Frontline: The War Z

For the first ten hours in The War Z, I had a gun. Actually, thanks to the global inventory afforded to me by the zombie-survival MMO, I had two. Only problem was, even after near ten hours of sneaking in and out of buildings, hiding in bushes, and dodging the undead, I hadn't once had the opportunity to fire either of them.

If there ever was an apt illustration of survival horror, this is it: 32 bullets, two guns, and hours spent too shit-scared to fire off a single round. You see, I'd seen first hand what happens when naive survivors shoot off their weapons in inappropriate places, and it usually involves a conga-line of death, with panicked players running for the hills pursued by a trail of hungry flesh-eating shufflers.

That said, seeing other survivors in The War Z is something of a rarity. Most of those that you come upon in the wilds of Colorado (the game's first and, so far, only map) will be hostile. In fact, much as it is in the game on which TWZ shares many traits, other players - bandits - are a more pressing concern than the living dead.

The War Z is very much a reaction: a response to a popular movement. The zombie sub-genre (which itself transcends several genres) has never been more popular. That people were flocking to Rocket's Arma 2 mod - Day Z - in droves, only proves the point. Gamers fed off the persistent world survival-horror in much the same way that a zombie feeds on brains. In short, they lapped up every morsel, and soon a massive community formed around the mod.

It proved so popular that its creator, Dean "Rocket" Hall, is now working on an official standalone version of the game, and it's due out any time now (hopes were high for a late 2012 release, but it's looking more like early next year now). But Rocket and Bohemia (Arma 2's creators) aren't the only ones reacting to the popularity of the genre, and the folks over at Hammerpoint Interactive have been working on a comparable vision. They don't mind the comparisons though, and when you play their game it's not difficult to see why. There are a lot of similarities.

Despite walking with a similar gait, The War Z is its own game. So for the time being we'll forget all about the existence of Day Z, concentrating instead on what Hammerpoint's MMO has to offer.

The zombie-riddled world of Colorado is large, roughly around 100 square kilometers (according to Hammerpoint, though we're not convinced it's that big). It's not as open as a glance at the map might suggest, with mountains dissecting the playing area, and effectively partitioning off sections. It's still big enough, and there are more coming in the future, with the developers promising more maps, some up to 400 square kilometers large.

Dotted across TWZ's Colorado are the remnants of society, waiting to discovered and explored. An abandoned camp site, an airstrip littered with wreckages, bodies of water punctuated by dilapidated buildings: all surrounded by lush vegetation, craggy mountains and woodland. As the world is explored, scenery regularly pops up in front of you. Textures are ragged and shadows inconsistent. There's much work to be done on the game's visuals. However, there's just about enough there to satisfy the eyes, though maybe not enough variety to stop boredom catching you unawares from time to time.

Before you jump into the thick of it, you can buy backpacks with increased capacity, medical supplies and nourishing food/drink, as well as simple melee weapons and binoculars from the store. When a character is created, or when they're in one of the safe zones dotted around the map, items can be added and removed from their backpack and placed in the global inventory. It's a neat solution to the problem of regularly losing gear when dying. Whilst the stuff on your person is still gone (unless you can get back to your corpse before someone else finds it), it cheers the heart to know that anything banked in a safe zone will be available for use at a later time.

The zombies themselves are quite menacing, though their movement could be more convincing. There's a lurch there to be sure, but a predictability to their movement removes some of the fear factor. Killing them should be fairly straight forward, and with a gun it is, but melee is a bit hit and miss. Several times I engaged the undead whilst wielding a hammer or a spiked bat, but finicky hit detection left me frustrated. The golden rule of zombie survival is always go for the head, but surely over one hundred hammer blows to the body should be sufficient too. Apparently not.

The zombie's immunity to body shots is made all the more frustrating when coupled with your own fragility. Just a handful of zombie swipes are enough to end your life, and when you've been smashing one of them in the knees with a hammer for near two minutes after being discovered prone and being unable to get up, it can feel incredibly unfair.

The feeling of unfairness spreads further when you consider the other players on TWZ's servers. A majority of those that you meet on your travels will try and kill you. That's not entirely unexpected, but when bandits routinely take to camping near spawn points to kill players as they arrive into the game, it's difficult not to be thoroughly annoyed. The ongoing threat from other players is arguably more severe than that of the undead, and vigilance is required if death at the hands of a fellow survivor is to be avoided.

Played by oneself, the size of the map, and the combined threat of both the dead and the living, can leave a lonely aftertaste. Played with a friend things improve. Kind of. At least with a friend there's someone to talk to as you take long treks through the wreckage of Colorado. I can only speculate - having only played with one friend - but the thought of several buddies teaming up together is more appealing. As a single player experience there's much work to be done to smooth out teething issues, but co-operative play remedies some of these problems, or at the very least renders them minor inconveniences rather than severe annoyances.

One of the annoyances that can't be remedied by the company of friends is the game's audio. The main theme, whilst a little on the repetitive side, is fine. The in-game soundtrack is also pretty atmospheric, even if it does kick into life at seemingly arbitrary moments. What isn't good is the way audio is used to communicate your proximity to the zombies you discover. There's no differentiation when they get closer, and when you're trying to be stealthy and can't see the threat because you're hugging cover, it can lead to annoying and entirely avoidable confrontations. With audio distancing non-existant, you can't trust your ears in registering whether a zombie's the next garden over - or about to chomp your rear as you loot abandoned sheds and camper vans. It makes investigating interiors terrifying, but for entirely the wrong reason.

Other technical issues rear their ugly heads from time to time: I experienced several crashes (both to the main menu, and to desktop), and a complete freeze. There are glitches involving steps and fences also waiting to be fixed. Servers regularly go down, and are inaccessible for no particular reason, forcing you to trawl through a long list of available servers looking for one suitable. There are also problems with hackers, one time overtly noticeable due to wildly inappropriate/offensive words appearing in giant red letters, dominating the entire chat box on the left of the screen.

Up until now I've not really talked about the elephant in the room, and that is The War Z's brief appearance on Steam (details here). The game wasn't expected to shuffle forth until sometime next year, but for some reason it arrived, described as a "Foundation Release".

In a nutshell, there was a flood of complaints following the game's unexpected launch on Valve's digital distribution site. Angry gamers were dismayed to discover that features described as being included in the game were not yet available. Hammerpoint argued that the new features, including more maps and increased social functionality, were on the way. The tide of frustration meant they had to revise the game's page, but that small concession that didn't stop Valve from removing the MMO yesterday.

What irked many - more than a deception that could've simply been down to oversight - was the defiant attitude of the game's lead designer, Sergey Titov, who (in an interview with GameSpy) seemed to blame gamers for making assumptions, rather than apologising for the lack of clarity. This hasn't gone down too well, suffice to say.

We still need to be objective, regardless of the way the studio has conducted themselves in recent days. When considered in its entirety, warts and all, The War Z is worth considering if you're a serious fan of the genre, but only if you can look past the recent furore, the fact that this is still very much a work in progress and forgive some of the more pressing technical issues. This zombie MMO certainly won't appeal to everybody, and Arktos and Hammerpoint's recent conduct won't help matters either. Those who appreciate polish and refinement will likely grow frustrated with the game's shortcomings, but for forgiving fans of the genre, it might be worth a look.