Zombie Army Trilogy (Switch) Review – Darker, Grimmer, Better

Over the past year whenever Rebellion announced they would be bringing an entry from their “Sniper Elite” franchise to the Nintendo Switch, I was quick to request a review copy to take a look and review the ports. So far, I’ve been rather pleased with the job they’ve done of bringing these games over. They were no means perfect or the most technically impressive games on the Switch, but “Sniper Elite V2 Remastered” and “Sniper Elite 3: Ultimate Editions” were in my opinion prime examples of how AAA multi-platform games should be brought to Nintendo’s hybrid system. With Rebellion’s latest release with a port of the “Zombie Army Trilogy”, they’ve outdone themselves yet again.

The “Zombie Army” series is sort of an odd duck. The first two Sniper Elite games seemingly set themselves apart from the other big war shooters of their day and it seemed the series was never really going to fall behind and follow what anyone else on the market was doing. So when they announced and dropped the first “Nazi Zombie Army” game about a year after V2’s release, it seemed a bit fishy. The setting, style and the 4-play co-op gimmick seemingly lifted from Treyarch’s “Nazi Zombie” mode from “Call of Duty: World at War” and the “Call of Duty: Black Ops” series and Valve Software’s “Left 4 Dead” series. But since the game was released as a standalone expansion for V2 as opposed to DLC, as well as costing only a mere $15, people like myself were willing to take the plunge and try it. Seemingly prepared for the positive feedback, Rebellion pushed out “Nazi Zombie Army 2” later in the same year. Then in 2015, Rebellion announced they would be releasing a third game bundled with the first two entries in a trilogy pack for current-gen consoles. Five years later, that trilogy pack has now been announced and released for the Nintendo Switch.

“Zombie Army Trilogy” is set in an alternate end of WW2 where Adolf Hitler decides instead of ending it all just unleashes a zombie horde among the masses of Europe. There’s certainly more to the plot than that quick summary. In fact, ZAT is probably heavier on plot than any of the other “Sniper Elite” games. Although most of it is explained in voice-over during loading screens and cutscenes of the protagonists (of which there are 8) quietly shuffling about. Also as you probably guessed, the game doesn’t exactly have the most serious of tone. But it’s not really goofy, either. Which is perhaps the best way of going about it. It’s campy but not directly in your face. If anything, the game has a pretty fantastic atmosphere that I’ll delve a little deeper into when talking about the graphics.

Like the other “Sniper Elite” games, the shooting is mainly centered around its sniping mechanics which unlike other shooters, switches from the standard pointing and clicking to introducing other factors to take into thought like bullet drop, wind, heart rate and other such. Though unlike the mainline series, the game doesn’t seem to rely on the sniping as much. Mainly due to the fact that the game’s levels and pace is far more linear and action-focused. You really won’t spend much time shooting from a distance. It’s due to this that the secondary weapons of ZAT act differently from their SE counterparts. No longer does the crosshair expand to a ridiculous size after firing one shot from an SMG or pistol. They stay relatively small and keep their accuracy up to a manageable degree. Another familiar mechanic from “Sniper Elite” also changed. The difficulty settings. In regular “Sniper Elite”, the difficulty was based on how in-depth you wanted the sniping mechanics to be crossed with the toughness of enemy AI. Since you’re fighting Zombies, now you just decided on the depth of the sniping mechanics and how you want ammo and health regeneration treated. However, another setting given is the option of how many enemies you want to spawn in your game. This is primarily based on how many players there are but you can also totally customize it in case you feel like the amount is overwhelming or you think there should be more.

Oh right, this is a co-op game. Technically co-op is not new to the “Sniper Elite” games. But where previous entries had 2 player co-op, this game has up to 4 and the players have the choice of 8 different characters to pick from. I was lucky enough to be given a second code so I could play with a friend for this review and we found the best combination of settings was setting the difficulty to ‘Cadet’ (more gracious with ammo and more straight-forward sniping) mixed with enemy spawns for 3 players as opposed to 2. Even with playing on what the game considers the ‘easy’ mode, the game is still a challenge but certainly not in a frustrating way. When one or more big chunky zombies wielding MG42s are barreling down a hallway towards you, it’s nicer to have your bullets fly straight instead of downward. Although most of the time when the difficulty was set to Marksman/Medium we didn’t really have much of a problem, either.

