Review of World War Z (Switch)

Interactive saber World War Z is the very definition of a smooth and simple game that is very obviously inspired by much better titles, in this case the Left 4 Dead series, and it serves up a pretty lazy rerun, not excelling at anything in particular while still providing a reasonably enjoyable good time, as long as you have a couple of friends on hand to work with on your campaign.

There’s really nothing to surprise or delight here, as you (and up to three other players) traveled the world in a five-hour campaign spanning places like New York City, Jerusalem, Moscow, and Tokyo. Everything is perfectly useful material; Take on waves of zombies here, escort a bus there, cut millions of cannon fodder, kill enemies and level up as you go. It’s on par with the super bland Brad Pitt movie of the same name and, silly enough, abandons the tradition of the original Max Brooks book, a tradition that could have Really helped infuse this barren world with a little more character.

The main difference between this and other zombie shooters: the true The Selling Point of World War Z: It’s the ridiculous amount of undead you can have on screen at any one time, with the game’s signature hordes stacked on top of each other to scale walls and get to your location. Shooting the lower levels of these undead pyramids and watching them fall to the ground is where this one excels. It’s really fun taking out a lot of wobbly foes this way, but in all other cases, what’s in here are largely forgettable things that fail to infuse your action with any real dynamism, rather than delivering massively repetitive firefights. They lack a substantial challenge or a strategic spark. due to enemies offering little variety.

While in the likes of Left 4 Dead you will hear, meet and instantly recognize different types of enemies, for example change tactics immediately to deal with the incoming threat of a boom, in World War Z everything looks and feels too similar. Has “gas bag” enemies; enemies in hazmat suits that explode in a green mist and poison everything around them, and there is the usual range of enemies with shields to fight with, but they are so easily dealt with and so quickly lost in the chaos of huge crowds of Zs that never really make you feel like you need to change your tactics to handle them.

It says everything you need to know about World War Z, really, that as we sit here and try to remember the events for this review, we have nothing but a great hodgepodge of uneventful shootings to go over; We have killed millions of zombies in our time with this game, we have defended checkpoints against swarms of the undead, we have installed turrets and laid barbed wire, we have prepared our team for attack after attack and we have barely raised an eyebrow at all. time. Everything is fine and useful; braindead, repetitive and safe.

In terms of this Switch port, we’ve at least been impressed with how well things work. Frame rate drops to 20 seconds every now and then, sure, there’s no gyro support (not a big deal with the game’s generous aim assist) and image quality can get blurry when large hordes arrive. your location, but overall, this is the full World War Z experience, looking decent and playing well on a handheld console. We had some pretty long waits for online sessions when we played with randoms, but overall this is a very solid port of a game that we were hoping would have trouble on the Switch, so kudos to Saber Interactive for pulling it off.

If only there was more to everything in the end; a little more variety and style, a little more inventiveness in set pieces or wacky weapons with which to kill your enemies. As it stands, World War Z is a completely solid yet completely smooth endeavor, it does exactly what you’d expect with nothing in the way of surprises or flair. If you have a few friends to jump into this one, you’ll have a decent time, but it’s nothing you can remember for long.

conclusion

World War Z is a no-nonsense zombie shooter that offers a decent five hours of action if you can find some friends to play with. It is something repetitive; Basic and nothing surprising for the most part, but this Switch port is solid, managing to provide the full experience without too many glitches or other shortcomings. If you’re in the mood to traverse smooth masses of zombies with a few friends in tow, this one has you covered, but don’t expect much more than that.