Whereas Minecraft taught the industry that launching an unfinished game can foster the creativity of players to feed the development process, Hammerpoint Games' The War Z sheds light on the uglier side of early releases. When the "Day Z inspired" survival game launched back in September, players complained that a litany of features advertised on the game's profile page were absent from the game. The War Z was quickly removed from the service. As it turns out, the developer considered the game on sale as a "Foundation Release," and suggested that the promised features were still in the oven. The whole controversy has sparked a lively debate on the role of ethics in game development and, more importantly, has shown other studios how not to handle public relations fiascos. With that said, how does the game stand by itself as a product? Let's take a look at the reviews.
EuroGamer: 3/10
It's unfortunate that the controversy surrounding The War Z has given it such a high profile, because inevitably more poor saps will buy it to see for themselves. If you're even slightly tempted, just remember that at the maelstrom's core is a very basic and ugly game made by a company that is both dishonest and incompetent. Combining disgraceful ethics with endemic failures of design, The War Z is a real disaster.
GameSpot: 2/10
The only way to draw even the tiniest bit of entertainment from the game is by playing on nearly empty servers to avoid the player-killing cheaters and focus on the undead. Even then, you soon get fed up with the dreary zombie combat, or some hacker shows up and puts you out of your misery. Fighting zombie hordes in an apocalyptic wasteland has never been so depressing.
IGN: 3/10
The War Z misses the mark at almost everything it does. It's rife with bugs and other tech issues, and the large amount of guns has turned it into a place where meaningful player interactions rarely occur. It needs a lot of work to become something that feels like a proper release, and is in dire need of the slew of promised features to make it more than rarely entertaining.