WAKE THE DEAD

ZOMBIE ARMY 4: DEAD WAR does exactly what it says on the tin.

- Alex Spencer

What’s your eighth favorite snack? You know, that one you’d never actively buy unless it was on offer but, when left alone with a packet, you’ll eat until your fingers reach for the next and find only crumbs. Now, imagine your cupboards are filled with it—that’s what playing Zombie Army 4: Dead War feels like. Especially if the snack in question happens to be delicious braaains.

In this analogy, the feeling you get as you chomp down—that beautiful weightless moment before the regret and mild tummy ache and the memory that you have a family history of diabetes—is clicking the left mouse button to fire your weapon and hearing the satisfying squish of another zombie’s cranium exploding. As gaming pleasures go, it’s not quite on a par with the solution to a fiendish puzzle clicking into place somewhere in the bottom of your brain or the explosion of the possibility that comes from trying something stupid and getting a response that shows the developers saw you coming. But it is certainly exceedingly moreish.

Over the 15 years and six games that have led to this point, starting with 2005’s Sniper Elite, Rebellion has honed this one moment to its sharpest possible point. The kickback on a submachine gun weapon, each shot punching your reticule higher and closer to that all-important headshot, has all the mass-produced genius of a Jaffa Cake’s sponge base. The way zombies tumble quivering to the ground when you hit them with an electrified bullet, delicious as just slightly-dark chocolate.