Zombie Army 4: Dead War

Developer/publisher Rebellion Developments Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now

From Romero to The Walking Dead, zombie stories are hardly ever actually about the threat of the shambling horde. They’re about the threat of us, the ways we turn against each other in times of crisis. Man is the real monster, and all that – and rarely is this more evident than when you’re knee-deep in a multiplayer session of Zombie Army 4: Dead War with a squad of people you would previously have called friends.

Dead War is nominally a cooperative game – the four of you are fighting back the same waves of enemies, working towards the same end-of-level objective – but there’s not a huge amount of teamwork involved. Perhaps this stems from Zombie Army’s beginnings as a spin-off from the Sniper Elite series. While those games did introduce co-op modes, the fantasy they traded on was always about being the lone sniper in his nest, separated from the rest of the world by the glass of a scope. Dead War brings you closer to the action, taking foes that for the most part need to be within clawing distance to pose a threat and then throwing them at you by the dozen, so that individual headshots quickly become impractical (though never anything less than satisfying).

With a full squad and a seemingly endless horde to manage, multiplayer can get very busy, and your primary interaction with fellow players is generally getting in each other’s way. An ally walks right in front of that shot you’ve been lining up, or worse, blows your target back to hell themselves with a lucky shotgun blast. There’s no friendly fire to worry about, at least not where bullets are concerned, and while this is handy for keeping the peace it can make it feel like you’re all ghosts, haunting the same spot but on separate planes of existence.