This is one zombie apocalypse gamers could do without.
When playing The WarZ back in its alpha stage, I couldn't help but be taken aback by how utterly boring the game was, and how virtually every aspect of the game was unfinished or broken, and yet, I kept playing. I dropped thirty dollars on the early alpha access, and I was determined to not only get my money's worth, but contribute to the process of being an alpha player, and testing the games strengths (of which there were almost none) and weaknesses (of which I lost count), and I stuck with it, through all the boredom, frustration, and exasperating inconsistencies and annoyances, but only for a week. One week into the alpha, I ran into over twenty hackers, got murdered as soon as I spawned, got glitched into the map forcing a restart, got killed from fall damage by sliding ten feet down a nearly horizontal plane, got killed by a server crash, got killed by zombies in the floor, and through it all, I realized, I was not having any fun, whatsoever. I told myself, because it was in alpha, I would have to forgive the shortcomings, and hope that Hammerpoint would get most of them ironed out for the games official release, whenever that would be.
Well, it's been just under three months since The WarZ "left" alpha and moved into its "foundation" release, and I've got to say, the game is still a broken, buggy, mess, and charging money for it in it's current state, is unacceptable. I don't want to hate this game, because in all honesty, it has plenty of ideas (while not original) would do wonders for an open world zombie game, and had this product been handled with more care and skill, it could have been something great. What we have here now, however, is a game that is still obviously in alpha/beta stage, being marketed as a game that is ready for the public to play it, and at a cost, which just isn't true. Even if the game were free, it would still be hard to justify spending any time in it. But, before I delve any deeper into what WarZ gets wrong, I should probably talk about what it gets right.
For starters, the atmosphere is tense, and unpredictable, as death and discovery are constantly on the horizon. Walking great stretches of wilderness to come across a settlement you've never seen before sparks the desire to search and scavenge for essential supplies, and knowing that zombies or bandits could be waiting for you adds to the tension. The visuals, while dated many years in both technical performance and visual flair, can look appropriately gloomy under the proper circumstances. The map is also large with plenty of places to visit, and scavenge. Lastly, you can occasionally find a player or two willing to work with you to survive. I once found a group of foreign gamers, and through our meager attempts at communication with one another, managed to squeeze several hours of trusting and rewarding gameplay, out of the game... before the server crashed, and we never spoke again, due to the games lack of a friends list.
Sadly, that is all that can be said about the game in a positive light. Make no mistake, this is a bad game. It has good ideas, but it is a bad, bad game, and of the thirty+ hours I've spent with it, only a few were enjoyable. For starters, the game just doesn't play very well. The map is huge, and your character runs so slow, that the lack of any vehicles to speed up travel, and the wealth of barren, empty forests that you're forced to trek through to reach locations of importance, means a lot of the time you spend in WarZ, will be walking from place to place, bored to tears. The character movement is also not very good. Characters have a tendency to get stuck on level geometry, making running from the undead, and the evil, a frustrating endeavor. Combat is also a bore. Guns are everywhere in WarZ, but ammo is scarce, so you rarely get the chance to use a gun, and are forced into melee combat to conserve ammo. There is no technique to melee combat, and the whole of it comes down to button mashing. Just walk up to enemies and click the left mouse button until they drop dead. There's also very little to do in the game. Aside from scavenging for supplies, there's nothing else to do but murder other players and zombies, as quests (a planned feature) are still not in the game, and skill unlocks are still greyed out, making killing zombies pointless.
Then there are the glitches. WarZ is one of the buggiest games to be released in recent memory. The whole game just feels unpolished, almost as if glitches were deliberately ignored to get the game out the door. You could alert a zombie to your presence and watch it run in place, only to be killed by its ghostly apparition. You could gently slide down a thirty degree hill and die from fall damage for no reason. Items can often be found floating in midair. Hacking is also a huge problem in the game. Running rampant like a forest fire, hacking is almost a guarantee in this game. Spawning into a game, to be show through the floor by a hacker across the map is never not frustrating. Wall hacks, map hacks, health hacks, damage hacks, weapon hacks, WarZ has them all, and you should be able to see most of them within a very short timeframe. This hostile, deadly nature prompts what is The WarZ's biggest problem, rampant player killing. Bandits, traitors, hackers, and about everyone you come across in the game, will shoot you on sight, loot your corpse, and then mosey off into the distance to do it again to someone else. While this brutal, competitive nature would be enjoyable in small doses, as not knowing whether or not you can trust a stranger adds a great deal of tension to the game, it eventually becomes clear that you can't trust anyone, and shooting first is the only way to stay alive in this harsh, unforgiving, and miserable zombie apocalypse.
The micro transaction system has already been torn apart by most people left and right, so I won't go too deep into it, but you should know, Hammerpoint obviously built this game to encourage paying more than the price of admission, as odds are stacked in favor of players that pay for supplies, such as ammo, weapon attachments, food, water, and other essentials through the use of in game currency (which takes a ludicrous amount of time to accumulate) or real game cash, and considering everything you purchase can be taken within minutes of spawning by bandits and hackers, even the micro transaction system isn't reliable.
It's obvious that this game isn't even close to finished, and it's hard play the game and not see the whole thing as ploy to cash in on the success of last year's Arma2 mod DayZ, which is vastly superior, and free. Missing features, such as friends lists, skill trees, private servers, vehicles, and quests, only add to the feeling that the whole game just has no reason to be out and available for purchase. Add to that the numerous bugs, annoyances, and the incessant, rampant player killing and hacking, and there's very little, if any, reason to recommend WarZ to all but the most diehard of zombie apocalypse enthusiasts. Do yourself a favor, and give this game a pass.
Concept: The WarZ is a collection of great ideas that never coalesces into anything meaningful or whole. 4/10
Gameplay: Boring, broken, and almost always frustrating. So many hackers. 1.5/10
Graphics: It has the atmosphere down, but this game is usually very ugly. 3/10
Sound: Little to no music and bad, repetitive sound effects, make this game a bore to listen to. 2/10
Story: There is none. N/A
Final Verdict: There's really nothing about this game that's good at the moment. A huge, wasted opportunity. 2.5/10
Review by Alex Keenan