Recent reviews by Fargo

The demo shows great promise, but I really hope the developer finds a 3D modeler or more artists to fill out the environment's textures, models and UI. The unity asset player models and ability icons that we see in all of these kinds of games is a definite deterrent for me. Games like Stolen Realms and Tormentis are just a few examples, these assets are always the go-to for a low-poly look, and it's so distracting. Despite the placeholder assets (Or at least I hope they're placeholder) lowering the overall quality, I have some faith that they'll sort out unique assets eventually. Though it's difficult to say exactly.

The fake players could use some oomph, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to use some form of generative AI to make them more immersive as 'players' later down the line. I'm not sure I'd pick this game up if the fake players remain in their current state, but even so, the developer has plenty of time to add more lines to each archetype of fake player before the launch in April. If their plan is to make all of the fake players from scratch, one thing I'd be looking for is to be able to form friendships or rivalries, especially with guilds. It wouldn't feel real without the drama of MMOs, all from the safety of it being a singleplayer game.

The gameplay feels familiar to anyone who's played an MMO, though it's still bare bones in its demo state. I like the quest dialogue, there's a lot of fun fantasy stuff going on that I look forward to seeing in the full release. There's a few bugs here and there, especially with quest item duplicates, but that can be patched. The items you can buy seem a little strange, and I hope that in the final release there'll be more streamlined vendors. In games like World of Warcraft, it's pretty easy to tell where the innkeepers are, the blacksmith vendors, the food vendors, so on and so forth. On the starting island in this demo, the person that gives you blacksmith blueprints is incredibly far away from the actual blacksmith workbench, as an example.

Regardless of all this, I want to give this game a positive rating for the time being, because I have a feeling things will improve when the game releases. If not, I may reevaluate my review when the game releases, and I give it a fair shake. For now though, if I could give a mixed rating, I would.

I bought Overwatch in late 2016, right around when Ana was released as a playable hero. At first, I was skeptical, since I was coming off of playing thousands of hours of TF2, so I was particularly embedded in the hate culture surrounding this game. Though, against my better judgement, I bought the Origins Edition of the game around my birthday. I played it, the game was decent, and eventually I started finding out people in my friend group had the game too. I played it with them, as well as on my own for hours out of a day, and ended up falling in love with the style and cast of characters.

Uprising came out in 2017. It was a PVE version of the game, it cemented my appreciation for Overwatch, as someone who does on occasion enjoy PVE experiences. To see what was essentially a shortened version of MvM in a game like Overwatch increased my hope that more events like this would happen in the future, and many of them did. I missed the first Junkenstein, but on it's return in 2017, I had a blast. When Uprising got a new release, I played it. I often would spend days trying to get all of the achievements, though I was ultimately unsuccessful as I had school to attend, and was otherwise preoccupied.

I played plenty of competitive as well, though I never played enough to get a gold weapon (I was 200 points away from one when I stopped playing competitive), I still enjoyed my time trying to cooperate with my team. In my early years of playing overwatch, I mained soldier 76 and tracer, though as time went on I played a more supportive role. I still enjoyed the game considerably through 2017, especially when Moira came out. Ana and Lucio were my mains, though I often gravitated towards Moira when I wanted to lay out serious hurt. Those were the days.

Not long after, me and my significant other started playing overwatch together. We never played any competitive, since she was never really interested in the competitive side of the game. We played often, we were the perfect support duo. And in 2019, I mustered the courage to ask her to be my girlfriend on the junkenstein 2019 main menu screen. We're still together.

We started to play the game less and less. My friends had moved on from the game, it was just me and my significant other playing, and we were still enjoying the experience. We played the new Storm Rising event when it came out, but I believe I only played it once. My interest was weighing, and so was hers. Though, that changed when we caught wind of a possible 'Overwatch 2' on the horizon. Me and my significant other were excited, even hopeful about the potential for something new, something interesting coming to Overwatch, And, since me and her were both heavily interested in PVE game modes, when we heard it was going to be potentially very PVE based, we couldn't wait to see what Blizzard had in store.

