Zed-itorial: Exo Zombies Review

[Black Hand Smith]

            Tally Marks on a controller….surely that means Zombies confirmed right? The Answer is Fuck no. yet Sledgehammer decided to pull a fast one at the last minute and scrape their very own Zombies mode together. Now, we didn’t get exo Zombies till the first DLC which pissed off a bunch of gamers due to being forced to buy a $15 DLC in order to try a Game mode that may or may not be worth it. So now the question is…..was it worth it? Well, at the time of this review only the first 2 maps have come out and the third has been revealed and will come out very soon, but by the looks of it I think I can already tell you my final verdict on this Game Mode….

               Exo Zombies is a Game that plays like zombies, looks like zombies, but when it comes down to actually sitting down and experiencing it, you are left disappointed. Sledgehammer tries so hard to copy the success of treyarch it comes off as just a quick attempt at grabbing your money. Even Infinity Ward which is infamous nowadays for their massive failure called Call of Duty Ghosts, gave us a pretty decent game mode with a different play style and objectives. It wasn’t as good as Zombies but it wasn’t bad either. Sledgehammer on the other hand completely botches their chance at creating something unique in favor of making something familiar. Which isn’t a bad move. Think about it, you have to wait a whole year for Treyarch to release their Zombie Mode so what could you do with Exo zombies? Well for starters, you could not fuck it up.

                 The story for Exo Zombies is probably one of the worst things AW has done. In fact it can be considered a Sin against anything zombies related. You start the story after the zombies appear on Riot. Giddeon apparently gets snatched from the side of the chopper. Better hide your wife and hide your kids cause they are snatching everybody out there. Outbreak takes place some time after this and introduces us to 4 brand new characters…..none of which you will care for by the end of this map. I’ll get to those characters later. So apparently Atlas is doing experiments with Zombies when suddenly they escape………..which is when you see one of the Major Flaws of this game mode. There’s no intel at all. Classic Zombies had hidden radios and notes, Extinction had watchable videos and audio which could be unlocked, and Exo Zombies……Exo Zombies has jack shit. The only intel you can find in these maps come from quotes or the cutscenes. The cutscenes are alright but leave much to be desired and the Characters are so boring you don’t even want to bother listening to what they have to say.

                  Exo zombies, like Zombies mode, have Perks you can buy to enhance your stats. You have quick reload, More health, quick revive, and 2 new perks Exo Soldier and Exo Slam. The classic perks work exactly like the ones in Zombies but With Exo Soldier you can reload while running as well as shooting while running, which is great because most of the time enemies are going to pop up in front of you since they can’t form a train. Exo Slam on the other hand is a completely useless perk. Exo Slam requires you to jump in order to perform the attack which means after round 30 it becomes obsolete since EMP zombies will immediately shut your exos down the moment your feet leave the ground. You could use the perk to defeat zombies before those later round right? Nope, aiming with exo slam is a pain in the ass and most of the time you will only be able to kill a small amount of zombies with it. Considering the amount of time it takes to jump up and then slam down, more zombies will arrive and you will end up like a Zombie Barmitvah  as you land on top of a huge hoard of zombies and you can’t jump and get away. Youa re stuck there in a deadly trap. By the time you get downed your ass will probably get slammed a lot more than the zombies.

                Speaking of Zombies, the Maps are just way too Hectic. EMP and Toxic Zombies are a special kind of pain in the asses. Unlike classic Zombies where zombies are slower, these zombies jump, boost, and run way too fast. Players will find it even harder to get away since the moment they run out of breath the zombies swarm all over you. Toxic Zombies will appear every now and then. These undead can poison characters. However the poison doesn’t go away which would be fine, if every single hit you take didn’t suck your remaining time limit away. Knowing the amount of zombies that can spawn and their speed you can expect to get hit a lot but then you have to go into a cramped close quarters area in order to cure yourself. Since zombies don’t follow you in a train they can cut you off before you even reach the cure zone. This is especially bad in infection when it is easy to get lost in the sewers. EMP zombies will constantly be harassing you and your first choice might be to eliminate them first right? Well, in exo zombies slowing down to aim at the EMP zombies is hard because all the zombies are moving around way too fast and it’s hard to get a clear shot before they swarm you. The best you can do it just spray and pray you kill them.

