Ultimate Zombie Defense 2 Review

Post by **Cmdr Shepard** » November 22nd, 2024, 18:42

The developer generously provided us four review keys with which to try the game.

Ultimate Zombie Defense 2 is an indie first-person cooperative shooter game created by Terror Dog Studios. In it, you survive against zombie hordes while building defenses.

World and Lore

"The streets of modern day Europe continue to be plagued with zombies, all efforts to contain the outbreak have failed. They're killing everything in their path and swarming their wave of death upon every living being. This type of destruction will soon destroy humanity as we know it." ―Steam description

That's about it, lorewise; you don't need more. Zombies are there. Kill them and you're superior. They kill you, they're superior.

The game's atmosphere is somber and bleak, good for a zombie survival experience.

Gameplay

This game is all about surviving waves of zombies while building your defenses. How it works: you start with a basic gun (The Viper 9mm) on a map of your choosing. There's a counter in the corner that shows the current round. Soon, a horde of zombies will come after you, trying to break through the barricades. Your job is to take them out, which gets you credits for weapons and upgrades for them. Weapons can be purchased at locations around the map marked by wall scribbles. If you're feeling lucky, you can also try your hand at the mystery chest, which gives a random weapon. After a few purchases, it will disappear and appear somewhere else on the map; look out for the ray of light that marks its new location. You can also use your credits to buy perks and clear obstacles.

Every fifth round is a special enemy wave. On every tenth round, you fight a boss or a miniboss, which are tougher, but you can see their health bars, so you will know how well your weapons work against them. Each run lasts as long as you can survive. There is no fixed endpoint.

The structures you can build are varied. There are spiked barricades both large and small. You can build chainlink fences to make the zombies follow a certain path while using electric grids on the ground to shock them, letting you shoot them while they are stunned. There are barrels, one with hazardous content and one explosive. There's a laser fence, but be careful around that one since it also damages you. There are turrets both manned and, if you don't want to get your hands dirty, automated. Portals are placed in pairs and let you jump between them. There are two Tesla Towers: a normal one and a highly expensive one ($66.666) called the Terminator Tower. I think these do area damage, but I haven't tried them yet. That was just a quick sampling; the game has even more structures to build.

Pretty solid so far. You immediately understand how the game works even if you have never played a wave-based survival game.

Game Modes

The game offers three modes:

Just Survive, featuring round-based zombies and defensive construction;
Just Survive (No Building), a variation without defensive structure options; and
Defend the Objective, in which players safeguard a military radar, constructing and strategically positioning defenses to delay the approaching hordes of zombies.

I like that the game offers a variety of experiences. For those who enjoy Call of Duty Zombies, there's the Just Survive (No building) mode. I played a couple of matches in all three modes but had most of my fun in the No Building mode since that one was the closest to Zombies: nothing to worry about other than dodging zombies and knowing where to run next while getting better guns and perks. Just Survive, the mode with building, was just too janky: you have to be careful where you place buildings because they also block you, which makes it even harder to evade zombies since you can't jump in this game. Defend the Objective was better. You had something to defend, so building around it to prevent the zombies' reaching it was not as big of a problem as building in Just Survive: you can run around killing zombies while the defenses keep them away from the objective.

Maps

As of this review, three maps are available:

Airport Terminal: A well-designed, atmospheric airport in a German-speaking country. It's spacious enough to navigate around zombies while providing strategic spots at which to set up defenses and slow them down.
Cemetery: The Cemetery has a lot of tight spaces and a few more open spaces to evade the zombies. It seems inspired by "Nacht der Untoten" from World at War. Wall weapons and perks are spread evenly across the map, meaning a new weapon is only a few steps away if you dislike your current one.
The Bridge: Very lengthy map. The bridge looks as if everyone deserted it in the middle of something, and it also has what appear to be CDC checkpoints. Good atmosphere.

The three very differently-sized maps.

I appreciate the diversity in map sizes, as each one offers a unique visual experience.

Enemies

The game features a variety of enemies, mainly zombies and demonic beings, each with their own dangerous quirks. Regular zombies range from rotting carcasses and burned corpses to zombies so recently turned they still appear living. Invisible ghost witches disorient you, making your screen all wobbly and your slowing your movement. Another enemy variation is the brute with a cleaver; these do a lot of damage. Snatchers pull you towards them so that other zombies can swarm you. Hazmats spit toxic goo at you; if the goo misses, it will stay where it lands for a short time, creating a damaging zone. There are also Hazard Bomber zombies that run up to you and explode.

It's a nice variety of enemies. They add to the challenge, but I have one complaint concerning the Snatchers: their hooking you and pulling you towards them feels too sudden and janky.

Every 10th wave, the game offers you a Hell Challenge. If you decline, a miniboss is sent to your current map. If you accept the challenge, you get sent to a boss arena. If you defeat the boss, you are rewarded with an opportunity to upgrade your weapons. The very first upgrade you choose is free; every upgrade after that costs credits. You should usually be able to upgrade your primary weapon to tier 2 or 3.

There are a few boss fights in the game. They are set up similarly to those in other games you may have played: you fight them in a special arena; they are usually bigger, stronger and faster than the normal zombies you have encountered so far; and there is a visible healthbar. The first boss is a huge demon in an arena with pillars all over. You bait him into running into them and then knife him; repeat until healthbar is empty. Very boring. The arena was cool, though. Generally, if you try to kill the bosses by just shooting at them, you'll have a hard time because they absorb a lot of damage, so figuring out their gimmicks is front and center.