So, we waited. And we waited. To keep myself occupied, I played the 2020 challenges to get the new limited time skins. Things used to be free. I started losing interest again as the years dragged on, and so did my significant other. Then, we started hearing news of employees fleeing the team. We watched Mccree become Cassidy, we watched Jeff Kaplan leave Blizzard. When Overwatch 2 finally came out, we took one look at the Sombra clown skin we were awarded for owning Overwatch, and all of the micro-transactions, the battle pass and the false promises. That day, we told ourselves we would never play Overwatch again. We never would be able to, that much was lied about. All of the time spent, the hours leveling, the years unlocking skins and honing our heroes' skills. When Overwatch 2 came out, we felt like the Sombra clown skin, we were the clowns. This game has thoroughly wasted our time, and is desperately trying to waste yours as well. Stay far away from this title.

I'm going to start this off by saying that this is all cosmetic, and doesn't effect gameplay. I'll judge this as it is, and say yes, the depicted Psyker armour piece is wrongly portrayed, and people have the right to be upset by the false advertising. However, I'd like to preface this once again by saying everything here is cosmetic, and you're actually getting a lot more than you might think. You get a skin for every class, and since class skin bundles in the cosmetic shop are about 5 to 10 bucks each, this is a really good deal. You're getting 40 dollars worth of skins, not to mention the 12 dollars worth of aquillas, and the weapon skins which go for 400 aquillas, or 3 bucks in the cosmetic shop. You're getting around $75 worth of stuff for only $25 bucks depending on how you value the skins, and if you value them lower, then that's still about $55 worth of stuff. The skins are all pretty decent too, the skull mask is nice and the armour itself has it's positives. For what they are, they're welcome additions to anyone's arsenal of customization. A lot of them are unique, with a central skull theme to every set. Some armour pieces even have physical skulls, like the Veteran, who doesn't usually get actual skulls like the Preacher does. There's a lot of subtle differences and texture changes which I appreciate, as someone who works in the industry. Though of course, the outfits won't be for everyone, and it's a bit disheartening that there was a case of minor false advertising.

It's not as big a deal for me personally though just because I had bought this for the sole reason of supporting Fatshark, the cosmetics were secondary since I knew I wanted to pay full price for the game anyway, this was just a bonus. I would highly recommend picking this up if you love this game, and want to pay a bit more for a lot more despite its single flaw. 7/10.

To preface this review, I've been playing Darktide since the alphas and open betas, and through the pre-order beta and all through its lifespan. I've seen the dev frame be leaked to the public for a few days, and I've also seen plenty of Fatshark's development philosophy at work. I have 8 characters, one of them being level 730 at the moment. I can safely say that I've developed opinions about this company and this game, especially since I've rewritten this review several times by this point. We'll see if this will be the final time. Here are my current thoughts on Darktide and its quirks as of May 25th, 2025:


Darktide's worldbuilding is one of my favourite aspects about the game. From the hive city of Tertium, to the player hub that is the Mourningstar, and all of the events happening throughout the 'story' that alter maps and add context for our being here. The hive city setting itself is a bleak subject matter, but the variety of each location adds to the interest. Not to mention its inhabitants, which are a collection of rotting poxwalkers, cultists, and turncoats. Though the story itself leaves much to be desired, which is something I'll touch on later, the atmosphere and mission briefings are solid. Fatshark certainly learned a valuable lesson from their previous titles in this way.

The combat of this game is why Darktide is an award-winning game. The fluid motions, the melee patterns and especially the sprint, vault and slide features which are new additions to the Tide trilogy are very welcome additions. Though many of the specials are similar to Vermintide, there are some new additional archetypes that add interest to the game's gameplay loop. There isn't much else to say about it aside from it's likely my favourite combat system of any game, or any first person shooter I've played.

Player expression in Darktide is much better than it was at first. Character customization, character personalities, cosmetics paid or otherwise, the talent trees, and the weapon combinations often mean that no player will be exactly the same as your own on any given strike team. I play a True Martyr Zealot, I don't take any healing what-so ever, no matter what. I've gotten very good at not taking any damage over my nearly 2,000 hours in this game, there's a certain thrill to the way I play, avoiding any damage while also avoiding my team's attempts to heal me. This, and so many more unusual builds are entirely possible in Darktide.

The in-game community is generally good. There's usually about 7,500 players on average in Darktide, perhaps more when an update comes out, or on the weekends. Most interactions I've had with players have been positive, aside from a few outliers. In the past, there used to be an influx of players who wouldn't prioritize teamwork, including zealot speedrunners, and vocal, often hostile gungryns. However, most of these players have either found different games to play, or quit entirely, as they're rather rare now. Players will leave on occasion when they go down, which has become unfortunately very common over the years. But, I'd say currently the community is in a good spot despite a minority of bad actors.


