I had forgotten how fun and great World War Z was. I am so glad that the new Aftermath expansion made me go back and re-experience everything.
Watching hundreds of zombies running towards you and climbing on top of each other, like in the movie, just to eat you and your teammates never get old. And you blasting a shit ton of zombies using all sorts of weapons never gets old and I am so so glad that World War Z got that mechanic right from the go.
It's still impressive seeing all that death and carnage running towards you, not just from a cool gameplay perspective, but also from the technical side too. Hundreds of zombies that interact with the environment and you can blast each and every one of them, it's quite an achievement in my books. What's even more impressive is how smooth the entire experience is.
I got to play and review the Aftermath expansion on a PS5. Unfortunately, the true next-gen version, the PS5 and Xbox Series version will release sometime early next year. However, even though it's running through BC mode, the game achieves a beautiful and smooth 4K 60 FPS in the new consoles.
So what does Aftermath add? Well, quite a lot so let's get to it then. First, it adds two completely new episodes, Rome and Kamchatka. In the Rome episode, you have to take back the Vatican City. This episode is great as you get to roam around a decrepit Rome and while it doesn't really do anything unique, as you've done the same things in the previous episode, it's still quite fun and there's an epic confrontation at the end. While in the Kamchatka one, you join forces and help other survivors in Russia. I particularly like this episode more cause it had some new gameplay variations I quite enjoyed. The first thing that's different is that to open some icy doors you need a flamethrower and depending on the difficulty setting, coordination with your teammates was a must to just open a few doors. And the other cool thing, no pun intended, is the cold mechanic. It’s the Russian winter and you and teammates must find heaters in the level to keep warm. It’s a very narrow and compact level, so you must also watch out for friendly fire.
Another cool thing that Aftermath adds is a first-person perspective mode and I really enjoyed that too cause it makes the game more personal and you are able to see details that weren't as visible before. Blasting a zombies' head clean off with a shotgun in FPP is of course a beautiful and visceral thing to see and also very zen-like. I plan to go and replay the entire campaign from this perspective as I am sure it will feel like a completely new experience.
There's a new class, the Vanguard, which is armed with an electrified shield that can plow through the horde with devastating efficiency. It's quite fun plowing through tens of angry zombies like a bull, even though it takes a while to understand how to make the most out of this ability. There are also new customizations for your weapons and new daily missions with special modifiers for bonus rewards to conquer. The melee mechanic has also received a slight revamp as now there are multiple types of melee weapons with different attack speeds like a pair of sickles for fast attacks and big sledgehammers for slow and big attacks. Oh, there are also rats that can swarm, down and eat you if you are not saved by your teammates.
And that's about it I think. Aftermath is a really great expansion and the addition of crossplay makes matchmaking a whole lot better and faster. One thing that I have to mention is some very weird crashes I experienced while playing on PS5. I had the game installed on an external HDD and I couldn't really play more than one mission without the game just freezing. Luckily when I transferred the game to the internal SSD, that problem kinda went away and I am able to play the game normally, please keep that in mind. Yeah, Aftermath is a great expansion to an already great game and definitely worth checking out. Thanks for reading.
The game was played on a PS5 (via BC) using a code provided by the publisher. World War Z Aftermath is now available for PlayStation, Xbox and PC.
