Paramount Digital Entertainment and Phosphor Games released a movie tie-in game on mobile platforms on May 30, 2012, one month before the scheduled release of post-apocalyptic horror movie World War Z. Using the same title as the movie, the game “World War Z ” is a first person shooter action RPG that is now available on both App Store and Google Play for paid download.
World War Z is a story driven game, but it doesn’t mention any information about the core plot of the movie. The story in the World War Z game runs parallel to its movie counterpart. It takes place in the same world where a widespread outbreak of a disease turned most people into mindless, blood thirst monsters. You will play a father who survived the disease and decide to travel across half the world to look for his son.
At first glance, you might be disappointed that it is nothing more than another ‘Shoot the zombies in the head’ kind of game. World War Z does require you to take down waves of zombies with guns and other weapons. While you are exploring a scene or solving a puzzle, fast and deadly zombies might appear all of a sudden. If you hear the sound of shuttering window glass or banging on a door, you should probably be on alert. While facing a horde of zombies, your character will automatically switch into shooting mode and all you need to do is swipe on the screen to aim the reticle over a zombie to fire. Shooting them in the legs will slow them down, while shooting them in the head will stop them once and for all. If there is only one enemy, your character will be equipped with only a crow bar or baseball bat, with which you can strike the enemy down. Which type of weapon you get to use is completely up to the AI, and it is impossible to switch between weapons. A touchscreen shooting game sucks as it is, and what they did in this one is no particularly helpful to change this point of view.
Fortunately, the game offers more than shooting. The game is broken down into 28 episodes, and you will be following the plot line and adventure in various scenes. Each episode provides you with puzzles to solve and clues to find. This regular RPG gameplay is much better than the lousy FPS part. You will be exploring the environment, looking for hidden objects and codes while trying not to get lost and navigating your character to the next scene. There is nothing too difficult, and if your character get killed, you only be restarting this particular episode.
For a movie tie-in game (even the worst ones), fantastic, movie-like graphics and sound effects are bound to be the best features. In World War Z, it is no exception. In a statement made by the producer company, cutting-edge Unreal Engine 3 is built in the game. The cut-scenes look real and really spectacular. Actually, some cut-scenes look a lot like the scenes from the World War Z movie trailer, like the signature tsunami of zombies. The environmental sound effect is also movie-like real, and the faint-hearted probably should avoid wearing a head set while playing.
It is a paid game with extra in-App purchase. Killing zombies earns you XPs, with which you can purchase and upgrade weapons and equipment in the built-in store. You can also purchase the premium currency - Gold - with real money and spend it to buy more XP or live-saving health pack to restore HP.
World War Z is a triumph on visuals. The mix of parallel storyline, RPG and FPS makes it much more interesting. Once you get started, you would probably want to play it through to see how it turns out. But the lack of flexible weapon switch during battle leaves no room to use strategy to fire enemies.
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