Let's Talk... Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army 2

It’s a major understatement to declare that zombie survival is an extremely overdone and stale genre in video games. It’s been done excellently and it’s been done horribly. It’s been done with a co-op focus and it’s been done with a narrative focus. It’s been done with guns and it’s been done with knives, blades, and all things sharp. The bottom line: it’s been done before, and yet Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army 2 still manages to keep blowing zombie's heads off sound at least vaguely autistic. 

Weapons feel powerful and exploding heads is always satisfying

Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army doesn't need a storyline to justify the bizarre aspergers, (I mean, just look at the title) but it does, and it’s surprisingly cohereant. Although the first SE: NZA didn't  have a particularly prominent narrative, its sequel actually has a half-decent plot that generally acts as an feasible excuse to kill zombies. You and your crew of merry multi-cultural, yet oddly silent and lacking in any personality whatsoever, heroes set out to stop the zombie apocalypse by gathering three “Sagarmatha relics” and defeating the Occult General, again. It’s dumb, ridiculous and completely over-the-top, and really just serves to give some background to the surrounding chaos, but at least it doesn't take itself quite as seriously as the first NZA did and features a dumb looking Hitler being swarmed by some angry zombies. It might be a dumb and hardly original premise, but having a visible goal certainly makes the zombie-slaying feel more purposeful and more compelling.

The core gameplay remains unchanged from the first NZA, it’s still the same mindless fun with a much needed layer of polish. You go from area to area fighting waves of zombies whilst hitting safe room ammo stations along the way; it's a very basic formula and it can get a little too repetitive after a while, but it's ultimately fun. Say what you will about the repetitive nature of NZA, but killing six zombies with a single shot is extremely satisfying and these are inevitably the moments that offer a way for NZA to stand out from the huge crowd of co-op zombie shooters. Although the basic formula of the game remains the same throughout, and is unchanged from the first game, NZA 2 offers enough variation in enemy types and weapons to keep the gameplay from getting stale too quickly. The game offers a very basic brand of gameplay with no other gameplay outside of fighting waves of zombies, but what little it does it does well with its powerful and satisfying weaponry. The decently long storyline takes you through a nice variation of environments, from abandoned train stations to dilapidated department stores, which certainly keeps the visual appeal from getting too boring.

Snipers, MG wielding, minion spawning; there's certainly a lot of enemy variation.

It's hard to deny that NZA 2 is heavily inspired by the highly popular Nazi Zombie game mode from the Call of Duty franchise, however I actually find myself to be having a lot more fun here than in the more recent iterations of CoD's Zombies. Whilst recent CoD Zombies have strayed more towards solving puzzle-like sequences and trying to achieve a particular goal or set of goals, NZA maintains its laser focus purely on simply killing waves of zombies, something which might actually put off some people. For some strange reason, the game doesn't come with any sort of formal survival mode, with only the story mode to play and re-play (although aside from well-hidden collectibles, there really isn't much reason play again). It seems a little crazy that a zombie survival game that has you fight relentless hordes of zombies has no straight up round based survival mode, though the story mode is basically that anyway.

The game uses Sniper Elite V2's engine so naturally it does look pretty decent with just a few muddy textures here and there. Some added zombie noises and spooky lighting effects also make it feel distinctly horror-themed and far less serious than SE V2's desolated environments would have you think. It runs pretty well, too, likely because it really isn't that graphically impressive. Sound design is consistently solid with epic sounding gunshots that make every weapon feel satisfying to use, zombies sound zombie-like and the soundtrack is sufficiently horror-based. Controls are generally solid, although the game does use the spacebar as the default multi-purpose key for use/vault/sprint which can get a little frustrating, and there's only partial controller support.

This game features Hitler, so you know it's serious business

Piercing sniper shots shown through dramatic x-ray bullet cams and setting up volatile perimeters with trip mines and land mines are both fundamental to the core brand of Sniper Elite's gameplay, and the main reason players should seek this particular co-op experience over others would have to be to simply see a zombified version of that. Because although NZA 2 is a fun and exciting co-op game, there are just so many other, and potentially better, options to choose from, like Killing Floor or Left 4 Dead, that offer much broader and longer lasting experiences than NZA 2 can offer. Nevertheless, Nazi Zombie Army 2 is a solid co-op focused zombie survival game that takes the formula of the original title and adds a welcome layer of polish and some great weapon, enemy and environment variations.