"World War Z" review: Meet with fire, guns without bullets rain

Since the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, the world has had one more original horror genre, and since then, the Living dead have come into view. The earliest introduction to the concept of zombies should be the 1997 game "Resident Evil", probably from here, the concept of "zombies" was officially established and received attention, promotion, widely popular. And this has contributed to the classic science fiction in 2006, Max Brooks works "World War Z", but he may not have thought that 13 years later on April 16, a scientific and technological revolution will bring it into the game, into today's "World War Z" (hereinafter referred to as WWZ). So, what's different about this new zombie that's just been born?

Before the start of the review, I have to say that the PC side of the game is currently exclusive to EPic and blocked the country area, which is undoubtedly a heavy blow for PC players who love this genre. However, "you have your good plan, I have my wall ladder", a large number of domestic players have crossed the region to buy the genuine version, and the EPic across the sea to support a. Of course, the player on the host side does not have to be so, placing orders and making payments, and it is quite easy to hit the zombie.

It's clear from the "Rabies Virus" backstory that the developer is trying to copy Left 4 Dead, and Saber Interactive CEO Matt Karch talked about this in an interview. As we all know, the reason why L4D is popular in the year, always rely on its multiplayer cooperation online mode and the MOD map that continues to maintain fresh vitality. So, in today's technology far more than a decade now, we can obviously guess that developers want to make some changes, and then break the shackles, and from the results, it has changed, but the results are disappointing.

Feeling of inclusion

In today's gaming world, which emphasizes a sense of engagement, WWZ's performance in this regard should be commended. First of all, in terms of role selection, compared with the year when only the "four Kings" supported the pedestal column, the choice of 4 times the characters of 16 countries did surprise the players, which is indeed the best in the same kind of games. In addition to the number of changes, unlocking the backstory as a performance of the game, so that players have a curiosity after reading a simple summary of the character biography, and all the static beauty of the production of a one-minute story, from the content and dubbing, is really very high level. This part of the character is not much interesting, and if the player has seen the book and the movie, it will be more impressive, although the movie is not very good.

As the first version, in the story line, plot, chapter of the work did not exceed the predecessors, "short" should be a reasonable evaluation. WWZ is indeed faithful to the original, the introduction and title of chapter 4, section 11, from New York in the Western Hemisphere to Tokyo in the northern hemisphere are as close as possible, I have to say, on the surface of the content it does very well. However, this success did not go further, but unfortunately stopped.

The whole game has two modes, divided into online and offline, PVP and PVE, in terms of offline single player mode, although the plot has 11 sections, there are only four maps of New York, Yale Sang Leng, Moscow and Tokyo. No slot can be found in the scene and true restoration of the entire map, which is worthy of recognition, but the segmented setting makes the shortcomings of the map and process "short" exposed.

From the perspective of single player mode, standing in the position of new players, in the face of the oncoming tide of corpses, often because of failure to fully capture the upcoming climax, the game experience suddenly ended, one wave, two waves, three waves, four... "Bang", screeching to an end, so the game goes on, the tedium of the offline mode is exposed. Although this can be talked about from the sense of fun and integration, of course, Shi Lezhi's AI is also an obvious problem, but the reason is always related to the "short" of the map and process. In contrast, the multi-person cooperation mode, teammates help each other, fight side by side, the integration of the environment and the integration of the community, so that the integration of online PVE is relatively good, and the sense of accomplishment of beating back the body tide exists at the same time, the situation is different. Therefore, this "short" problem has been covered up and has not been solved.

Feel of hit

From this point, we can also see that WWZ force in the pursuit of the ultimate experience online, this has been explained in the third paragraph of this article, but as a TPS, the sense of integration is only one of the place, the feeling of hitting is also indispensable, but new players are easy to lose themselves in the sense of integration. When the visual experience such as modeling and picture quality reaches a certain standard, subconsciously, they will excessively look at cooperation, blindly pursue the amount of corpse tide, and gradually be attracted to ignore the quality - the exhilarating feeling of high-quality strikes, which is often the most concerned point of old players. WWZ in terms of refreshing, in fact, can not be called good, standing in the position of old players to consider, "popcorn" should be an appropriate adjective.