Darktide's story is rather lackluster. Throughout the years, Darktide has relegated their lore to short YouTube videos in the form of trailers and the vox series or unintuitive websites with walls of text. Only recently have they attempted to share their lore with the playerbase in the form of the Mortis Trials, but it comes off as a bit loredumpish. I do appreciate their efforts to try and fill in the players on what's going on with their characters and their backstories, but it's honestly too little too late. That's to say nothing about the reject's journey through proving their worth. The story here is essentially nothing, a traitor on the Mourningstar who is quite obvious. Your reject doesn't have any role to play in finding the traitor, nor do you get to talk with the traitor aside from buying items from them at their shop. There's no intrigue at all, and it serves no purpose to the actual gameplay. If they wanted to do something with this plotline, they would've needed something like the opening sequence, maybe you go on missions with the traitor which slowly reveals their traitorous undertones, or maybe it could've been a rivalry. Otherwise, there's no reason to care about the traitor, since you never get to know who they are or what they want, or their story at all. Suffice to say, the story is really poor in Darktide.

Fatshark's lack of transparency has been a serious point of contention for me. They often do provide little tidbits about what they've made for Darktide after the fact, but often times the playerbase is never well-informed about Darktide's roadmap, or what's going on behind the scenes. Community managers almost never respond to player questions, and if they do, I haven't seen any developer interaction with the community outside of their discord, which I can't speak on much. This isn't something that's new with Fatshark, as they've always had issues with being fully communicative with their players. I like to think back on that apology letter they sent us years ago, about unfulfilled promises. It took them I believe a year or so to even implement the crafting system they wanted at launch, which makes me question their company's efficiency, as well as future content for Darktide.

The gameplay loop is really quite boring. The combat is what locks me into this game for a while, but the most common reason for me as to why I take huge breaks from this game is how little map variety there is. There's about 20 maps in Darktide, and at launch there were maybe 10 or 12. Make no mistake, I'm happy they've added 2x more since launch, but it's really not that many in the grand scheme of it all; Again, Fatshark has an efficiency problem. Tertium doesn't feel large at all when there's only 3 maps per environment, visiting the same Enclavum Baross for the 100th time becomes stale very quickly. You would think there would be way more map variety given it's a hive city, which usually houses a hundred billion people or more. I don't believe it's unrealistic to ask for more map variety, especially when it was possible in Vermintide 2, with Fort Brachsenbrücke's alternate path along the river. That should be happening way more often in Darktide.

The gamemodes are a bit bloated at the moment. Since launch, they've added Auric, Maelstroms, Auric Maelstroms, the Special Operations (which is just the Orthus Offensive), Havoc mode, and now the Mortis Trials. Not to mention all of the difficulties, which just adds too much choice. This has caused quite a few gamemodes to either fully die, or have so few players that you can't even play the gamemode at certain times of the day. This is especially bad with Havoc, a mode you're forced to build a team for, which only causes player bias issues. At any given moment, there's maybe 3 or 4 Havoc lobbies open at any given time, and no Havoc lobbies early in the morning or late at night, even on weekends. The Mortis Trials are filled with new players, as many experienced players have either earned all the rewards at this point, or find it way too easy. Worst of all, Orthis Offensive has practically 0 players.


I believe I've made my points fairly clear. I love this game to death, and there's a lot to enjoy about it, but it has a lot of issues that are difficult to resolve. Fatshark's poor communication, combined with their poor management of updates over a game, which at its core, is exceptionally fun... I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this game. I think some of their worst decisions have consistently divided their playerbase, and I didn't even talk about the anti-teamplay penances of the past. Great game, poor management. 7/10.

I wanted to write something small for this, I've already made up my mind in terms of the game itself, since I've pre-ordered it and it's loyalist pack, so I wanted to add my two cents while the devs still have 45 more days until the planned release. I know someone will probably see this, so let me just start by saying I'm more than happy with my purchase. This game looks beautiful, and plays well on my system.

