Gaming
Zombie Army Trilogy Event
February 18th was a busy day. Work, errands and all those trivial stuff. No doubt I needed a bit of respite. But sometimes you have to ask yourself “What Would Rick Grimes Do”? So I met up with an old college buddy of mine and we made our way to the Prince Charles Cinema near Chinatown to get some sanguine, zombie-killing action in at the Zombie Army Trilogy promo event.
It was only recently that Rebellion’s PC Game Zombie Army made the huge leap from a PC game to the gaming console arena of the Playstation and Xbox, so surely we wanted to feel a little like we were part of history in seeing how well the game translated.
We made our way downstairs (after work and train delays we were kinda late) and got greeted by friendly staff and even greater bounty. They hooked us up with Zombie Army Trilogy T-shirts, popcorn for a Zombie flick and an energy drink that may have been outlawed in Russia. So we caught the last few minutes of an obscure, subtitled Nazi-Zombie film feature (a Norwegian film I think). Felt like one of those “it’s so bad it’s good type” films from what I caught. Pretty much lots of snow and Nazi Zombies. The most evil type of Zombies.
And after a viewing the trailer showcasing the awesome features of the game where a demonic Nazi Zombie Führer won the war by unleashing the undead blight on the world, and seeing the return of the games’ visceral X-ray cam, albeit of a Zombie being shot in the nuts, I was all but ready to get my hands around a PS4 controller and see how much carnage I could wield. So in just a few minutes we were decked out with our screens, warm, purring controllers and headsets and began on our journey of blood, guts and g(l)ory.
A group of four journeyed out in campaign mode, and the game gives us a bit of a safe haven to test out our weapons and get familiar with our controls before journeying into the Third Reich ring of Nazi-Zombieland hell. That’s about the only respite you were going to get, because as soon as you staggered outside with your sniper rifle, shotgun and pistol, all bets (and camaraderie) was off.
The environment is intuitive and interactive in design. You can lure zombie towards obstacles like jerry cans / tanks which you then can use to blow up a group of undead to thin the horde a bit. Bodies of dead zombies can be searched for more ammo if you run out of munitions. Just make sure they are dead. Had a straggler nip at my heels and for the life of me could not see why my vision was going burgundy red until it was too late. Got revived, but it still hurt as I remembered my #TAP10 list worst ways to die in a video game. That instance was slightly a combination of #6 and #3.
The sniper rifles are a doozy; you can toggle the scope on for those long-range cranium shots in ADS, or if you are more in a tight spot and don’t want your peripheral blocked, just toggle off R3 to get a more loose “shoot from the hip” type of gunplay going. You are able to set traps, and use a wide variety of incendiary devices. And if all that fails you can go for a solid kick to the head. Which was my panic button when there was no need for it. It’s just the zombies are so loud and frightening sometimes. God, I would survive a minute in a real apocalypse.
The controls took a bit getting used to (but in all honest, I think that was mostly just me) but once you get a hang of it, it gets highly addictive very quickly. That and the energy drink.
Zombie Army Trilogy is definitely a game you can get really stuck in, especially with a team of friends to play alongside with. And even though I missed a few headshots, I was downed only once. There should be a medal for that somewhere.
While we did play co-op campaign, there are other modes gamers can get into, including going solo or Horde Mode where you can face off against a never ending sea of undead Nazis, all with 8 playable characters with their own unique idiosyncracies that make them all viable candidates for surviving Nazi Germany’s final blight on the world.
Super fun game, definitely would recommend it, and the people at Rebellion were awesome too.
Zombie Army Trilogy is coming out on PS4, Xbox One, Steam and PC on March 6th 2015
