Xbox Series X|S Review Key Provided By Saber Interactive
Based on the book and film of the same name, Saber Interactive’s 2019 title, World War Z offered players a Left 4 Dead-like co-op survival title with a third-person perspective. While it may not have been a ground-breaking title, it did try to introduce a couple of new ideas to the genre that hadn’t been seen before, such as the mega-hordes of zombies that appear throughout it.
Over the summer though, Saber Interactive announced an expansion that no one saw coming, World War Z: Aftermath, marketed as the all-in-one ultimate way of how you should experience WWZ. It not only included the base game but all of the previously released content found in the GOTY edition as well as a plethora of new editions coming from the Aftermath expansion.
Upon playing Aftermath myself, I came away with just as many pros as I did cons. It is most definitely the definitive way to experience WWZ, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a masterpiece or even halfway there. The game is filled with bugs, poor design choices, or missing concepts altogether.
Story
Aftermath introduces two brand-new chapters into the WWZ universe. The first featuring a completely new set of survivors as they make their way through Vatican city all the way up to the Roman Colleseum. The second brings back a set of familiar faces in the group of survivors that we met during the Tokyo chapter. This time, a bit of time has passed since they’ve left their cruise liner and have to fend off the zekes in the Kamchatka peninsula.
Gameplay
When it comes to gameplay, I have to say, I was pretty underwhelmed. Firstly, the two chapters differ vastly in quality from each other. While the majority of gameplay is the same tedious or copy and pasted objectives, I felt that the Rome chapter felt groaning when compared to Kamchatka. The latter offered some cool mechanics like the battle against frost which slowly chips away at your health bar. I just felt like Rome took a safe and far more generic route overall.
A new additional hazard to these chapters is the inclusion of rats. They scramble around in a puddle of sorts and will literally jump at the chance to attack you. Moving into them, around them, or shooting at them will cause them to chase you until they overtake you to the ground. From there, they can even attack your teammates if they get too close when they come to the rescue. I thought that this addition was unique and actually pretty formidable at times.
Going into the new class and melee auditions; I thought that they were both passable. The Vanguard class offers a new ability which is basically an electrified riot shield for which you can just barrel through a horde of zekes. You can of course upgrade the class as you level it up and give it better and/or stronger abilities. The new two-handed melee inclusions are good enough but don’t really warrant a confetti toss. They’re limited to a couple of pairs of knives or a sledgehammer.
The thing I looked forward to the most but felt was realized the least was the new first-person viewpoint introduced in Aftermath. While it’s a really cool addition, in theory, it was executed in the poorest way possible in every facet. Aiming itself is fine enough but when aiming down sights, you don’t look into the scopes or iron sights. You just get a tighter reticle and a zoomed-in view of the regular one. It’s really jarring at first and makes this new perspective feel like it was just tacked on.
What makes it worse is the fact that your character moves awkwardly when using this perspective. Characters in the game have a tendency to slide a bit when you stop them from walking. It isn’t too noticeable in third-person but in first, it’s horrendous. It actually put me into dire situations due to my character sliding over a ledge once or twice. I think that fully redoing the character movement to match the first-person perspective or tweaking things would’ve made this feel a lot more optimized.
Another con I had for the perspective is the fact that while you’re in first-person, melee attacks switch you to a third-person perspective. The same can be said about other actions in-game. Why offer first-person if you aren’t going to utilize it fully? And if you want to switch between the two perspectives, you have to go into the settings just to swap. I find it really annoying that this wasn’t just a button prompt. It takes you out of the action and can get you killed.
The same can be said about the rest of the game’s controls as well. Even two years later, button prompts are finicky and the controls just feel off when compared to similar games in the genre. It all has a nice look but gets hampered down by a lack of strongly created mechanics.
I also faced numerous bugs that impacted the game entirely. One was an objective remaining on-screen for the entire duration of a level and another was a game-breaking one where the game ceased to progress at all. It’s issues like this that make it seem like the devs just don’t get it. A game, DLC, or expansion needs to be delivered to the players ready to go. This isn’t a beta test, these are post-release day issues.
Matchmaking is a complete joke as you’ll fall out of matches or fail to even join them at times. Even playing offline will still cause the game to place “matchmaking failed” types of messages over the screen even though you weren’t trying to.
Audio and Visuals
The new characters look and sound like they fit well with the already established themes of the franchise. Characters really seem to have personalities as opposed to being militarized robots that are just surviving. There’s some great back and forth between them, that shows the bonds that they’ve created with each other.
Replayability
World War Z: Aftermath really is the complete package. It includes everything you need to indulge yourself in some zombie-killing goodness at an extremely fair price. I’m actually pretty surprised at just how much content you can get for so cheap, walking in as a brand new player.
This is a title that is meant to be played with friends and that’s where you’re going to get the real enjoyment of what it has to offer, shortcoming aside. Playing alone, however, your mileage may vary.
What It Could Have Done Better
Besides the unfinished new mechanics, bugs, and other issues, Aftermath also falls short in a couple of other aspects as well.
For one, the two new female characters in the Rome chapter seem unnecessarily sexualized. In a world full of zombies, the devs thought it would make sense for women to be half-dressed. Daniela (pictured in the motorbike helmet) wears a ripped shirt that barely covers the bottom of her chest and Sofia (pictured in overalls) has both her bra and underwear showing. It comes across as a pretty clear objectification of women. It makes no sense to the characters or the story and looks like it was done simply for the sake of sexualization.
My other gripe is the fact that the next-gen enhancements and Horde XL Mode weren’t included in Aftermath’s launch. Why release an expansion when two important aspects of it aren’t even rolling out at the same time? They should’ve just held off on releasing Aftermath until those aspects were ready to go so that it could ship as a complete experience
Verdict
While World War Z: Aftermath is a lot of game at a small price, it does have some pretty glaring issues that still need to be fixed as well as some design choices that are questionable at best. If you’re a new player that wanted to get into the game, this is your time as long as you proceed with caution. For seasoned players, this may or may not be a reason to come back to the game as it doesn’t offer too much aside from its two new chapters. I really admire the continued work that Saber does on this title but there’s still a ways to go for it to be great and play as well as it should.
