Released to much popularity on PC, Nazi Zombie Army was the standalone add-on for Sniper Elite V2, featuring a new set of locations, characters, missions and not to mention zombies. With three new campaigns launched in total, it only seems right that we see Zombie Army Trilogy launch on the Xbox One. But the big question is how does it perform against its PC counterpart?
The simple answer is relatively well, if you miss the occasional screen tearing and frame drops when the mayhem becomes just too much to bear. If every player within your squad was to put all their explosive equipment down and set it off at the same time, the game would certainly see a major drop in performance and you’ll notice this now and again, even just through playing properly.
The game is best played as a team of four, so you’ll definitely be wanting buddies for this one. Spanning across three campaigns, there are around five chapters to each campaign, which will have you spending hours on them, as they range in difficulty. The action on-screen is primarily clearing through hordes of zombies, but there are some interesting objectives along the way to spice things up a bit such as finding explosives in an impressive keep and helping a man locate his treasure.
The gameplay is actually quite enjoyable and even though the well known bullet cam doesn’t feature as much with four players online, it’s still satisfying to string together headshots on the undead. I have to say out of the three campaigns, the final chapter showed much more promise, with more side objectives and exploration on offer. It’s just a shame it came so close to the end. Specific missions have their own unique secrets too, which I thought was an interesting idea and I was always curious to find out more such as when I found a body on the floor and a creepy little girl’s voice came from it.
Offering a whole locker of snipers, submachine guns, shotguns, pistols and explosives, Zombie Army Trilogy gets the best out of all your equipment. You’ll always find yourself short of ammo because there are just so many zombies to deal with, so you’ll need to scavenge dead bodies and look for buildings to search for stashes of weapon clips.
The array of enemy types will also keep you on your toes, especially those heavy gunners and pesky snipers jumping building to building. You’ll frequently find yourself scrambling into the next area filled with tougher enemies and each chapter always hits a ‘defend yourself’ section, whereby you must kill everything that comes at you before you can move on. It’s quite a repetitive process, but it also feels rewarding and challenging, as the environment is rarely ever the same. Sometimes they’ll be in tight enclosed underground labs, whilst at other times they’ll be set in a mist-filled swamp.
All in all, Zombie Army Trilogy is an enjoyable blast with a group of friends and that’s definitely how the game was designed to be played. Sure you can play alone, but you’ll probably find it more challenging even though the difficulty is tailored to the number of players through factors such as enemy spawns and the number of zombies thrown at you. Despite the performance issues suffered on the Xbox One edition, the gameplay still remains fun and is definitely worth a buy if you happen to have some spare cash to spend. Although you may overlook this title and go for something a little fresher.
Pros
- Popping zombies’ heads off is always satisfying
- Mysteries to explore in some levels
- Overall a fun game to play with friends
Cons
- Performance issues with frame rate drops
- Bullet cams almost non-existent with four players online
- Needed more of the last campaign throughout the other two