albeit with some variations to the formula adapted to the use, for the most part, of guns. Even the weapons, currently not very many in terms of aesthetic diversification, can be upgraded as long as you have the necessary "upgrade kits", objects that will be obtainable during the game.
Each character will also have an initial loadout, consisting of a melee weapon, an emergency muzzle (usually a pistol), a primary and a secondary weapon. Despite the inclusion of some role-playing characteristics, albeit only timidly mentioned, Zombie Army 4: Dead War will be able to count on a respectable and rather varied arsenal, including weapons with elemental effects or roleplay-derived effects (such as, for example, weapons capable of healing). All of course framed by the aesthetic and ballistic care that has always distinguished the flagship product of the Rebellion library, Sniper Elite, which will make things more sparkling especially at the highest levels of difficulty or if you try to get a high score, which it will be the direct emanation of combining different "activities" without suffering any damage.
In addition to the campaign, we will have the opportunity to undertake a classic horde mode, in a style not too dissimilar from the one inaugurated years ago by Gears of War: from a minimum of one to a maximum of four players, the mode will put us to the test in maps, taken from the campaign but with a modified design specifically for the game mode, in which we will face increasingly complicated waves of undead, to which we will have to use by exploiting not only the lead, but also traps and the very shape of the map. The modality will not bring great variations to the ludic formula described so far, but it will still be an excellent diversion and a pleasant addition capable of increasing, which is already quite extensive, the overall longevity of the title of Rebellion.
As soon as you step into the game, you will immediately notice that jumping headlong against the undead is not a wise idea: in the stages, in fact, we will almost always be overwhelmed by a myriad of undead and for this we will have to strive to survive. About this various exploitable elements will come to our rescue, such as explosive barrels, dangling weights and traps of different types, to be activated and which will become substantially fundamental to "manage" the waves of zombies gradually increasing not only numerically, but also qualitatively. In the game we will find zombies armed with flamethrowers and gatlings, as well as armored aberrations or kamikaze ready to blow themselves up and cause significant damage to the party. If you consider that at the highest levels of difficulty, the game will automatically activate friendly fire, you have the knowledge of the rather high difficulty of Zombie Army 4: Dead War and, consequently, of the overall necessity to proceed to a real overall cooperation. in the internships that we will face, in which communication and strategy will be necessary under penalty of defeat.
The stages that, in addition to a continuous face hordes upon hordes of the undead, will offer the classic clichés of the genre inaugurated by Valve: activation of switches and defense of limited points of the map, exploration (albeit contained) in search of useful elements to achieve the specific mission to which we will meet. In general, Zombie Army 4: Dead War will be quite varied and the cooperative multiplayer will cover the "shame" of a gameplay that in essence, is a sort of mash-up between the canons of the series and some variants introduced by another title of Rebellion - Strange Brigade - from which it clearly inherits some mechanical choices undertaken by the British studio. Bad? Absolutely not, but a bit of additional experimentation would certainly have helped.
From a more purely technical point of view, Zombie Army 4: Dead War will certainly be pleasant, albeit fluctuating in many matters. The Asura graphics engine, certainly valid and reliable, shows the side quite visibly, at 360 °, due to a certain, overall age. Starting not only from the textures (better those of the characters, worse the environmental ones), but also from a certain inaccuracy of the controls, albeit millimetric, to some slightly woody and "forced" animations, emanating from a recent past.
To this, add some frame drops in the most agitated screen situations, at least as regards the PlayStation 4 version, tested here with the Pro version of the Sony flagship. Of course, these obvious limitations are largely mitigated by a cost of the title almost halved compared to Triple A productions and, all in all, by a department with some mole and which will be a bit dated but which, in essence, will not greatly affect the fun. that the title manages to offer.
Zombie Army 4: Dead War is a safety both for those who already know the game, but even more so for those looking for a fun and thoughtless cooperative, at a low cost. Despite a tried and tested formula with guaranteed pleasantness, the Rebellion title limps a bit on the technical side, at the same time not introducing any new weight compared to the past.
► Zombie Army 4: Dead War is a Shooter type game developed and published by Rebellion for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 04/02/2020