With that said, my only real complaint is with the keybindings. A lot of games will provide an alternate key for certain actions, and provide keybind freedom for most functions. I use enter for certain actions in a lot of my games, so to see it hard-coded to be the chat button is less than ideal for me personally. Also, in Vermintide 2, the scrollwheel wasn't separated like it is in this game. Before, you could either scroll up or down to access your primary, secondary, bombs, healing and potions. In this game, that isn't an option. In fact, everything is it's own button, which makes grabbing what you need a little more confusing. Also, with this in mind, the 'medkit' and ammo box deployables are for some reason, also bound to the primary scrollwheel. I found myself accidentally deploying my healing box when trying to quickly switch back to my primary since in my mind, it shouldn't be like that if the game wants to keep everything separate. it's either have everything on their own buttons or put all of them on the scrollwheel. Why this is bound in this way is baffling, but I have faith this'll be changed. I'm hoping that with this closed beta, these keybind issues will be either resolved or tweaked, or at the very least become an option to switch in the game's full release. I'd like to add that every time I closed the game, my keybinds would reset themselves, however I doubt that will be making it past this beta, and will be resolved in the full game.

With everything negative I had to say about this game out of the way, I'm happy to say that this game makes me want to keep coming back for more. Honestly, this is everything I've wanted from Fatshark for a while now, as it's essentially an upgrade to Vermintide. Sure, potions aren't present, nor are the traditional bombs or healing items, but I feel like this gives the game it's own charm. From the character creation, to the graphic overhaul, the setting, and the gunplay, it's everything they promised and more. The world they've built is so atmospheric and immersive, especially when you can make your own convict and work your way through the ranks just like you were able to do in this beta. It was rewarding, refreshing and an enjoyable experience through and through. I am thoroughly looking forward to playing this game more, and equally dreading that I'll have to wait a full 45 days to play it again. In the game's current state, it'll be getting an 8/10 from me, and it hasn't even come out yet. Can't wait to jump back onto The Morningstar for some more contracts. 8/10.

Here's the deal. I played the Back 4 Blood Beta back in 2021, and I rated the game a 4/10. The gameplay was confusing, the characters were annoying, but the gunplay and environments were acceptable. My review has changed to some degree now that I've had time to play the full game in 2022. In the past, I wouldn't recommend this game for the simple fact that Back 4 Blood touted it being created by people who made Left 4 Dead. This is a half-truth since the majority of people who worked on this game were fresh faces to the series, so in my review I'll try my best not to compare this game to Left 4 Dead. This review is from the perspective of someone who regularly plays on Nightmare and has the first DLC expansion.


The Characters aren't as bad as they were in the beta. To compliment the subtle storytelling, I appreciate their effort to flesh out the characters through the pre-apocalypse skins or in-game conversations. However, even with the efforts to squelch the mystery behind a lot of their main cast, none of them feel particularly like real people. There isn't a lot that can be parsed from conversations, however despite the shallowness of a lot of their personalities, the characters at least feel grounded to the universe. As someone who appreciates the small subtleties in storytelling, I wish there was more, at the very least I wish there were character bios or descriptions for skins, anything to help add context to why Walker has a baseball helmet, or if anyone from Holly's baseball team survived like she had, or how any of the cleaners even found Fort Hope to begin with, etc. Point being, I shouldn't need to read Back 4 Blood's tweets in order to figure out who these characters are. Essential lore information should never be external.

The Card System Is not nearly as bad as people say. I personally didn't care for it in the beta, but I find that in 2022, I actually do quite enjoy making my own decks. Decks make the characters you play more personalized, since every card combination is a different playstyle. From hipfiring decks to shotgun decks, there's a card for everyone. Not to mention, the supply lines are a fun way to have a "Battle Pass" without needing to pay microtransactions for it. However, I find that I don't often use burner cards, not unless I know the next mission is going to be challenging.

The Acts, speaking of, are beautifully put together. However, keep in mind that a lot of the mission locations are repeated, such as the exit to Fort Hope, or the apartments. Despite the fact there is a lot of reused content, the areas are gorgeous. When you do eventually see new areas, the locations are amazing and unique in their own right. Since this is all taking place in a township called Finleyville, it makes sense that there wouldn't be a major scenery change, so a lot of it sticks to the rural and humble setting. From the motel, to the bar, the school and the police station, it all feels like it belongs in a PA county. As someone that lives in Pennsylvania, you can really tell they did their research on what the area is supposed to look like. However, due to the fact the game only has 3 base acts (not counting Act 4 since it's a single mission), I have to dock points for the lack of content in the game. However, the mission cards always help mix things up and make the acts more fun in the long run.

