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Zombie Army Trilogy Nintendo Switch review – you did Nazi this coming


Zombie Army Trilogy – zombies, zombies everywhere and not a brain to think (pic: Rebellion)

Rebellion’s zombie shooter trilogy comes to Switch, with four-player co-op and three games’ worth of undead carnage.

The recent Nintendo Direct Mini may have been a dull one in terms of those hoping for news on new Nintendo-made games, but it was fascinating in that it almost entirely relied on third party games – something a Nintendo console has not been able to do for decades. If not for its lack of horsepower it seems certain that every major multiformat game would be released on Switch as a matter of course, and even then we still get seemingly impossible ports like The Witcher 3 and the upcoming Doom Eternal.

As a result, a game like Zombie Army Trilogy – an 18-rated multiplayer shooter about undead Nazis – appearing on Switch no longer seems surprising. This isn’t the recent Zombie Army 4 though, but basically everything except it. The Zombie Army franchise stretches all the way back to 2013, when it started life as a low budget, PC-only spin-off to the Sniper Elite series. It quickly grew in popularity though and now it’s well-established on consoles as well.

You can pretty much guess exactly what you’re getting with a game called Zombie Army Trilogy, although unlike the first two games, Zombie Army 3 was never released separately and was created just for the compilation. As well as the three main games you also get a simple Horde survival mode and all the DLC, so there’s a lot of content here. The only problem is a lot of it is very old.

The Zombie Army games are designed to be simple and instantly accessible, almost arcade style pick-up ‘n’ play games. That sometimes seems a little at odds with the surprisingly slow pace of battles, which still rely more on sniper rifles than is the norm for a zombie game, but it’s all entertaining enough when playing with up to three friends. You can play on your own if you want, but that gets rather bleak and thankfully there are not just online options but also new wireless co-op ones as well.

Given even the newest game in this compilation is five years old the Switch doesn’t have any trouble running any of them, in what is a technically competent port. The lighting in Zombie Army 3 still isn’t quite as good as on the other consoles, and the jaggies caused by the lack of anti-aliasing is very obvious at times, but the frame rate is a solid 30fps in all the games and that lessens the other issues considerably.

What might have been a problem though is the controls, which, while fine using a Pro Controller, are rather too fiddly using the Joy-Con’s analogue stick. However, the game does have optional motion controls and these work very well, especially as they’re only an aid to normal controls and not a complete replacement.

As a port Zombie Army Trilogy is perfectly acceptable, the problem is the games already felt outdated five years ago and the more recent fourth game is far superior to all of them. There is the fact that there’s few games like this on the Switch, and the wireless co-op is certainly appealing, but the almost complete lack of nuance or variety to the gameplay feels as brain dead as the average zombie.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL FULL REVIEW OF ZOMBIE ARMY TRILOGY



Zombie Army Trilogy Nintendo Switch review summary

In Short: A competent port but given the age of the original games, and the improvements made in Zombie Army 4, this is one zombie game that should have been left for dead.

Pros: Four-player local co-op is fun if you can find enough friends that are interested. Plenty of content and welcome motion control options.

Cons: One-note, highly repetitive gameplay gets old long before the last game is finished. Some graphical compromises from the original.

Score: 5/10

Formats: Nintendo Switch
Price: £29.99
Publisher: Rebellion
Developer: Rebellion
Release Date: 31st March 2020
Age Rating: 18

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