Love the game, but it is so broken.... – SAS: Zombie Assault 4 Review

If I was to make the extremely long review to follow into one short sentence: It’s very apparent that the game is a fantastic idea executed very poorly. The game is incredibly fun to play and progress in, but there are so many bugs and game quirks that clearly were never well thought out by the game developers. Disconnects are very frequent, and when this happens the game automatically ends in a loss. Online games are commonly so bugged that one player may finish the final boss of a level on their end, but the other players in the game are still fighting it as if it had never been defeated. Black keys and strongboxes are so rare now, I’ve literally played hundreds of games in a row without a single one of either. Even if you do get one, they’re of course useless without at least one of the other. People frequently exit the game right before it starts in the last second if they don’t like the items or level of the other players in the game. The only good way I see this being fixed is if you couldn’t see the stats of your teammates until the game actually starts. The matchmaking system should also do a better job balancing difficulty and making sure players are of similar level and skill, making the game more rewarding to good players. The “Last Man Standing” game mode is very problematic since the only criteria for winning is to survive after all your “teammates” are dead. This encourages players to actively try to be bad team players and put the burden of actually playing the game on others. It doesn’t matter if your teammates die within the first 30 seconds or 30 minutes of playing, because either way you earn the same amount of points in the competition. Therefore, players who are high levelled are at such an advantage that it makes no sense for lower levels, even 70 or lower, to even participate. If all the rewards go only to the top players, then it only worsens the situation. The game needs many more maps and perhaps more game modes. There are other maps than the standard ones, but they are only playable for very specific game modes with rewards that make them next to useless to play. I think overall it would make more sense to allow players to retrain and reassign their skill points freely at any time, because otherwise you can easily and permanently ruin an account or prevent it from being as good as others. This would help balance the game in a very natural way as well as allowing players the freedom to experiment and try new gear and skill setups to find what they like and what works best for their play style. Grenades clearly need a huge buff. They’re practically useless and they cost a massive amount of currency to purchase midgame. There is definitely something wrong with the way strongbox drops are determined. Collection rewards for collecting all items of a certain type are a great idea, but some of them are so hard to achieve because a drop is actually physically unattainable. For example, there is a low-level helmet I have never received, and it is the last red type armour piece missing from my collection. However, because it’s such a low levelled item and my character is quite progressed in the game, it doesn’t seem like the helmet will ever be an item I can get from a strongbox. Bosses are commonly crazy overpowered. This point is arguable since one could make the point that it adds challenge to the game, adding to the sense of accomplishment of victory and eventually earning a good item. I feel, however, that because the items earned are completely arbitrary and based on chance alone, it doesn’t make sense for bosses to take 25 minutes of 4 players constantly shooting to kill. There have been attempts in the game to implement higher risk-higher reward scenarios, but the game doesn’t go nearly far enough. The only thing hard about nightmare mode is the bosses. If the standard enemies were much stronger and the bosses much weaker, the game would be far more exciting to play since you have to worry about more than one giant enemy that can kill you instantly with one (sometimes unavoidable) hit. Harder game modes with ideas like this but offering much higher drop rates of black items, but perhaps less money as a trade-off, would give the game so much more diverse gameplay and replayability. I would love to see some of these changes put in place, because this game is great. For my entire review, I’ve sounded incredibly negative. But I play the game almost daily and it’s by far my favourite iOS game. The flaws with the game can be incredibly frustrating however, and I think this repels so many potential new players. Ninja Kiwi could pull in so much more revenue from this game if they actually gave it the attention it deserves.
Review by MaxxCashFtw on SAS: Zombie Assault 4.