World War Z: Aftermath short review

My friend and I finally jumped into World War Z last month. It was the only major zombie shooter we hadn't touched in recent years, and since it’s pushing into its seventh year of service in late 2025, we figured we were getting the definitive, polished experience. We got it on sale, and honestly, if this is the "massively improved" version, the original launch must have been absolute sewage water.

I only really recognise Saber Interactive because they did Space Marine 2, and after playing this, that game’s design makes a lot more sense. World War Z shares that same DNA: it is spectacularly mediocre.

Quantity over quality:
The entire game is built on this philosophy. It’s heavily inspired by Left 4 Dead and some Vermintide, but it completely lacks the soul or polish of either. It feels like every design decision was made for shareholders and engagement metrics rather than actual fun. Take the characters. In L4D, 15 years later, I can still hear the voices: "Pills here!", "I hate vampires", "ZOOOEY!", "My buddy Keith". They had personality. Here? The cast changes almost every campaign, and barring a few decent lines, they are forgettable skins with subpar delivery.

The Swarm Engine bottleneck:
The zombies are the one highlight. Seeing the swarm mechanic from the movie, where hundreds of zeds pile up on each other, is genuinely awesome for the first few hours. Mowing them down feels great. But they are merely a scripted set-piece, after the first few hours, you'll know exactly where and when you're supposed to get one. Yet, this visual spectacle comes at a massive cost. To get that many entities on screen and still run on older consoles, the devs clearly had zero compute power left for anything else.

The bots are brainless. They are moving turrets that don't interact with objectives and, until a recent update, couldn't even carry heavy weapons for you. Compare that to a bot in 2008’s L4D handing you pills or swapping to a higher tier weapon. The immersion is non-existent here because the game is just struggling to keep the horde moving.

Weak feedback and outdated mission design:
For a game about shooting, the guns lack any real impact, again, likely from the bottleneck. They sound low quality and feel like you are shooting pellets. Explosions are even worse; you fire an RPG into a massive heap of zombies, see a low quality explosion and maybe 20 die while the rest keep going like nothing happened. It’s funny that years later, Saber still hasn’t figured out satisfying gun audio or visuals, even by the time Space Marine 2 came out.

The mission structure is painfully dated. It’s always "go here, press button, wait." The defensive finales are okay, but the bits in between are full of friction. Escort missions, fetch quests, or searching for items while a horde attacks. The DLCs try to be clever by adding mechanics like freezing (find a heater) or sandstorms (find indoors), but it’s just the same annoying mechanic with a different coat of paint. Where's the fun? It just wastes your time.

The progression system is actively hostile:
This is where the game shows its true colours. The design here is disgustingly blatant in trying to inflate playtime metrics. To survive on higher difficulties, you need weapon upgrades (silencers, penetration), but the way you get them is nonsensical.

Every single weapon has a separate XP bar. You only gain XP for a gun if you personally get the kill with it. If you use a turret, melee, or class ability to wipe out a horde? Zero weapon XP.

Who designed this?

It’s completely counter-intuitive to the entire game's core. It actively punishes you for actually playing the game. You have classes like the Slasher or Vanguard that are built around melee, yet playing them correctly punishes you by halting your weapon progress.

It gets worse. The XP bar is capped per level. If you max out a weapon's current level mid-match, you stop earning XP for it immediately. You have to finish the match, go to the menu, and pay currency to unlock the next level before you can earn XP again. Since drops are randomised, if you don't find that specific gun in the next run, you're forced to use something else you don't care about.

And then there’s the currency bullshit itself. Levelling the weapon is just step one. You then need "Supplies" (yellow coins) to buy the upgrade. These get expensive fast, exceeding the rate you earn them, which forces you to grind. Then there are "Challenge Coins" (blue coins), which are the only way to get the actually useful perks. These are drip-fed to you through weekly challenges or punishingly hard modes. It’s a double-wall of grinding designed to treat the game like a second job.

Difficulty vs. Tedium:
We started on Hard, moved to Insane, and tried Extreme. Unlike Left 4 Dead’s Expert mode, which tested skill and teamplay, WWZ’s difficulty is just a checklist. Have you grinded enough currency? Do you know the map spawns?

On Extreme, they turn off outlines for interactable items. Since mission objectives are mainly "find x in this area," you end up running around blindly checking corners while zombies spawn. Tedium isn't difficulty, Saber. It removes the ability to blind-play a map and forces you to treat the game like a memory test.