World War Z (Game)

World War Z (Game)
Information
Developer(s)	Saber Interactive
Publisher(s)	Mad Dog Games
Director(s)	Dmitriy Grigorenko Oliver Hollis-Leick
Designer(s)	Anatolii Koruka Pavel Ryazantsev
Artist(s)	Petr Kudryashov
Platform	PlayStation 4 Xbox 1 Microsoft Windows (PC) Nintendo Switch
Released	April 16, 2019 - PS4, XB1, and PC (Standard Edition) May 5, 2020 - PS4, XB1, and PC (GOTY Edition) TBA - Nintendo Switch
Genre(s)	Third-person Shooter Survival Horror
Rating(s)	M

World War Z is a four-player third-person shooter survival action game based on the movie and novel of the same name. It is developed by Saber Interactive in conjunction with Paramount Pictures and its publisher Mad Dog Games released the game on April 16, 2019 for Microsoft Windows (Epic Games Store), PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. A Nintendo Switch release is expected to be released at an unknown date in the future.

A Game of the Year (abbrev. GOTY) edition of the game was released on May 5, 2020.

Overview

World War Z is a four-player cooperative third-person shooter. It is a zombie-killing action game that follows unique stories and missions from different parts around the globe. The main objective of the game is to kill, escape, and survive the zombie apocalypse.

The player has to combine stealth and effective killing spree tactics to navigate around the zombie masses. These gameplay aspects become particularly important as difficulties are raised, making the zombies much tougher and aggressive.

The game rewards players that cooperate to be more effective (integrating a voice chat), to progress quickly and stealth (avoiding additional waves of zombies that could be attracted by noise or roam randomly), and to search areas for better weapons, defenses, and other utilities.

All the missions are pleasantly story-driven and the player has to complete many different tasks alternating areas that suggest stealth play to others that require an organized defense against hordes of hundreds and hundreds of zombies. Each episode is divided into three or four chapters that take place in New York, Jerusalem, Moscow, Tokyo, and Marseille, with each location following a different set of four survivors.

To improve the replayability and the overall longevity of the game, there is an abundant use of RNG through all the missions, concerning the weapons/items players can find and where they can be found, as the waves/hordes generated differently in each location to be less predictable, as different paths to progress in the map. Often player has to improvise to manage new critical situations and an organized team that works together is extremely valuable.

As the player chose a class to play and progress mission after mission, new abilities become available for each class, improving chances of survival and adding to the complexity of tactics with the team. Also just using any weapon unlocks progressively many upgrades for it, improving significantly its effectiveness and also allowing to personalize the weapons found in the missions.

At the end of any mission, players earn experience for their class and weapons and Supplies for unlocking better versions of their weapons and class perks. Challenge Coins are earned after beating a mission in the higher difficulties.

How to play

As the player starts the game several features are available like campaign mode (PvE), PvP, weekly challenge (PvE), Horde mode (PvE).

Playing the campaign, the player can also choose to play in a public party (with random players), a private party (just with your friends), or offline. Then the player can adjust the difficulty of the mission (number of weapons/items in the mission and overall aggression by zombies) and choose their class.

Once in play, the player has a primary, a secondary and a heavy weapon, that can change based on the class chosen, its active abilities and what player gets in the mission. Also each class has a specific consumable equipment to use and additional items that can be found/replenish during the mission.

As the player complete any mission some rewards are available based on the difficulty, performance, and optionally, if any survivors managed to complete the special objective: experience (xp) to level up the used class, Supplies (to upgrade weapons), and challenge coins (for special weapons and cosmetics).

Once a class reaches the max level 30, it can be reset to level 1, improving the "prestige" and adding a new special ability. There are at the moment 5 prestige levels for class and they cost each 7500 gold coins.

There are then other PvE play modes with different rewards based on the difficulty and team performance: Horde mode (where the team has to survive a long sequence of waves of zombies more and more intense and aggressive placing/replacing defenses and searching around for useful items between rounds) and Challenge mode (weekly missions with several different active modifiers).

Story

The world of humanity is on the brink of extinction. From New York, Moscow, Tokyo, to Jerusalem, the undead apocalypse continues to spread into massive swarms of zombies that recklessly rush their living prey.. Countless millions of ravenous zombies without feeling or fear overwhelm and infect the embattled survivors of World War Z.

As the end looms, a hardened few band together and endure. Alone, we are easily overcome. Together, they must bring down the horde and press on.

Tips and tricks

- The easiest way to improve for new players is starting from lower difficulties and completing all the missions before increasing the difficulty as the class becomes more effective and they become more experienced with mission objectives and weapons. That's because the game is very penalizing if all the players die. To improve efficiently your class (and weapons) you need the completion rewards, so you need to complete missions at the lowest difficulty where you have almost 100% chance of success as a beginner. Harder difficulties will come later, don't worry.

- Play as a team. Lone wolves die fast and often. That's because the game is designed to assault you from the sides or even behind randomly; lurkers can wait for you behind any corner to pin you on the ground and kill you and only your team can save you there. Also the team is much more effective playing coordinated and you will complete the mission in half the time.

- To level up fast classes you just have to complete missions fast at the highest difficulty you can win consistently. If you have favorite missions, replay them to become faster and more efficient.

- The experience/rewards gained are based on 3 elements: mission success (increased significantly by chosen difficulty), player performance (small amount), number of virus samples collected by your team (only one per player, so maximum 4)

- The bonus experience/reward from virus samples can be small (for just 1 sample) or huge (if your team get 3-4 samples). So look for virus samples around the map when you can. You can also kill bomber zombies (they have a clear and peculiar sound) with melee attack (after you fired on their legs) to find more samples. Just remember to play safe, if you die with a virus sample you'll lose it and most of the time it won't be possible to revive you.

- Because you want to complete the missions as fast as possible, you want to upgrade your weapons to be more effective, also you want to use silencers to pass quickly through most of the mission without attracting waves and waves of additional zombies. Some weapons upgrades don't have a silencer even at max level, so chose carefully. At the end, a level 4 weapon with a silencer helps much more than a level 5 without.

- As beginner try to upgrade first all the weapons you have when you start missions with your class; that will improve the damage and, even more important, add a silencer to them.

- Don't forget to upgrade your secondary pistol; at level 4 it can headshot normal zombies even at the highest difficulty, and all the classes starts with it (in particular when you reset the class to increase the prestige rank).

- Don't buy all the classes abilities and weapons upgrade at the beginning. Try to understand what they do and if you really are going to use them more often than the other alternatives. Otherwise you won't have gold for the strongest (and most expensive) ones.

Roadmap

(Season 1)

• Undead Sea Update

Reception

World War Z received "mixed or average" reviews on Metacritic receiving a metascore of 70/100 on PC, 67/100 on PS4, and 73/100 on Xbox One.

Trivia

• Infestation: Survivor Stories (formerly known, The War Z) was forced to change their name due to World War Z being in development and trademark problems.

Media

Images

Videos

World War Z – PSX 2017 Reveal Trailer PS4

References

• Gamasutra Press Release