The Gameplay is harder to sell. Although the gunplay is amazing, I cannot recommend playing this in solo. Although it's possible, after all in April of 2022 solo progression was added (a bit late in my opinion), the director is not tuned well. I complained about this in beta, and I'll complain about it now. The director doesn't know how to pace the missions, it's evident that even on the lowest difficulty, special spam is inescapable. I play on nightmare difficulty, and it wouldn't be so difficult if the game didn't throw at least two of every special at you at once in hordes. This is especially annoying when the specials have mutations, like armour or spikes. Because if the director decides to special spam, you not only need to clear the armour of 6 different specials, you also have to not get grabbed or incapacitated. Sure, there are ways around this, but when breakout is on cooldown there isn't a lot you can do. This flaw is especially bad when a boss is spawned, since even when an ogre or breaker is on your tail, specials will still constantly spawn. It gets to a point where the specials are more pressing than the boss itself, because it's an endless stream. The game is easy enough on some of the harder difficulties with the right cards, but even with good cards and high trauma resistance, special spam makes the game feel exhausting to play. It physically hurts to play this game when the director won't stop spawning specials no matter how many cleaners you lose, even if you're the last cleaner you can bet the director will spawn 3 monstrous slashers on you just because it felt like it.

The Price is, I'll admit, outrageous. The game looks high quality, however it is not worth $60. As much as I appreciate this game, Turtlerock should've taken a page out of For Honor's book, where the base price is low, but any additional content like the battle pass puts it into the $60 price range. This game would be way more appealing to players if Turtlerock structured their price in this way, and is why a lot of people complain about every little change that happens in the game. In my opinion, for a $60 dollar game, all of the currently released DLC should just be free content since people are already paying full-price for very little gameplay to start with. Vermintide 2 released their Chaos Wastes for free, why can't Tunnels of Terror be free too?

My Final Verdict for this game is a 7/10. This game clearly is a labour of love, from the environments to the gunplay, and it's worth at least trying if you enjoyed games like WWZ, Vermintide or L42. Despite its many flaws, and the baffling price range, I would recommend buying this game and it's DLCs when they go on sale, since that's the price you should be paying for this game and it's contents anyway. Good game, 7/10.

First off, in 2022, they STILL haven't fixed the arrow key emote issue for left handed users. So already off to a great start, since a huge chunk of people who want to play this game have to either download a 3rd party key mapping software to fix their issue or use a controller, which is an awful workaround. The game is unplayable otherwise, since you quite literally can't fire your gun or reload if you so much as touch the left or right arrow keys to strafe, thanks in part to the fact emotes are hard coded to the arrow keys. You have to be standing entirely still without touching any movement keys to reload or fire your gun, either that or you have to resort to only holding the up arrow down without strafing to move and shoot. You can kind of see where the problem lies, since this game requires you to be moving around a lot in combat, this is impossible with arrow keys. Quite frankly, it's baffling that it's still not fixed after four years; at this point, it's probably not going to be fixed either. So if you're left handed and use arrow keys, do NOT pick this game up, unless you're willing to go through the trouble of rebinding your keyboard and rebooting your entire computer to play. Right handed though? Game's cool I guess. 4/10, because it's obviously a feature that doesn't need fixing, and doesn't ruin my experience whatsoever.

Age of Empires 4, although unusual and different, is likely one of the best AOE in the series. As of writing this review, I have over 100 hours in the game, as well as most of the campaigns finished and have two civ masteries completed. I can say from experience that this game is amazing, especially for a history buff like myself.


So I wanna start this off by saying that first and foremost, the game feels very good to play. It's the only game in the series where your armies feel like they matter, and especially feels realistic in terms of how units operate. Spearmen tense up and ready spears when they're being charged by cavalry, knights will couch their lances for charges, longbowmen can stake the ground for better protection, and foot units can build siege weapons. These are all firsts in the series, and I didn't even mention the walls.

Walls in this game are once again a first for the series, for better or for worse, stone walls actually matter now. Not only can non-siege units not damage stone walls, but units can also climb up onto walls for better defense. This makes sieges a lot more meaningful, and make the player more immersed and engaged in the battle. Palisades can still be attacked, and well-placed stone wall towers can make the difference.

Setting buildings on fire is an actual mechanic, long gone are the days of AOE2 where buildings would burn indefinitely. If your buildings are set on fire, they will actually begin to burn, and must be extinguished or else they will burn to the ground. This adds a level of intricacy to the gameplay I wasn't expecting. It's a very welcome change.

