Now Playing: World War Z: Aftermath

World War Z: Aftermath AKA Left 4 Dead 3 is a third (or first) person zombie co-op shooter. You and up to three friends can fight your way through 7 campaign based episodes comprised of 23 levels, or try your luck in the limited – but fun – horde mode. There’s also a challenge mode providing unique modifiers to various levels, and a competitive multiplayer.

World War Z is, more or less, a Left 4 Dead game in all but name. You have 4 characters to choose between, a pistol and a primary weapon with heavier ‘special’ weapons that can be found randomly placed throughout levels. Each episode has between 3 to 4 levels and mostly involve moving from A to B, broken up with a few horde defence sections. Zombies come in the regular or special varieties, such as the hunter – sorry, lurker – or the charger – sorry, bull. If you’ve ever played L4D, you’ll know how it works.

But that’s not to say that War Z doesn’t have any of its own ideas. Rather than follow the same 4 characters across every episode, War Z takes a global approach to the zombie outbreak, with each episode set in a different part of the world with a new team – New York, Jerusalem, Moscow, Tokyo, Rome and Marseille.

War Z also has a class system, complete with a level system and perks you can unlock as you progress. There’s a Gunslinger class that focuses on being the best at shooty shooty bang bang, or the Hellraiser that focuses on things that go boom. In total there’s 8 classes to pick from, and you use virtual currency earned from completing missions to purchase their various perks.

There’s 5 difficulty settings in War Z and the harder you go the greater the rewards. Every weapon also levels up as you use it, although you do need to purchase each individual upgrade level before you can keep progressing which is kind of annoying.

Zombies are also far more numerous in War Z than in L4D. The hordes in War Z come charging at you like a relentless tide of dead flesh and bone. It’s really quite impressive to see as they pile up and form zombie pyramids and it never gets old tossing a grenade into the base of the swarm and watching the pieces go flying.

When you’re fighting hordes you’ll typically have access to a few defence items such as stationary or automated turrets, barbed wire or electrical grids that can help you slow down and thin out the herd. And it’s those moments when you’re fighting a horde that are the real star of War Z. It’s like the final escape section at the end of a L4D campaign, only in War Z you get it several times throughout each episode.

War Z is undoubtedly fun. The levels are fairly short, but not too short. For all the zombies on screen at once the performance is always smooth. Visually, it’s a good looking game. It’s a little repetitive at times – the missions don’t really vary much from that A to B formula. But I enjoyed working my way through the missions both in solo with AI – which is surprisingly decent – and again with a friend in co-op.

I think my main criticism of War Z is that it lacks personality. Compared to L4D, none of these characters really stand out. It’s all a little too serious and po-faced. There’s not really any humour to be found and you won’t come to have a favourite character to play as because they’re all pretty bland regardless of who you pick.

And that’s all I really have to say about World War Z. It’s a solid, enjoyable game that does enough of its own thing to stand apart from L4D and offer a fun alternative. The characters are so bland that I’m not sure I’d even call them characters. The missions are all pretty much the same despite the variety of locations. The horde mode could do with more than one map.

But despite its shortcomings, War Z is worth picking up if you’re growing tired of L4D and want a new game where you can shoot lots of zombies with friends. There’s plenty of content here to keep you busy, plenty of missions to replay on different difficulties, classes and guns to level up and perks to unlock. It’s a game I’m sure I’ll keep returning to every so often for some mindless, simple zombie shooting action.

7/10