Full disclosure, I’ve never played any of the Zombie Army Dead War games until now. But I have played the Sniper Elite series from Rebellion and I absolutely love them!
So going into Zombie Army: Dead War 4 I wasn’t sure what to expect and even then I still wasn’t disappointed, because just like the Sniper Elite franchise I can’t wait to play these titles with my team.
Zombie Army: Dead War 4 starts off at the end of the 3 installments of the series from what I can gather. You get to choose which character you’re going to play as and straight away you’re taken into the fray with undead Nazi soldiers roaming the streets of Milan during the “Dead War”. Being familiar with Sniper Elite I choose a character I was familiar with Karl Fairburne because if you’re going to kill the undead. Do it from a distance with a high-powered rifle and you can enjoy watching their heads blow up.
Now one of the things I loved about the Sniper Elite series which carried over to the Zombie Army series is their attention to detail when it comes to taking out an organ or any sort of special shot. This same principle is applied to Zombie Army: Dead War 4 as well. I shoot the head just right, BOOM cut-scene in slow motion where I watch their little nazi brains get blown to kingdom come. But that’s not what I’ve come to love with Rebellion, one of the things I’ve adored since I was a little PC builder is that they take the time to learn and optimize their games.
Zombie Army: Dead War 4, much like the rest of the Sniper Elite series fully utilizes DirectX 12 and even Vulcan. What that means to the end user is that the game can always look amazing if your system can handle it. One of the things I’ve come to love from the franchise is their endless attention to their product, not rushing its development and designing something that everyone will enjoy and love, only modifying it when they feel it’s truly necessary.
Rebellion has taken the same mechanics they’ve used in every Sniper Elite and Zombie Army game from my understanding and went with them if it’s not broken, don’t fix it only add to it much like how in this game they’ve added a means to modify equipment. Now, this may be a running staple but since the Zombie Army Dead Wars series is new to me. I want to call this out and say how much I love it.
Zombie games have always had a multitude of modifications they can add to weapons to give them unique effects and Rebellion taking that stance toward their Zombie Army series makes me happy because for me. It helps make the game more interesting with the ability to modify the ammo capacity of your weapons, give them electric bullets, and so on.
Narrative-wise of the Zombie Army games, I’ll be honest I haven’t gotten too far into it yet to piece it together but considering that Hitler fell into a giant pit of doom in the third one and the game starts with earthquakes and tremors. I’d suspect ol Adolf is going to make a grand return in this title later down the road as I keep playing.
But I want to draw a conclusion based on the data that’s presented itself so far. The Sniper Elite games have helped in the design of this game so much that I love it, and I do hate it at times. Because there are no direct means to control movement speed in the game and I feel the character positioning on my screen could use some readjustment. I had the same issues in the Sniper Elite franchise and it’s become more tedious than anything to deal with.
However, that is really about my only grievance with the game I just don’t like or feel how the character is positioned. The voice acting is flawless, and the fact that all the characters I’ve come to love from the Sniper Elite franchise are in Zombie Army Dead War 4 makes me love it even more because jumping into this I felt that air of familiarity and it helped make the game more special to me. My only concern is when my friends and I will be able to play it together since It’s not on Steam and even though we all have Epic Game Store accounts, we generally don’t like using Epic Game Store.
Is it worth picking up on consoles, and PC? Most definitely and I highly recommend it.
Zombie Army Dead War 4 is optimized and designed well, so far a strong good narrative for a zombie game it contains everything we would want in a zombie game while still being true to the Sniper Elite franchise in its gameplay and features.
An autistic gamer with opinions on games who also enjoys making dumb videos on the internet!