World War Z VR Leaves More Than Just Brains To Be Desired

World War Z VR sounds like a deathmatch made in heaven, but our time with the preview build is already leaving us feeling some rigor mortis.

The flatscreen World War Z is a good co-op zombie shooter, so coming into this VR take on the World War Z experience, I had high hopes. Instead, the result dashed those hopes like a zombie’s skull, because Saber is resurrecting something I thought we’d moved past as an industry.

For our younger readers, back when console generations felt like miraculous technological leaps, the prior generation would still get these weird ports of current games. Developers had to effectively remake the games from scratch, save for maybe some assets. These would obviously be compromised, but they’d still try to capture the same experience. Sometimes you’d get lucky! Other times? You’d get Call of Duty: World at War – Final Fronts, which was incredibly not great.

My time with World War Z VR unfortunately falls into the latter.

For my preview, I could play the tutorial and one story mission, White Noise. I played the latter on all difficulty settings.

What’s strange is how the tutorial frames the World War Z VR like it truly will be a unique VR spin-off. You’re a nameless new character. There’s a slower pace. Stealth is heavily emphasized, save for a final rush of oncoming enemies near the end. You might wonder if we’re going to feel more like Brad Pitt in the World War Z movie. Neat idea, but the whole vibe stops the second you leave the tutorial.

Turns out World War Z VR is just a mashup of the 2019 flat game, but not as good. It’s totally functional and fine, but very average? This mission sends three characters from the prior game to do something; you play as one of them, you shoot some zeke (see: zombies), and call it a day.

In my case, despite being set in Tokyo, only one character from the original Japan campaign is present, along with one of the NYC survivors and an Israeli soldier for some reason. They’re hot on the trail of a man who could be key to creating a vaccine against the zombie infection. To get his attention, I had to navigate with my squad to a radio tower in Tokyo, then defend it from incoming zeke.

Level design consists of unremarkable hallways connecting a few boxed arenas and safe areas to restock. Every now and then, for spice, there might be two lanes to choose from. Each route either reconnected moments later or one led to a dead end with some supplies. Rinse and repeat this flow until the final holdout to defend the radio tower. The dialogue conveying the story isn’t particularly stunning either, serving a highly perfunctory role.

It’s the World War Z experience, but hollowed out. Fewer interesting choices to make as a player, fewer weapons, fewer zombies… it’s just disappointing.

I also have to wonder if this was always single-player only, because your two NPC buddies are utterly brainless. They will glitch on the environment, struggle to fend off enemies on the easiest difficulty, and you have no way to command them. They’ll just stand in place at times and let the dead eat them alive. Every so often the scripting throws up its hands and teleports them into position. Yet you have to heal these two fools with your precious, limited use healing sprays if you want the extra firepower the odd moment they help out.

Accessibility is an odd conversation as well. On paper, there’s a good array of options, but the gameplay balancing isn’t finely tuned for those who want more realistic reloading. I began on the Realism control/Immersion setting because it’s supposed to be for those with the most VR experience. However, the tempo of combat clearly favors using the simplified reloading system where you just smack your gun to your chest to instantly reload. Realistic grenade tossing is also fairly unreliable, so enabling the ‘fishing line’ option that lets you precisely aim is a necessity.

It’s not that the manual reloading is badly implemented or anything on its own. In fact, manually reloading a shotgun here is notably better than in some other recent releases. The problem is that manual reloading is slower, and with your incompetent teammates, every second counts. And it’s basically impossible to dual-wield guns effectively without the simplified reloading.

As for the hordes? Look, I understand that my Quest 3 can’t match World War Z: Aftermath’s absolutely jaw dropping amounts of zeke that a PlayStation 5 can render. I’m not asking for that. However, the final horde of White Noise, even on Hard, is only mildly overwhelming towards the very end of the last stand. The level design funnels them so deliberately that an onrush of zeke is often at your mercy rather than a threat. It’s trickier trying to avoid a smaller number of them in a confined space, and that’s only if you’re scrambling for ammo. The absence of melee weapons is most prominent in these moments.

Yet at the end of the mission, my party of zombie hunters proudly declares that they must’ve taken out “half” of the entire undead population of Tokyo. We fended off maybe a couple thousand, not half a city’s worth. Yes, there were sprites in the distance trying to depict more coming from neighboring buildings, but they were clearly for show. The presentation’s goals didn’t connect with the reality in gameplay. This is the case both on the grand scale and… well, look at this:

This is a primary character that you fight alongside the whole mission, not some random background character. They’re not all this bad, but the compromises to run smoothly on Quest hardware grew more evident the longer I played. I’m hoping that at least the Steam VR release ends up looking better, but it begs the question: Why didn’t they go for a more stylized art direction for VR? If performance came at this substantial a cost, something less intensive and better suited for a lower polycount would be preferable.

That’s the frustrating part – the absent glory of what should be an obvious slam dunk. There’s nothing fundamentally broken here; it’s simply not as good as the source material. I’m sure someone will play this and have a modicum of fun, but Saber is capable of much more than baseline entertainment. That’s what put its first World War Z game on the map in the first place. I can see the ghost of the game I once loved, but it’s just so hamstrung by decisions that make it less fun.

You don’t get crates with unique deployables, but keys that you can only use to unlock predefined defenses that never change, no matter the difficulty. Heavy weapons can’t be stored on your person despite your left shoulder going unused as a weapon slot. Melee combat is reduced to shoving zeke with your gun, even though melee should be a highlight in VR. Seriously, imagine the chainsaw in VR! Dual-wielding, as I said before, only really works with one style of reloading, and the pitiful amount of ammo available discourages it.

So basically nothing, besides the type of special zombie spawns, changed between three different playthroughs of the same mission. For a game built on replay value, that’s a big issue. A few upgrades in the skill tree require playing through missions again on Hard, but the difference between Medium and Hard is barely notable, so that means playing missions maybe twice. Since you’re on your own, there’s not even an excuse to replay a mission with a friend who just picked up the game.

I don’t understand. Saber has been at the top of its game for a good few years now. And to be fair, if you told me this was an early alpha, I’d call it a decent start. Except this game launches in a few weeks. I want to believe that maybe Saber will turn things around with post-launch updates. However, I’m just not sure most players will have that kind of patience. I fear only the most devoted fans of World War Z are going to get something out of this.

World War Z VR is up for pre-order now on Steam and Meta storefronts, releasing on August 12, 2025.