Zombie Army 4 is a fantastically gory time, and playing through it reminded me of one important fact: it’s fun to kill Nazis. Regular Nazis, zombie Nazis — they’re all fair game. If you also want to kill Nazis, Zombie Army 4 is for you. You can even bring your mates along for the ride.
Before Christmas, I previewed zombie shooter Zombie Army 4. The gore and monstrosities of the Zombie Army franchise had turned me away in the past, but I’ll admit I may have been mistaken. While I love monsters in all their forms, I don’t care for zombies.
Zombie Army 4 might just change my mind. In the two-hour preview that I attended, I played through two campaign levels — “Meat Locker” and “Molten Nightmare” — and the game’s Horde Mode in a team of four.
For context, the Zombie Army games are set in an alternate timeline where Hitler uses the power of the occult to win World War II, leading to a Germany that’s overrun by Nazi zombies. That’s right, these games feature zombie sorcerer, Adolf Hitler. That’s video games, baby.
Gameplay is fairly easy to pick-up, and not too different from your run-of-the-mill shooter. You’ve got your primary and secondary weapons, your throwables and traps, a melee thrust that deals some whopping great damage and a stomp for smashing in zombie heads. Kill enough zombies, and you’ll also unlock a finisher, which has enough power to take down higher-powered tank zombies. Teething issues for new starters were minimal, and controls were straightforward.
Combat is based on the Sniper Elite engine, so anyone with experience in those games should have no problems at all — and the best part of this is that the Zombie Army games also adopt the sick bullet-time feature of Sniper Elite so you can see the full impact of your shots as they land with skull-shattering x-ray vision. And yes, you can shoot Nazi zombie balls off in slo-mo.
Players can travel throughout the entire campaign solo or in co-op for up to four players. When our team was immediately bombarded with leering, high-powered zombies, I was thankful to have company — but I can definitely see myself going solo for the larger campaign.
The “Meat Locker” level is a romp through a spooky dark forest. While the tide of the undead started slow at first, it wasn’t long before our team of four was surrounded. Zombies move relatively slowly in Zombie Army 4, but the sheer number and tendency to rush from all sides makes them difficult to manage.
One minute, you’ll be carrying a fuel tank for an electric door and thinking you’re in the clear, and in the next, you’ll get a zombie up the ass and groaning in your ear. But, as they say, teamwork makes the dream work, and I was lucky to have a team that covered our bases — even when a zombie tank rolled through the battlefield to mess our shit up.
Now, you might ask what a zombie tank is, and I’d tell you that it’s exactly what it says on the tin — a rotting tank that appears to be made entirely of dead human flesh. For good measure, the game also features a zombie shark — although we didn’t encounter one in our playthrough. This game is ridiculous, and it knows it. The self-awareness at the core of Zombie Army 4, is what makes it so fun, and what other medium could get away with these kind of antics? After all, it is a game that features Hitler, Zombie Sorcerer.
While travelling through the murky forests of the so-called Meat Locker would’ve been scary enough if we were just facing down regular groany zombies, Zombie Army 4 also has higher powered zombies, including this big boy.
Now, I’ve mentioned I don’t really ‘do’ zombies. When I saw this guy approaching, I put down my controller and hung my head. He is absolutely horrible. Every time my team died in our playthrough, it was because we ran into one of these heavies — the problem being that you can’t get anywhere close to them.
Chainsaws have a tendency to y’know saw. And when you’re the last one alive on your team, and you’re backed into a corner, and this dude is taking giant steps towards you, your chances of survival are pretty slim. Also, having a whole team of strangers groan as they watch you (their last hope) die tragically in the blades of a chainsaw is… rather disheartening.
What’s worse is watching your team mates resurrect as zombies themselves and come after you in your darkest hour.
The next level, “Molten Nightmare” was significantly faster-paced, and featured a Bond-style chase through a crumbling villa — as well as a lovely device known as a ‘blood fountain’ that opened up a new pathway. This blood fountain was fed on zombie gore, and required our team to get up close and personal with more wonderful, rotting corpses than we could poke a stick at. There was blood spurting from neck holes, gristle torn out of zombie ribs and blood leaking out of every undead pore. It was great!
Giant armoured zombies that required an armada of bullets to take down appeared in droves in this level, followed swiftly by another heavy with a chainsaw. There really is nothing like the sheer, sweaty panic of having a fleet of Nazi zombies baring down on your vulnerable, meaty body while your ammo swiftly runs out. It’s the ideal situation, really.
“Molten Nightmare” ended in a showdown with a giant lava hand that, from what I could gather from the brief dialogue, was the embodiment of Hitler’s dark Nazi sorcery. The power of this hand drew all manner of zombies to it, resulting in a mad and ungainly dash to survive as the courtyard our team found ourselves in shuttered and trapped us inside.
Here, there were zombies on the ramparts, zombies in chests, zombies crawling under doorways and zombies mounting Gatling guns. Beyond the campaign, which was a bloody good time, we also had the chance to try out Horde Mode, which, as you can probably guess from the name, featured multiple waves of attacking zombies.
This mode doesn’t have a win state, but continues until each member of your team has died a gruesome death. The team at Five Star Games, who were kind enough to invite us over for the preview, had a record of getting up to wave 13 in this mode, but our team only made it through six waves before we were pummelled into submission.
As a newcomer to the franchise, what I saw of Zombie Army 4 impressed me. As someone who doesn’t normally enjoy shooters, it might just change my mind. From the two hour preview I got, Zombie Army 4 looks set to be big, dumb fun — and that’s definitely when video games are at their best.
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