Independent-but-rather-big UK outfit Rebellion have built a canny, reliable business model while you weren’t looking. First they make a game – usually a bit shooty, starring X-Ray gibsplosions – and then they make its sister, the zombie game. One-two. This time they’re doing both at once. So while a buzzcut snipes jeeps behind enemy lines in North Africa for Sniper Elite 3, another buzzcut is doing the same to undead jeeps in Berlin.
What the second buzzcut needs to ask himself is whether his comrade in another continent is creating work for him. Sniper Elite V2 left Berlin littered with dead, and now here it is rising for a second go. Don’t be surprised if our man winds up headed to North Africa next, to mop up the still-moving corpses left behind there.
A zombie, operating a sniper rifle. They’re learning.
There are things Rebellion would like you to know about their new Nazi Zombie Army: that it has “revolting” new zombie and skeleton types, including a Summoner boss who’ll raise the same dead again and again until you forcibly get him to cut that shit out. That its support for four-player co-op will see it sold in multipacks of four for $35.99 / £23.99 / €26.39 (or alone for $11.99 / £7.99 / €8.79).
But there’s more interesting stuff going on: those queasy Vangelis synths that hopefully indicate a self-consciously pulpy air, for one thing. And the promise of “sandbox” environments for Sniper Elite 3, which with any luck will have rubbed off on its sibling here.
We’ll soon find out if they have – Nazi Zombie Army 2 is out tomorrow on Steam. Is that close enough that it might quench an immediate thirst for weekend potshotting?