As the title suggests, the game is a Trilogy of all three “Zombie Army” games. Although, the three games barely differ in terms of gameplay. So it feels more one long game with three 5-chapter acts. Each chapter consisting of shooting a lot of zombies or skeletons (which a handful of special tougher enemies with abilities thrown in), completing an objective or two, and then ending with some sort of set-piece either defending a position from waves of the undead or defeating some sort of boss character. Throughout each chapter, you encounter safehouses that act as checkpoints where you can take a breather from the action and replenish ammo and equipment. There’s a pretty substantial jump in quality in regards to level design and places you visit between each of the three games. With most of game one spent running around a lot of samey urban areas mostly re-cycled from “Sniper Elite V2”. Meanwhile, in the third game, the environments and settings you fight in can change several times within the same chapter.

But let’s talk about the technical details. Because not only is ZAT a damn fine game, it’s perhaps Rebellion’s finest port yet. Now there is some good reason behind this as one could argue this game is a lot less graphically intensive than previous releases. V2 Remastered ran on Rebellion’s latest engine and was using entirely new assets while SE3 was a cross-generational release with wide, expansive and detailed locales. Zombie Army Trilogy uses the same engine as SE3 but most of its models and assets are re-purposed from V2 (as that’s what the first two installments were based on). So the texture and model work isn’t going to blow anyone away. What more than makes up for it though, is details like the lighting and color. “Zombie Army Trilogy” is highly stylized and atmospheric. Reds and greens and blacks are used to a pretty astounding degree. The game may not be a technical showcase, but it certainly holds up visually extremely well and may well be one of the best-looking third-party games on the console. This is also helped by the game’s resolution. A crisp native 1080p in docked and 720p in handheld. No dynamic resolution, here! And the framerate is just as solid, too. It’s capped at 30fps, which seems to just be the standard for a lot of Switch releases. But even when there are 20 or so zombies shambling across the screen, the game doesn’t appear to drop a single frame. Impressive. Although there was a hitch or two that could occur when too many explosions are going off. In fact, the fact they were able to achieve such a steady framerate and high resolution made me wonder why they didn’t go the THQ Nordic route of including a lower res, higher framerate “performance mode”. Certainly, the Switch should be able to handle it. But it’s not something I’m too bent out of shape about, either. Also, the soundtrack is just sublime. Play this game with headphones on, for sure.

As far as Switch specific features, the game does feature gyro controls just like the previous “Sniper Elite” ports. They also added the ability to play over local wireless, so you and your friends can play together when sitting close by and not connected to the internet. If you intend on playing online with friends, the game uses the Switch’s new invite system for private lobbies. This sounds dreadfully boring as a feature when I type it out but I’m pretty sure this is one of only a couple of games right now to use the feature so… yeah. Actually the one thing right now that has me scratching my head is voice chat. The game seemingly doesn’t support it. At least not through the console itself. But I haven’t gotten a notification for the Switch Online App either so oh well.

Also, this game has a horde mode. I didn’t mention it earlier because I just don’t really find it all that good. The maps are incredibly small and yeah I just figured not to bother much with it.

In short, yes you should buy it. Yes, I recommend it. It’s an extremely solid shooter and just an overall really fun time on top of being one of the best ports of a game on the console. All I have left to say is when’s “Zombie Army 4”, Rebellion? I know you just released it on other platforms so uh, yeah. Go do that.

Or “Sniper Elite 4”. It might be best to keep going chronological order.

Actually, no, where’s my Switch remaster of “NeverDead”?

EDIT (4/1/2020): Apparently the way this review is worded (I guess) made some believe the game is invite-only co-op. It is not. You can play online with randos. So yeah.