Much was said about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III’s “Modern Warfare Zombies” before release. Perhaps too much. Many wrote it off and assumed it would repeat the mistakes of the half-baked Zombies mode found in Call of Duty: Vanguard. The reveal confirmed that the mode wouldn’t be round-based, further splintering opinion. I was more optimistic. As a fan of Treyarch’s first attempt at open-world Zombies in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Outbreak, I truly believe there’s potential for another type of Zombies mode that can complement round-based maps by keeping players invested in the undead during what is traditionally a down period. I’m pleased to say my expectations have been met and exceeded in almost every area. Modern Warfare Zombies is a confident successor to Outbreak and a much more realised extraction shooter than Modern Warfare II’s DMZ.
Much like other extraction shooters, you deploy to the map, loot and fight your way across it, and extract before the timer runs out, living to fight another day with your valuable loot that can carry across to the next time you deploy. This gameplay loop works well with Zombies. The fight or flight decision to either continue through Zombie infested Urzikstan or to hedge your bets and extract is highly addictive, and there’s already a solid pool of loot that can be taken out of the game for use in future matches, such as perks, weapons, schematics, and equipment.
Once extracted, schematic blueprints unlock the ability to craft items in the menu before deployment. This is very rewarding, and despite completing all three acts and spending the majority of my time in Urzikstan this past week, I still have quite a few blueprints to track down and extract. If you want to go straight to the most challenging location on the map, you can save up your best acquisitions and use them all at once. It brings back the feeling of running a Perkaholic in Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, but with more pride since you’ve put in some graft to get your acquisitions instead of just hitting the Gobblegum jackpot.
This system could also be further enhanced by adding additional schematics as new perks or wonder weapons are added to the game. There’s also the potential for an upgrade system similar to the one in DMZ, where the craftable timers can be reduced by completing tasks across the map and extracting specific items.
I am impressed by the amount of contracts and objectives across the map at launch. By the end of Outbreak, it was bursting with things to do, but there wasn’t a massive amount at launch. MWZ has hit the ground running, and many objectives hit the sweet spot between busy work and being fun. The Escort contract is a much-improved version of its namesake from Outbreak (though I miss Dr Grey’s Monkey friends).
The Aether Nests and Infected Strongholds also develop on the idea of the Aether Crystals activity from Outbreak. These can be tricky depending on the location and how well-equipped you are to tackle them. I’m afraid to admit the number of times I’ve ignored Ravenov berating me for not using a gas mask, only to down in a nest. I look forward to seeing what else gets added to the activity pool. The more, the merrier!
The in-game timer is necessary for an extraction shooter – even one based on a “survive until you die” mode like Zombies – so while I don’t agree with those who want it removed, I do think an increase to the timer would be a positive change if possible. Sometimes, the Aether storm spreads just as I finish setting up my loadout for a Zone Three game. An hour of gameplay before the storm moves would be a significant change.
Treyarch has been conservative by removing pack-a-punch levels and weapon rarity from weapons when extracting. This decision has been contentious, but it is the right call as a player having one good run could trivialise the entire mode, as players could quickly drop into Urzikstan fully kitted out after only one or two games.
That said, I think there’s a way to reward players for extracting with powerful weapons – especially Wonder Weapons, which are incredibly rare (as they should be!). Similar to DMZ’s exfil streaks, having a system in place where extracted weapons drop shards of aetherium, which can then be used to form pack-a-punch crystals and aether tools acquisitions for use in future matches, would ensure the acquisition economy isn’t broken, and also encourage players to extract with the best loadout possible.
A way to “case up” a wonder weapon for extraction would be helpful, too, but I think it would need to require a sacrifice by the player – something like an extractable PAP’d weapon case requiring five bag slots.
MWZ introduces a new Wonder Weapon, The Scorcher, and the first-ever Wonder Vehicle(!), The Blood Burner. An indestructible aether-powered motorcycle, the Blood Burner is a great way to get around the map. From what I can tell, there is only one instance of it in each game. This makes it extremely rare, which is what you’d expect from what is essentially a Wonder Weapon with wheels, but having a quest to unlock it would be a fun addition. Having the entire lobby filled with aether cycles may be a bit unruly, though. The Scorcher isn’t a top-tier weapon in terms of damage, but the alternative fire that shoots you up in the air is an incredible tool for traversing Urzikstan.
When previewing the mode, I hoped that the game difficulty skewed to the more difficult side, and Treyarch has done a great job here. Zone One feels similar to Outbreak, where travelling about the world won’t be a problem, but contracts and objectives can trip you up if you aren’t paying attention.
