Zombie Army Trilogy (PS4)

Great game

"Zombie Army Trilogy" is the spiritual successor to the Sniper Elite series. A third-person action shooter set in an alternate time line where in 1945 with the Russians storming through the streets of Berlin, Adolf Hitler instead of taking his own life invokes "Plan Z", using occult powers to resurrect all of the German war dead - and there are A LOT of war dead! As with the Sniper Elite series, the main character of the story is OSS sniper Karl Fairburne, although there are also seven other playable characters to choose from, including a Red Army Infantryman, Wehrmacht Captain, French resistance fighter, and German Occultist. All characters essentially play the same as each other though, so it's purely a cosmetic choice. Game modes include solo play, co-op play, or horde mode. Controls for the game are broadly similar to those people familiar with sniper Elite will be used to playing with, and the game also has many other features that were common in that series, including X-ray "kill cam", and an inventory system that allows you to choose a primary weapon from a selection of sniper rifles, secondary weapon such as sub-machine gun or shotgun, a pistol, as well as grenades, mines, and TNT. Where the game differs from Sniper Elite is in the manner of play. Rather than concentrating on stealth, patience, and long range killing, Zombie Army is more of a run-and-gun type experience. You will rarely get the drop on your enemies, and most sections of any given level involve you fighting off the slowly encroaching hordes of zombies, using your environment (such as explosive containers) to help cull the crowds, or fortifying defensive positions against an assault. This is both the games greatest strength and greatest weakness. It's a strength because it replaces the slow-burn, stealth heavy experience of Sniper Elite with a much more accessible shoot-em-up style of game that rarely gives you a moment to breath and in which you never quite feel you've got enough ammo to finish the job, but a weakness because it makes the traditional sniper aspect of the game a little inconvenient and difficult to use as combat is generally conducted over much shorter distances, against enemies that rarely stand still, and against such numbers that you rarely have enough time to pull off more than a couple of long range head shots before you have to resort to your secondary weapon for some close combat. It is however a pretty tense affair. You crawl through the darkened ruins of Berlin, destroyed German and Allied vehicles scattered around and the ground littered with the bodies of the dead, the screams of the few living souls that remain ringing out from the distance, and the howls of the undead never far away. It's got a pretty neat soundtrack too that helps ramp up the atmosphere and reminds me of something from a Romero zombie movie. Enemies come in a variety of forms. The basic zombie - usually armed with little more than a simple club or entrenching tool - is easy enough to kill, and even in large numbers can be outmanoeuvred. Head shots work the best of course, but in order to not make it a too restrictive playing experience, sufficient application of fire power to any part of the zombie will destroy it. Other zombie types include the "suicide zombie" that charges at you at full speed before detonating its bundles of dynamite and are much more difficult to deal with, skeletons (both armoured and unarmoured versions) that unlike the traditional zombie require a hit to the chest rather than the head to dispose of, zombie snipers who are one of the few enemies that use weapons and can also leap from vantage point to vantage point to escape return fire, demons, occultists, and elite zombies toting a massing MG42 machine gun and capable of soaking up massive amounts of damage. This is an older game now - the first game being initially released as a DLC for Sniper Elite V2 in 2013 - and remastered in this trilogy back in 2015. Whilst it does admittedly look a little basic by current standards (I'm writing this in 2020), it's good enough that it stands the test of time and it's looks don't detract from the quality of the overall game play, which is a somewhat simple but excitingly high-octane experience that makes Zombie Army Trilogy well worth the modest amount it costs to pick up!

Although a semi fan of zombie genre games I love this game, something new and exciting to play Very arcady, hellishly cool with the level of details graphically, vocal yet comically it's also amazingly gory creepy and created by masters of Sniper Elite III. The zombie sound effects are just as much clearer and mastered the way it should be! My favorite has to be the music, it's absolutely awesome something i've been dying to hear within a video game very atmospheric 70s/80s & 90s very tempting to listen too, it pumps you up in the mood to survive and challenge the horrors ahead of you. As said above i wouldn't say this is my favorite game of 2015 but it's second to Sniper Elite III UE. So if you enjoy zombie games, endless fun blasting nazi zombies left, right, back and forth then this is the game that should blast you out of your misery as it did myself and i'm sure many others.

Seeing as this game is about being a sniper it is poor and the game is basically a " shoot em' up" with poor guns. The original Sniper Elite wasn't bad but this is a poor second. Although quite play-able i bought this game thinking that you would basically be a sniper (i.e. one sneaky bastard) whom shots from a high hidden position etc. but all you get with this game is a constant army of zombies whom find you where ever you are once you walk through the game. I would have preferred a game where as a sniper you could have eliminated certain targets fro a safe position in order to progress with chance, poor judgement and mistakes being part of the play but as i said this game is just a "shoot em up", walk...zombies come...shoot all...walk...more zombies...shoot...final boss..next level...BASIC stuff! could have done with with a gatling gun or a tank to make it more interesting lol. Don't waste your money is all I say....

Okay

Constant fun , always challenging, great features throughout the game. One of our favourite games to date.

Do you like shooting zombies? , with slow motion hits on long shots, hit delays an x-ray type on hit so you can see exactly what damage you've done. Any "Sniper game fan" this is for YOU. Any zombie shooter this is for you. Prefer third person shooters, this is for you. You don't just get your sniper, you have a choice of secondary weapons, choice of pistols & a choice of explosives (& meele, stop too) . You change your load out before you start the game, whether it be 1 of the 3 campaigns, horde mode (which is brutal) or chapter select (you can play any chapter at any time, solo or in online multi-player. Graphics aren't amazing, game play is good, with replay value in online co-op in campaigns or horde mode, or with solo, the get the collectibles, for the price it's well worth your money & for you Trophy hunters; yes there is a platinum.

I love this game, yet I hate it at the same time. It is so atmospheric, scary, insane and bloody brilliant all in one. Playing solo you feel like its you against the world even after a horde has been dealt with you still dont feel totally at ease, then bam! More zombies. I also like the wave mode where you just survive for as long as possible. Its a grim, unchained, exciting, engaging, game which is unrelenting and unforgiving at times. Yes, it lacks a proper fleshed out (Thanks, I'm here all week) story and in that way is similar to Doom but is seriously worth the £20 odd i paid.