World War Z Review

By Ben-Roy Turner / May 8, 2019

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Platform: PS4 (copy supplied by We Are Romans/Sony)

The year is 2019, and we are now in an era where movie ties-ins have almost gone the way of the dodo (or are relegated to phones), but the game based upon a 6 year old film - which was loosely based upon the best-selling novel, is for the most part a solid experience.

There won't be much for the fans of the book here, because this game isn't interested in tense character moments, instead seeking to take almost tsunami-like swarms of zombies and unleash them on the players with little to no downtime. If character development is what you're after maybe pop on the audiobook whilst playing.

However, it should be noted that Saber Interactive do go to the effort to flesh out the playable character by at least making them look rather distinctive - even giving each of them short motion comic cutscenes. All of this humanises what could've been a series of blank slates.

Getting down to it, the selling point for World War Z is the sheer overwhelming number of zombies it crams on screen, alongside how much fun they are to shoot. Surprisingly enough, fighting hundreds of zombies flowing as one towards a defended position is a hell of a time, and really goes to show something as simple as a zombie horde can go a long way in 2019.

So many other titles on the market right now are focused on being as big or complicated as possible - or they just want to be another live service - and it's refreshing that World War Z couldn't be further from that. It almost feels like a game that crawled out from a simpler time.

The zombies themselves are simple enough to take down and thankfully don't require precision headshots like their counterparts in Resident Evil 2 Remake earlier in the year. Planning your defences for each large encounter is really where it is at though, with the ability to put down barbed wire, traps, mortars or a range or turrets to hold the line for a long as possible.

Watching countless zombies fall to gunfire is super satisfying and on the lower difficulties can almost be relaxing at times - as sometimes we all need a game to switch off to. And taking down the zombie pyramids never gets old, whether you try to keep them at bay with a standard gun or watch them collapse with a well place rocket they help WWZ stand out from the generic zombie shooter.

Unfortunately, it's all the parts in-between these last stands that bring World War Z down.

Cont.