Another major change in this game, you can trade in 1v1s. This is a fix implemented from AOE3, as trading posts act similar to how they did in that game with a few exceptions. Other map activities include religious sites for a religious victory, and the addition of ambush forests, which only adds another layer of intricacy in every fight. Unlike in AOE2, the high ground only provides additional LOS in AOE4, though is still useful in gameplay.

The landscapes are also incredible, along with the beautiful graphics, the elevation in AOE4 has been cranked up to 100. Hills and mountains reach for the sky, and steep craters go way deeper than what you'd expect. Some of the multiplayer maps show this effect off amazingly, and are still impressive after 100 hours. Some of the campaigns take full advantage of this elevation and detail, which I enjoy immensely.

As for the campaigns, though there isn't a central story like there is in AOM or AOE3, the documentary style gameplay is highly engaging. Though of the 4 campaigns provided as of current release, most levels are considerably easy. But where there's easy levels, there's high-stress levels as well; a good example are the siege defense levels. Not to mention the bonus documentary videos, which are highly insightful for those interested in history, and a satisfying reward. The documentaries are a testament to their dedication to history and accuracy.


The reason AOE2 fans are not as interested in this game is mostly attributed to the limited amount of civs, as there are only 8 civs in-game, 5 months later. Not to mention, there's a surprising lack of maps in the multiplayer. The editor has not been released as of writing this review, and there are no custom maps. No mods are available, and there is no colour customization. You cannot select your own colour in multiplayer, which alienates players that don't like playing as blue. In VS. AI, there's a surprising lack of customization. No handicaps are available, no taunts in chat, no unique AI names, no AI personalities, and no diplomacy. Of all the AOE games, I'm utterly shocked at the lack of customization in this game, which drastically limits what you can do, as well as makes the game lifespan very short for those looking for more variety. Another complaint happens to be with hotkeys, though I personally don't have issues with the hotkeys.

Another issue lies with the balance, though there's a lot that needs to be ironed out, players tend to complain about overpowered civs. Of the two right now, Mongolia and the French are top tier at the moment, though hopefully there will be more balance changes as the game grows and progresses through it's pipeline. As of writing, there was a balance change yesterday, so it's a good sign that the devs are listening when they can.

*There is also an immense amount of memory leakage in the game as of writing this review, especially in the main menu and for the steam version. This will likely be patched soon, but is a minor inconvenience.


Though this game has it's flaws, it's only 5 months as of writing this. I've been thoroughly enjoying this game to death, and I wanted to voice my opinions. It's still a fairly new game, so I have faith in the devs polishing everything, since the scenario editor is supposedly coming soon. I have high hopes in new civs coming our way, as well as more maps and more content to look forward to. 8/10, the game I've wanted to come out for years.

I want to start off by saying I wouldn't've known about this game unless Back 4 Blood existed. I played the Back 4 Blood Beta, game was iffy and too overpriced, so this was the next best option. I couldn't be more happy with my purchase, I was looking for a decent zombie shooter and here it was, better than I expected.

As of writing this review, I've beaten every episode and every chapter at least four or five times over, I've maxed two classes, and obtained several level 5 weapons. From what I've gotten out of this game thus far, it's everything I could have hoped for. This game is what happens when you mix Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City and Borderlands with Warhammer: Vermintide 2. Keep in mind I also own the DLC, which may alter my opinion.


Similar to both games mentioned above, the gameplay is fiercely satisfying, addicting and varied. The immense amount of variety in the weapons is welcome, and the weapon leveling system is superb. Most guns are very satisfying to fire, each having their own playstyle. Heavy weapons are very helpful in a tight pinch, and also very effective against hordes. Not to mention, they're very fun to fire with the immense amount of bodies and particles most of them generate after use. You can toggle between thirdperson and firstperson, both have their merits, though this game is clearly designed with thirdperson in mind, which is in no way a downside.

Melee weapons are fairly limited, though with what is provided, there's a lot of interesting combinations. However, the fact that all melee weapons are automatically available makes a huge amount of the melee roster useless (i.e. the Machete, which has no perks.). Locking more of the melee weapons probably would've been a great idea for a sense of progression.

