The four-player shooter for game night
Zombie Army 4: Dead War, hordes, friends and slow-motion bullets
- Critic score
- 76
- Player rating
- 4.3/5
- Main story
- 11.7 h
- Genre
- Shooter, Arcade, Action
From the makers of Sniper Elite, a co-op shooter that owns everything it is: 1940s Europe, undead Nazis and heads exploding in slow motion. Not a masterpiece, but one of the best games in the catalog to fire up with friends.
The previous game ended with a zombie Hitler banished to hell. That was not enough: the dead rise again, in greater numbers, and the survivor brigade sets out across Italy to find out what drives them. The story is a B-movie fully aware of being one, and that is exactly right.
Rebellion reused the Sniper Elite engine, and with it its signature: careful ballistics and the X-ray camera that follows the bullet all the way to impact. On zombies the effect is more grotesque than disturbing. You snipe at range, finish off up close and chain spectacular takedowns.
The game supports up to four players online. Weapons are upgraded with elemental effects (fire, electricity, divine energy), each character picks their perks, and levels are built as a series of arenas to hold against ever larger waves — armoured zombies, suicide bombers and possessed tanks included.
Solo, the game works but soon goes in circles. With others it is a different thing: you split roles, cover each other, revive each other, and chapter finales turn into genuine moments of group panic. Horde mode, with endless waves, stretches the evenings.
About a dozen hours of campaign, far more to unlock everything. Like Left 4 Dead in its day, it is the kind of game you do not buy for the story, but keep installed because someone always ends up suggesting just one more round.