I found that a lack of an experience system or something similar to advance your skills - giving you a longer sprint time or the ability to hold more explosives in your inventory, for instance - was somewhat disappointing. From level to level, the stages began to feel very similar, giving you little reason to switch up from standard defensive tactics. From beginning to end, strategy basically boils down to standing back as far as possible and lining up shots from a safe distance.
To change things up, players can try to use different weapon loadouts in order to assemble a team specialized in different aspects, but this can also backfire, depending on the difficulty and the type of ammo available. I did, however, appreciate the number of characters you can play as in the game - Rebellion added four more to Zombie Army Trilogy, compared to previous standalone releases.
After playing a considerable amount of Zombie Army Trilogy’s co-op component, I can't say that there's much of a cooperative element going on. Sure, you can have up to three other players join in to help through the campaign or Horde mode, but there's hardly anything that requires players to work together.
If a player takes enough damage, he will go into an incapacitated state and be left immobile on the ground. The incapacitated player may then use any acquired pistol ammo saved until a surviving player runs up and revives him. If they die, they’ll have to wait until the next checkpoint to come back to life. That's about it. Co-op mostly serves to manage the difficulty of the game, as having extra gunners and explosives around is helpful when you need to take out large groups of enemies.
However, this also makes the game somewhat annoying to play for score. Many times, there are only a few zombies to shoot, and since everyone’s rushing to kill them, you’ll have difficulty building up and maintaining an extensive combo. Essentially, while you’re playing co-operatively with friends, there’s also a competitive element that pits you against your buddies to see who can get the high score by the end of a stage. This takes away from the cooperative element just a tad. The linear nature of the campaigns also gives few opportunities to explore the terrain, traverse them in a stealthy way, or find unique spots to snipe from. This hurts the replayability in the long run.
Zombie Army Trilogy is a solid title on its own, and cooperation between multiple players lightens the zombie load and eases some of the more challenging difficulty modes. Horde mode is a great time-waster when playing with friends in short bursts, but the most fun I had with the game came from the multiple lengthy Campaign episodes.
In the end, however, the game offers little more than what Call of Duty’s “Zombies” modes have to offer, only in third-person with with less variation. If you like games that don't require much in the way of progression or time-consuming leveling-up for characters, then this a fine way to kill some time (and zombies) with a group of friends.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Includes remastered versions of Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army 1, 2, and the unreleased 3. Battle through THREE epic campaigns across 15 demon-infested missions. Play solo or fight back to back in online co-op for 2-4 players.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.