During one playthrough as three players, we made it to the 10th wave, at which we accepted the Hell Challenge. The boss spawned, and we engaged in battle. Unfortunately, our combined damage was so low that it took an excessively long time to defeat him, and we only managed to do so because one player somehow ended up on top of the boss, out of its reach, allowing him to shoot without being hit. When I was playing alone, I figured out that you had to let him charge into those stone pillars all over about the map. The game hints at this by giving the pillars a red hue.

Weapons, Perks, and Skills

As you can see below, there is a broad selection of guns, some very good, some a waste of your money and time. To give my impressions of a few of them:

The flamethrower, from my experience so far, is a waste of money and time which ultimately cost me a run. Enemies burn, but you need a lot of fuel to actually kill them, and letting them burn and die from passive damage takes too long. Guns are faster and less dependent on damage over time. I'd avoid it in the future.
I disliked the VAL on my first time playing but came to appreciate it upon further testing. At first, the recoil was tough to handle, but once you get a feel for aiming with the sights, it's actually really fun and easy to take down enemies. It also becomes a good weapon for later rounds if you upgrade it.
The AA12 is by far my favorite weapon mainly because of its damage and magazine size. If you get the perk that gives you double the magazine size, it gets upped to 64 bullets, and, upon further upgrading it at the Pack-A-Punch machine, it gets even more bullets and damage. Very recommended!

As mentioned above, you get an opportunity to spend credits to upgrade your weapons, and thus their damage, after successfully beating each Hell Challenge.

Some of the available weapons.

There are a number of Perk Machines, which allow you to spend credits on buffs that lasts until you die. So far I have found:

Phoenix: When you die, you come back with 50% of your max health. You still lose your perks.
Fortress: Boost all buildings within a 10-radius of your presence, enhancing their damage output by 25% and durability by 25%.
Rapid Reflexes: Reload faster, reinforce defenses faster. Reload speed and barrier repair speed increased by 200%.
Blood thirsty: With every strike, you have a 17.5% chance to replenish 2 health.
Brain Buster: Consecutive headshots amplify headshot damage by 10%. If you miss, it resets.
Lock and Load: Magazine size and max ammo increased by 200%.

Fortress becomes pointless in (No Building) mode, but most perks are very useful. Rapid Reflexes, for example, makes reloading almost instant even when you use LMGs. Most perks seem to be 1:1 copies of those of Call of Duty Zombies, which is fine, as this is an homage to it.

There are three skill trees planned, but only two of them are implemented as of this review:

Engineer: This is the tree for building. Skills here increases durability of buildings, lower the price of the buildings, and also making certain buildings more effective, such as giving barrels a wider area of effect.
Scavenger: A more action-based skill tree with abilities that reduce prices of weapons and mystery box as well as giving you an ability that saves you from death once in a while.
Slayer: Not currently available.

At the end of each run, you gain points that can be spent on skills. As of this review, points may be spent in both the Engineer and Scavenger trees simultaneously, but after the game leaves Early Access, you will have to choose one of the three.

Sound

Weapon sounds are 50/50, and not in a positive way. 50% have sounds that seem very amateurish and low quality, and the other 50% sound fine but are still not what one would expect. All of them have something in common: sound mixing issues. Some weapons far too loud and can damage your hearing (not even joking), while some are so quiet that you have to turn the volume up to hear them. Only LMGs are well-mixed and sound as they should. Reloading sounds are fine, as is zombie audio. The music is consistently good and very reminiscent of Killing Floor and Killing Floor 2 with its metal soundtrack.

Visuals

The visuals are quite nice for a small indie developer. The marines look detailed, and their gear looks like the real deal and not tacticool stuff from military movies and other media that like to give soldiers nonsensical equipment. They fit well with the world, as do the zombies.

Art Direction

The art direction is quite "realistic", meaning most places look like real places you could find somewhere on Earth. The only place that looks straight out of a fantasy or sci-fi horror flick is the demon plane:

The aforementioned demon plane.

A few different shots highlighting the nice art direction.

Player Characters

The player characters are nameless soldiers from various armies, nothing fancy. I do like that they are just soldiers and not special OC Donut Steel characters.

The different models used for the player characters.

Negatives

The core concept of the game is solid, but, unfortunately, some aspects fell short in execution. Building is a great idea, but structures can confuse the enemies' pathfinding: zombies will sometimes attack nearby structures even when there is a clear path to the player. A lot of the weapons just have bad sound mixing and are too loud or too quiet, and some sound very amateurish. The ability to place defenses seems very limited: you can't always place them everywhere you might want to, such as flush against walls or in corners. You can't walk through your own structures, and there is no jumping, so it's easy to accidentally trap yourself and die.

Conclusion

Fun with friends, but generally falls flat. Playing it alone gets somewhat boring. Building is a good idea but very rough. As this game is still in early access, everything described here is subject to change. As of now, I would not recommend the game unless you have three friends with whom to play it. If you are planning on solo play, don't bother.

Should this review prove compelling and prompt a purchase, please do so from the provided link:

Ultimate Zombie Defense 2 - STEAM