When it comes to shock, it starts with weapons. The game's weapons have improved a lot compared to the 2008 Left 4 Dead game, adding the upgrade system in the online game FPS. It was a very good point to talk about, but this upgraded gun is only for single use, and can not achieve independent disassembly and assembly, hateful like drinking half a bottle of Coke, it is not satisfactory. On the issue of "popcorn", naturally it is the performance of the game's sound effect, which is really puzzling. In the common switching system of alternating main weapon, secondary weapon and heavy weapon, loading, loading, firing, resisting zombies, demonstrating achievements, the sense of accomplishment after one go should be satisfied, but in WZZ, this satisfaction is finally destroyed by the "popcorn" -like sound effect. Of course, only this point, there is no substance to talk about the "sense of attack", the sound effect of "attack" must be available, the most important "sense" must also be available, and this is to talk about the "death squad" - zombie tide.

The addition of the zombie tide is the biggest point of view and the main embodiment of the game, but after all, it still lost the "people's heart" in the attitude. If you are a player who has played WWZ for many days, you should find that when you keep shooting at the incoming zombie tide with the popcorn machine, when the bullets Pierce into the broken shell, you often have such a feeling: "Am I fighting zombies? How do I feel like I'm fighting a bunch of SpongeBob Squarepants?" Of course, this is the experience of experienced old players, for novices, I am afraid it has already been flooded by this "overwhelming" wave of big scenes. And screaming zombies, wild cows, predators... These elite zombies who have changed or not changed their names still cannot escape the unique framework of L4D, and nine out of ten are retained. From the developer's point of view, although there is a "feelings", but after 11 years today has not made a big change here, there is indeed a bird gun does not change the old, conventional sense, nothing more than will make players have a perfunctory view. Therefore, in WWZ, the gap in the core gameplay still isolates itself, even if it is more dust into the sense of integration can not save it.

prattle

After talking about the main problems of the work, we basically reached a conclusion, but just like the news broadcast, there are always some news in the program, although the nature is different, but in the form is still consistent. So let's talk about its feelings, bugs and compatibility issues, which also makes the score more comprehensive.

Careful players may notice that, looking down from the second floor corridor of New York in the first chapter, the entire display is indeed a tribute to the hospital lobby in L4D, including the elite zombies mentioned above, and Jerusalem in the 2012 film adaptation of the same name. Not to mention other issues, foreign ACG workers or pan-entertainment workers, in the "Easter eggs", "feelings" of the level of participation is still recognized by the industry, and this is also a point for the game.

The bonus points of feelings have gone, and the bad things that seriously damage the game experience are inevitable to say some. Because of the pursuit of authenticity in 3D, "time change" has become a common setting in shooting games. Although the same is true in WWZ, a magical operation has been measured: when the magazine is empty, it can be realized without timing by switching weapons, and the switch after swinging the knife in melee is applicable at the same time; With the same nature, there is the problem of setting the scope of activities of the zombies and the setting of the map scene: through different angles of observation, it can be seen that the zombies are standing in various corners "waiting for the rabbit", waiting for the player to approach. Whether these two are attributed to "special skills" and "intentional", or "bugs" and "technical defects" is unknown, but for the reason of the first version, it is still classified as "BUG".

The problem of gameplay can be considered comprehensively due to the different versions and the size of the manufacturer, and the compatibility of hardware and software is the same. However, the compatibility problem has become a more serious problem since WWZ was sold today. Thanks to Saber Interactive's collaboration with AMD, the game is much more compatible with A cards than with N cards. After testing, it was found that because WWZ supports Vulkan interface access, in the case of lower power consumption, compared with 3D limited DirectX, its compatibility with A card is better, so that the compatibility gap between A card and N card is more obvious. However, the N card shows better compatibility after matching with DirectX, so players also have a choice.

Sum up

Recently, WWZ's live heat on Twitch continued to decrease, although the developer invited some famous anchors to live play, but this did not make WWZ's reduced heat to recover. In view of this phenomenon, we can see that the combination of "exclusive + low gameplay" allows Saber Interactive studios to pursue more share at the same time, the game into the Dead Sea, more salt water, salt is unbearable.

On the whole, WWZ does not have the refreshing feeling that TPS should have, the sense of integration is still reasonable, and the sense of achievement is slightly thin, but the addition of zombie wave and the shocking appearance picture are still commendable. In view of the first version, if the following improvements are made in these three aspects, the compatibility problem is dealt with as soon as possible, appropriate activity benefits are made, and the creative workshop is opened in the future, Should pick up some of his popularity again. However, this is for the volume of more than 22G of the game, it is really disappointing, can only be said: together with the fire, the gun forest without bullets.