Zombie Army 4: Dead War E3 2019 Preview

July 5, 2019 at 2:23pm
By Jason Stettner

The Zombie Army series returns following the release of Sniper Elite 4 awhile back. This is a long tradition for Rebellion, releasing a main entry in the series and then doing a zombie spin-off of it. This continues with the fourth entry titled “Dead War”.

This is actually a huge step forward for this set of games, as they went all out with this one It really does feel like it’s an entirely different experience, while still having a fun element that the Zombie Army games are known for. To prime yourself, I definitely suggest checking out the Trilogy as it’s a lot of cooperative fun.

This one carries forward that tradition of coop based play as you can be in a squad of four players. I was able to play two player coop while at E3 2019, and this was just as fun. The setting is a 1940’s Europe, featuring what seems like a large scale campaign.

Hitler might have been cast to hell, but the dead are still rising which isn’t great for humanity. There are many elements of customization across various aspects of your characters and a number of extra tools to deliver on those undead freaks. The signature elements of sniping focused gameplay return, but in a much more frantic style of play.

You can still see some amazing kill shots with bursting guts, but it does focus on making sure you’re moving around. The zombie hordes felt really dense here, more so than ever before. That’s great as it makes it feel more realistic, with an extra sense of being overwhelmed. It’s not particularly too difficult, but you get some more fear. The level we played while at the show focused on having a train crash into an outpost, and everything going wild. There are people running about trying to survive and you’re just fending off the undead.

This was multi-tiered as you’re initially holding the dead back from an elevated position and then they come bursting in. If you’re lucky to remove this pile of corpses from their second life, you get to move forward. This opens up the environment to a larger, yet still linear focused setup. If you’re familiar with the regular Sniper Elite series this might feel odd, but it’s more present during this spin-off as it makes sense for the setup.

The past entries have had large areas, and that may be present here too with the full release. I really liked what I saw, it was a ton of fun to play and I can’t wait to see what they do here. It was also mentioned that this game will be taking advantage of Xbox One X and Playstation 4 Pro consoles. Check out our preview of Dying Light 2 below or the E3 2019 hub for additional coverage of the event.

Read our Dying Light 2 E3 Preview
View our E3 2019 Hub