                The characters in Exo Zombies are major disappointments. All characters need character development in order for them to be memorable. Some maps like Mob of the Dead made their characters Unforgettable in a single Map. While the tranzit 4 were pretty disappointing characters they were at the very least memorable. You had stuhliner who could have been part of the flesh, you had marlton who was a scientist and possible doppelganger, Russman who was a broken arrow operative turned Bum, and Misty who was pretty much just there because of tits. But even Misty’s tits are more memorable that these assholes. I literally cannot remember anything interesting about the exo zombies characters even if I went online and checked it up right now. You don’t even call them by their names since they are so god damn forgettable. Shane, the Janitor, the chick, and that other guy. Usually by the second map we start learning a few new things about the characters but in Exo zombies we get nothing of importance. Now, the characters being unimportant to the story could potentially still be acceptable as long as the characters were fun but they really aren’t as fun. The original 4 characters were a lot of fun to play as and each one had a definable personality. Even when they were changed in Origins they were still a lot of fun to listen to. Speaking of listening to things. Just listen to Lillith say "OMG...YOU KILLED OZ!" That line is so badly voice acted and sounds so forced I actually laughed. Listen to it again.

                 But it all can’t be bad, can it? Well, not all of it is Bad. Exo Zombies has a few things it did right. Outbreak while having bad characters, no intel, and way too many things coming at you, was at least fun to play every now and then unlike Infection which is so bad you don’t want to ever play it again. I’m probably going to be the first to say this but after talking about it with my friend irl I have deemed the Upgrade system in Exo zombies…Good. Well, the thing about the upgrade system which most people hate is the fact that it doesn’t upgrade your weapon completely until the 20^th time you do it. But at the same time it refills your Ammo each time. which is something Pack a Punch will only do Once. It also makes you grind for points since each round you might want to upgrade your weapon to the next level. Taken into factor that zombies get stronger each time you upgrade it makes sense that you don’t necessarily see your weapon improving much with each upgrade. Another cool thing about the upgrades is that they stay with you even if you trade your weapon in which can be kick ass sometimes. However by round 35 you will run out of Ammo pretty quickly and if you already have a level 20 weapon then good luck getting more with all the zombies chasing after you and EMPing our fucking ass.

                         Exo Zombies is the kind of gamemode that was never meant to have a story. In fact, Exo zombies could have been much more successful if it stopped trying to have a story and just took us to some locations fans have been wanting from treyarch zombies. MOTD, Like I often say, is a complete waste of time storywise since it hinders the actual story from continuing. Yet here is an opportunity to fulfill some of the wishes the fans have without disturbing the Zombies storyline. You could have had a Theme Park zombies map, or a Map in a College or hell, even a map on Mars. If it had done that then maybe my response to Exo Zombies would have been “ Hey, Exo zombies is not as good as real zombies, but it was at least fun to play in these locations”. The problem with a location like Alcatraz is the fact that there isn’t much you can do with it in relations to group 935. It’s just a prison. The same goes with theme parks, zoos, colleges, etc. You can’t really go anywhere from there. So if there was NO story holding you back then you could pretty much do anything you want gameplay wise and map wise.

            In conclusion Exo Zombies had potential to be good or at least Decent like Extinction was but is botched up by a Lazy story, Uninteresting characters, lack of intel, and maps with very little diversity. I would recommend playing each map at least once just so you can see for yourself how bad it is but other than that there really isn’t much reason to play the game mode. I personally give it a 3 out of 10. The only reason I don’t give it a perfect 0 is because like I said before. It DID to a few things right so it isn’t a complete pile of shit. The majority of the game mode though is shit

[Giga IV]

one issue, the upgrade system is horrible. 50 grand to upgrade a gun? then its the same exact gun afterwards? ill pass.....