Zone Two feels like a big step up, and it’s where I spend most of my time. I’m not a world-class Zombies player by any means, but I can hold my own and have completed every possible Treyarch Zombies Easter Egg solo. Zone Three… Zone Three scares me. It really is similar to a high round run or a difficult easter egg step. One wrong move, and you pay the price. The enemies shred your armour, and they hit hard. Keeping all your perks after being revived is a massive boon in this case, and I’m glad it’s been implemented.
The key to Zone Three is preparation. You will have an incredibly rough time if you haven’t used acquisitions or hit lucky with the mystery box and loot drops. Some people are into that kind of thing, but I like to enter the zone with a belt and braces on.
As a predominately solo player, the mode has started in a decent place for players like me, but more can be done to assist solo players without making solo an “easy mode” option. The dog companion is a quick, easy easter egg that significantly helps with its free revives and crowd control. However, having the opportunity to drop in with a self-revive, be it via schematic or a permanent upgrade, would be much appreciated.
A few of the contracts – Aether Extraction and Console Defence in particular – could also be balanced a little better for Solo players. The time limit on Aether Extraction, combined with highly aggressive zombie and human AI, makes it very difficult for solo players to complete – even in Zone 1.
Speaking of human AI, enemy faction Terminus Outcomes are littered around Urzikstan in strongholds, convoys and unspecified buildings. These soldiers need a nerf – they are too aggressive, accurate, and powerful – but their introduction increases gameplay variety and makes Urzikstan feel like it is hosting an ongoing battle. Outbreak had a similar premise, with Requiem and Omega operators participating in an arms race throughout the Ural Mountains and surrounding areas, but apart from an occasional helicopter, there was little Omega presence in the mode.
Playing on a map with up to 23 other players is a first for Zombies, and so far, I’ve had positive and negative experiences. Some players are helpful and will pick you up when you are down, and others will ignore your plea despite being across the road. I try to pick up players when I can, but there’s not much of a reason other than wanting to be a Good Samaritan. A way to encourage players to pick up strangers would help, but this could easily be exploited, so I can imagine Treyarch’s hesitancy at adding something like that without fully thinking it through.
A few times, another team came in as I finished an activity, like an Aether Nest, and helped themselves to my loot, which was a bit frustrating. As a solo player, I am not interested in grouping up with others much, but I tested the feature, and it seems to work well. I wish I had the ability to leave a squad after joining, though, as I think I would use it more if I could team up with a party for a specific contract or activity and then leave when we’ve been successful.
The scale of the mode constantly impresses me. Being used to a limit of 24 zombies on the screen at once for the longest time, seeing a massive horde for the first time genuinely made my jaw drop. Certain exfils are chaotic, and mowing down that many Zombies feels phenomenal. As of the November 17th update, Treyarch has had to reduce the number of zombies at Exfils to improve stability.
Hopefully, this is just a temporary measure. Many players have been spamming exfils and using exploits like infinite turrets (thankfully, now fixed), which has likely made some games more susceptible to crashes. I’m not the only one who loves seeing the screen flooded with Zombies, so I’m sure Treyarch will explore all potential avenues to return the feature to the game. It’s hard not to imagine how Treyarch could use these hordes in traditional Zombies. If it’s possible to have so many Zombies appear at once in an online 24-player game of Zombies, what could be possible on a smaller round-based map with only four players? We’ll need to wait for the answer, but the Zombies Team have likely already asked that question themselves. As the ancient proverb goes… “let them cook”.
A Vast Ocean and a White Whale
Modern Warfare Zombie’s main meat is a bunch of missions split into three acts. Each act has different tiers of tasks that test players’ skill and knowledge of the mode, and each act culminates in a story mission. These story missions are similar to the open-zone missions from Modern Warfare III’s campaign, but they work much better in Zombies with greater enemy variety, mechanics that are consistent with the rest of the mode, and set pieces that may be overdone in a campaign, but feel fresh in Zombies.
I am pleasantly surprised that each mission has unique pieces of character dialogue tied to it. Although we’re not getting massive story revelations, it gives each mission purpose, and you feel a sense of progress as you work through each tier. A few of the mission requirements are a bit of a slog – using Aether Shroud on mercs, for example – but most are engaging and help explain the mode’s mechanics. It’ll be interesting to see what future missions entail.
The boss fight in Act III is a lot of fun, and it’s promising to see that bosses aren’t limited to Easter Egg quests in MWZ. It’d be cool to see the boss reappear randomly on the map occasionally in a “world event” or something like that. Destiny 2 does something similar with its patrol zones, and it would be an excellent way to re-use content in a way that enhances another part of the mode. It would also let more players experience the boss, as some players likely aren’t as interested in completing all three acts as Zombies fans are.
