One of the gaming series which I can always trust to release top quality sniping experiences is the Sniper Elite series. It’s one of Rebellion’s flagship titles, totally immersing the player in the role of a sharp shooter in the World War II era. Although Zombie Army Trilogy is not a Sniper Elite game entry, there is no doubt that Rebellion have used the same gameplay mechanics, visual style and formula. This makes complete sense as the Sniper Elite series always feels incredibly natural when you pick up the controller.
It’s a third person focused game which focuses on fast paced action. Featuring a mixture of long range sniping as well as short range combat. Zombie Army Trilogy contains a constant barrage of zombie hordes and tells an intriguing narrative of Hitler in an alternative version of our history books. As he commits suicide this unleashes a zombie apocalypse on the world in a last ditch attempt to win the war.
As you progress through the 18 chapters, each one lasting between 25-45 minutes across three titles. You will find that whipping out your shotgun and blasting dead limbs off the animated corpses or spraying them down with machine guns is the only way to survive. The title plays out in third-person but ADS can be used to bring you into first-person mode if you want to. All this is controlled at the touch of a button to switch backwards and forwards between modes. This is incredibly useful if you have been sniping the undead horde from long range and suddenly a zombie climbs the wall to your right. You can easily come out of first-person ADS and snipe them at close range. It’s smooth and elegant and never jerks the player out of the game experience.
Traps can also be set to help you, you can throw items down like trip mines and land mines but you can also bring other explosives like grenades and dynamite to the equation if you feel it necessary.
Enemies range from ordinary dead German soldiers all the way to super armoured grunts wielding heavy machine guns. The locations are similarly varied and range from destroyed cityscapes and horrifying forests. Rebellion is well know for building immersive and intense environments and they have excelled themselves with this title. One of the best features of Zombie Army Trilogy is it’s co-op mode, with you and three buddies attempting to survive the zombie hordes together. It’s a breath of fresh air as there are not enough games featuring co-op campaigns in video games right now.
The graphical quality is incredibly high and the gameplay similarly so. Seeing the cinematic of your bullet flying across the map to find the skull and brain of a zombie is spectacular. The audio of the zombie growls and the bullets being blasted out of the guns were spot on. There were no trailing echo or sound effects where there shouldn’t have been. The audio is as polished as the visuals and gameplay. The only negative is that I wished that the main characters spoke during the cutscenes.
With the announcement of Zombie Army 4 coming at E3, this is a perfect and addictive jumping off point for newcomers. For the price you get 3 games that make up an enjoyable single player or co-op campaign. There’s also a fun horde mode which significantly ramps up the challenge. This is a polished and accomplished game title from Rebellion.