All weapon drops are randomly placed, and tucked away in crates or out in the open. Weapon tiers range from 1 to 3, excluding heavy weapons. Tiers don't typically matter for secondary weapons, though they are vital for primary weapons. All loot is up to chance, which is why there are perks to start with certain weapons; though these perks are partially useless in the grand scheme of things. Like in Vermintide, this game has unique pickups throughout the level which grant bonus experience and currency at the end of the mission. Defense kits are also a very fun mechanic, which almost partially turns the game into an RTS.

Unlike a good amount of zombie titles, this game has eight different classes to choose from, all independent from the actual characters. All classes offer different playstyle choices, classes such as Dronemaster offer a more pet-orientated playstyle for self-protection, while Medic is pure team support. Vanguard is a tank class, while the Gunslinger makes for an excellent DPS class. There's plenty of strategy that comes with picking the right class and perks for a situation, especially in a team. A lot of the perks help make the game much easier, such as double damage, extra equipment, better gear and less friendly fire. Experience is also very easy to come by, as even if you lose a mission, you still gain class experience, weapon experience, challenge coins if you completed a challenge, and currency; meaning you don't feel terrible for dying at the very end of the level, since you still get pretty much everything you would've gotten anyway if not a little less.

The Zeke (zombies) are lots of fun, they act just as they do in the book and the movie, with minor differences. Zeke still tower over each other, they can surround and incapacitate you if you are left alone, they can infect you in certain circumstances, and you also become a Zeke if you die. Not to mention, like in the book and movie, they are attracted to sound. This level of detail is seldom seen in other zombie games, which is partly why I admire the amount they've put into this. The Special Infected are also quite interesting, some are obvious, others are less so. The infector can be hard to see in certain circumstances, while infected like the Bull, Gasbag or Reeker are very easy to identify. Lurkers are almost too quiet in hordes, but are very obvious when alone or with the "Seek and Destroy" perk, which auto marks specials.

Another part of this game is the NPCs in the world. Unlike Vermintide or L4D2, WWZ:A has in-game full NPCs and scripted actors that help flesh out the world considerably. As a side note, most NPCs can also turn into Zeke, more nuance that I didn't know I needed. It is so satisfying to both keep these NPCs alive, and watch them turn into zombies. These NPCs are as effective as Survivor AI, only they go down a lot quicker.

As for the Survivor AI, they need some serious work. As in most games, the built-in Survivor AIs in this game are as useful as a broken pencil. If you plan on playing this game singleplayer, keep in mind the AI will struggle to save you in most situations. The bots don't pick up heavy weapons, medkits, defense kits, breaching charges or virus samples. Bots also don't mount onto turrets, and they also don't replenish auto turrets. Bots also default to a level 1 gunslinger, and do not have grenades to throw or any perks to speak of. They also don't have good priorities, and will likely shoot at the nearest special infected instead of protecting the objective with a fail condition of 50 seconds (or less in higher difficulties), resulting in one player versus 1,000 Zeke on a gate; not a good combination.

One aspect that's positive about the AI in this game, is that their weapons will slowly upgrade themselves as you progress through the level, meaning they aren't stuck with the base weapons, even if the weapons are level 1. Bots also take up positions during a crescendo event, meaning they have fixed locations they can stand at which benefit towards the overall defense; instead of crowding around you. This is especially helpful if you're breaching a door while the crescendo event is still happening, the bots can fend off a horde well enough. However one downside to this is you're ultimately left alone, and a very easy target for Lurkers or Bulls. One negative aspect to round this off, is that bots walk to where you are if you're being attacked, and will only sprint if you're a very far distance away. Even then, it'll still be too late for the bot to save you.

In terms of customization, there are no microtransactions as of writing this review. All cosmetics in this game are unlocked via Challenge Coins, which are obtained by playing Weekly and Daily challenges. There is a surprisingly low amount of cosmetics, but I have a feeling more will be added.


This game has it's flaws, but that doesn't make it a bad game by any means. The levels and scattered loot gives for a unique and replayable experience, especially accounting for class perks and the unpredictability of the director. The zombies are wild and overwhelming in a very good way, making it not only challenging, but adrenaline pumping. Overall, I'd give this game an 8/10, I got my money's worth, and I'll be playing this one for a while I reckon. If you want a great action zombie shooter that isn't 60 to 100 USD, then this is the game for you.

It's probably safe to say this is the final boss of the VR experience, if you're a seasoned VR veteran this is absolutely the game for you. For those that have never played a VR game though, it may be too much stimulation.