The reward for defeating the boss and completing all three acts is a beautiful Ripper skin. It feels good receiving a reward with something that you can then take into other Call of Duty modes like Multiplayer and Warzone, and this is something that Zombies fans have wanted for a while. It’s great that Treyarch has finally found a way to do this, and hopefully, cosmetic rewards will now be a standard for all Zombies modes.
Overall, the mission format works well, and successfully capping each story mission off with a cinematic is a welcomed touch. Since Black Ops 2 first introduced cinematic endings, they have quickly become the most anticipated part of a new Zombies map. Black Ops 4 finished with comic book-styled animations, which was a cute callback to Zombies’ roots but disappointed some players, who wrote off the poignant ending of the original Aether saga because of it. Cold War didn’t have many cinematics, but when it did, they delivered—the season finale cinematic ending to Forsaken was exceptional. Unfortunately, Vanguard had an immense opening cinematic, and… that was about it.
Modern Warfare Zombies is an ideal entry point into the Dark Aether story for newcomers. Enough time has passed since the Cold War that a new wave of characters has come across the dangers of the Dark Aether, with most of our favourite Requiem members sadly “out of action”. The welcome return of Sergei Ravenov will no doubt result in him keying Operation Deadbolt in on what he experienced in the 1980s, and it’s good to see him back. We now have three eras – post-WW2, Cold War, and the 2020s – that Dark Aether covers, and it shows the strength of the narrative team at Treyarch that there are compelling characters in all three.
The oversharing, can’t-read-the-room Hugo Barrera is already a fan favourite, and pilot Fang is just as cool as Raptor One, who came before her. I like how Dr Ava Jansen is introduced to players as a Terminus Outcomes defector and then repositioned as an essential character as the story develops. Zombies has always had strong main characters alongside an entertaining supporting cast, and I’m glad this is still the case. Having an iconic Call of Duty character like Soap feature in Zombies is enjoyable, but ideally, the further we go down the rabbit hole, the less of an emphasis on Modern Warfare’s world there is.
Having cinematics return to Zombies with not only an intro but three act-ending cutscenes is a vital message to fans that the mode still has the ambition to use cinematics to progress the story, alongside the more obscure methods of storytelling that diehards such as myself enjoy, like radios, audio logs and documents. While I enjoyed hunting across the Outbreak regions for intel after every update to Cold War, Urzikstan is just too big – and there’s too much going on – to do something similar in Modern Warfare Zombies.
Unfortunately, running about without a clue where the lore is hiding is like finding a needle in a haystack. There’s also no extractable intel, which seems like a no-brainer due to DMZ having a similar mechanic. A similar mechanic in MWZ would be a wonderful evolution of the Intel system that debuted during Cold War, with players on the same boat as me likely to extract every piece of intel available.
Hopefully, Treyarch can address these issues post-launch. The studio has taken major strides with its narrative techniques in MWZ, directly addressing fan feedback regarding the need for more cinematics and straightforward storytelling. However, this does mean the lore has suffered slightly so far. Some fantastic stuff is hidden across Urzikstan, but the mode greatly misses the Cold War intel system. Not everyone is a lore addict like me, so this is likely lower on Treyarch’s priority list – which is understandable!
With Call of Duty 2024 fast approaching, the studio probably has quite a few aces up its sleeve, too, and may be holding off on some features and big lore revelations until a more suitable time.
“I assume we are still on schedule, Doctor Peck?”
There are, as expected, some teething issues. Some matches are hit with lag and hitching, zombies occasionally lose track of their pathing and float in the air, and Fang and her Exfil helicopter get lost on the way to pick you up. There’s also a frustrating matchmaking issue where you disconnect just before the match starts, meaning you lose your weapon and any additional acquisitions you attempted to infiltrate Urzikstan with. Unfortunately, I’ve lost countless acquisitions to this. I always expect issues like these as Call of Duty comes in hot every single year (if we survived Black Ops 4, we can survive anything!).
The mode is also an enormous undertaking for the Zombies team, as going from creating 4-player experiences to a completely online mode with 24 players likely had all sorts of difficulties. Granted, this doesn’t make losing progress and items any less irritating, but MWZ is so enjoyable when everything works that it’s easier to let it slide. Thankfully, a couple of patches should sort out most of these issues. Treyarch has quickly updated players on issues being monitored and sorted out some of the most significant problems already, so the post-launch support we saw in Cold War will likely continue in MWZ.
Some have taken issue with the “identity” of Zombies no longer existing because of MWZ. The mode has had a storied history of environmental storytelling, and playing on the Warzone map certainly isn’t the same as fighting back the undead on the moon, in a pocket dimension prison, or the ancient city of Delphi. From the outside looking in, it feels like Treyarch has its hands tied. I have no doubts the studio has the talent to create an incredible bespoke map for open-world Zombies, but it will never happen as part of Bobby Kotick’s Call of Duty conveyor belt, where resources are tight, the deadlines are even worse, and player spending is more important than player satisfaction.
I’m seeing things like the “Warzone-ification” of Zombies, and in MWZ’s case, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. It’s Treyarch working smart. In a perfect world, Treyarch could conjure up a unique environment for its larger-scale Zombies modes while continuing to release the traditional smaller-scale round-based maps for which the mode is known. We don’t live in that world as much as I wish we did.
One hill I’ll die on is that Zombies is at its best with a set crew of four characters. While this isn’t a dealbreaker for a mode like MWZ, it would be thrilling to see a crew return in the future. It’s the best way to attach players to certain characters, and an exciting crew can cover over some of the cracks in other areas – like a lack of environmental storytelling, for instance.
So many classic Zombie maps resonated with players because of the emphasis on a set crew. Playing as a crew gives the mode a sense of cohesion, combining story, gameplay, and identity. When players think of the Black Ops 2 maps Tranzit, Die Rise and Buried, they likely refer to them as the Victis (or “Tranzit Crew”) maps. Blood of the Dead wouldn’t have had such an emotional impact on players had we not gone through Black Ops 3 as Primis. Cold War had players putting themselves in the shoes of a Requiem Strike Team operator, which was an interesting change of pace, but I think it’s time to return to a set team of four.
Sledgehammer created the perfect system in WW2 Zombies, where there was a crew of four main characters and additional characters that could be used in place of them. This system would allow the same player freedom we currently have in selecting operators while enabling a set crew to return. With many fascinating characters established in the Dark Aether saga already, Treyarch would be spoiled for choice when deciding on a new crew!
For now, I’d be happy with some Operation Deadbolt operators being added in future seasons – hopefully with some Zombies exclusive barks and dialogue. It would be nice if these were in-game rewards, but we all know they will likely be available through the store instead.
Once, This Land was Alive…
It’s too early to tell what Microsoft’s plan is for Call of Duty. Still, there’s a glimmer of hope that it will enforce changes that allow CoD developers the time and budget required to execute ideas effectively — not efficiently. Game Pass could also open up the opportunity for a Zombies specific project. I’m content with the open-world Zombies experiences like Outbreak and MWZ not having the same amount of detail as round-based maps, as long as we continue to receive round-based zombies that deliver in that department. I think most people would agree with me on that.
However, we must be realistic with our want for more round-based Zombies and admit that a traditional DLC season of 4 maps spread across the game’s first year of support would not work in the current video game climate. Activision has established Call of Duty as a live service title, and fans – with no doubt in my mind whatsoever – would complain about no updates or new content in between round-based maps.
During Black Ops 4, I remember vividly the constant complaints of “no content” for Zombies upon every gauntlet release. The game launched with four round-based maps, had the usual DLC season of 4 additional maps, and had extras such as Gauntlet, Rush, new perks and elixir updates. If that didn’t satiate these players back then, I don’t think it would now.
I’d love nothing more than a constant barrage of round-based maps, but it just isn’t feasible, and there’s also the worry that round-based maps would start to grow stale. I certainly felt that a little during Infinite Warfare and WW2 Zombies.
The reception from other Zombies players seems positive despite the mode being a massive departure from what has come before. Many big-name YouTubers, some of whom have become increasingly critical of the mode since Black Ops 3, have been kind to it and are having a lot of fun. While I’m not losing sleep over who does and doesn’t like a Zombies mode that I enjoy, it certainly is a good feeling to have some of that infectious positivity back, even if it’s only for a short while.
Modern Warfare Zombies is Treyarch Zombies at its most experimental. Most of the risks taken have paid off, and despite the feeling that some areas are limited due to the current state of Call of Duty as a franchise, it’s a solid foundation to build on. After some unfortunate missteps in Vanguard Zombies, the Zombies Team has successfully rebuilt the momentum that it gained from Cold War. There are many unknowns surrounding the franchise’s future, particularly with it now being under Xbox rule, but MWZ’s successful launch – with more traditional Zombies surely to come in 2024 – may have arrived at the perfect time for Treyarch and all of its Zombies aspirations.
Be it surviving as many rounds as possible, defeating bosses, or waiting for the next exfil, as long as the Dark Aether is still an entertaining threat; I’ll be killing the undead for as long as Treyarch lets me.