Zombie Army VR Review: Veil of the Undead

To say that VR games have been the talk of the decade would certainly be a mistake. VR has been around for almost two generations, but we haven’t seen any significant titles emerge in the genre in the last few years. When I enter a VR arcade or hook up my PSVR2, it’s mostly the same things that are popular – Beat Saber, Synth Riders, or in some rare cases, Les Mills Body Combat. If you’re on a Meta Quest or maybe the HTC Vive (feeling old, aren’t you?), you might be playing Half Life: Alyx (possibly the best single-player VR that might have come out recently). Naturally, when a new zombie shooter came out, I was super excited to try it out and see whether getting nausea from smelling rotting flesh of the undead or a heart attack from seeing a horde of reanimated corpses is worth it as an experience or not. I picked up Zombie Army VR, wanting to see how different the game feels in a VR environment (don’t worry, you can still see how good it feels to pierce the heart of an undead abomination up close).

Zombie Army VR launched officially on all major platforms on June 12, 2025. The game was developed and published by Rebellion (who are known for a good number of games like the Sniper Elite series). The game is a first-person shooter in a VR format at its core, though one can argue that it also adds the zombie shooter archetype into the mix.

Zombie Army VR is set in the aftermath of the events of Zombie Army 4, which led to the defeat of zombie Hitler in hell. Fragmented bands of zombies still roamed the surface of Europe, eager to strike back at any and all living beings. With Hitler’s death, the people of Europe expected peace to prevail and for the dead to go back to rest. However, the dead have started regrouping and attacking the living again. With the lingering threat of the Scourge, the Allied troops have reached out to the Deadhunters, a group of elite undead killers trained to get rid of the rampaging undead on the move. The player is one of the selected Deadhunters who are selected to help identify and purge the undead threat lingering in the wake of the war.

The game is aimed to be primarily played in singleplayer, though like all other Rebellion releases, it is enjoyed more in the coop mode. Taking on the zombies with a friend is more fun, just like pretty much any other zombie horde shooter (or pretty much any of the previous Zombie Army games). New players might face some difficulties since the zombies tend to come in groups and without a break, so it’s definitely recommended to jump into the game in co-op.

Zombie Army VR features all of the elements of a quintessential zombie shooter. Players start with a brief tutorial, learning the basics of the game. Then they are deployed into the heat of the fight, where they are supposed to take out the hordes one zombie at a time while investigating the main cause of the zombie infestation. It’s simply a decision of moving from one point to another, shooting the zombies, and listening to story recordings that tell more about what’s going on inside the world. It’s 2025, and I’m not sure if building a game on the premise of something in 2012 is going to hold the same weight. Being spoon-fed narrative portions without experiencing any part of it isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I went into the game.

There’s nothing “new” to the army of the dead. Players would expect them to be evolving to counter the “living threat”, but there isn’t anything that indicates this (except a few narrative sections that tell this, even though the game doesn’t show the same thing). Also, it takes a while to get used to the controls. I’ve played a couple of other VR games, which are a lot more basic than this, and they tried to set the tone better (one important point here would probably be that the better VR games almost always are on PC and not on the PS5). The controls are jank,y and it takes a lot of time to get used to. Also, the “snapping” inside the game leads to issues (one example being trying to aim with the bolt-action rifle always opens up the scope even when you don’t need it). Working with the PSVR2 already has its challenges, and this adds more difficulty to the mix. Reloading and firing guns is a pain, and haptic registrations are extremely inaccurate.

Zombie Army VR does not feel like a new entry in the franchise. It feels like a coat of paint applied to a mix of the existing Zombie Army games and published. The environments feel dated, the zombies haven’t changed, and with the long list of technical issues, it’s definitely not going to be a favorite when players boot into their VR headset to try and play this. The myriad of issues, along with the lack of polish and new features, would push many away from buying this (and from the PS5, from getting another good VR game, to its seemingly small collection of VR games). Even as a generic VR game, it feels very shallow in terms of its gameplay features. For a newbie, Zombie Army VR feels overwhelming as it takes too long for a gun to reload and hit registry feels off (I think this is mostly done to give a feeling of “recoil”), and the zombies in the first few levels start overwhelming a bit too early if players are playing alone (and not without another player in coop).

It’s difficult to understand how a theme as exciting as Nazi zombies invading Europe has been made to feel as boring as drab as Zombie Army VR makes it out to be. The game is very tedious for newcomers to the franchise to get into, as barely any of the lore is covered in the conversations. Even for people who have some experience with the previous Zombie Army titles, some of the info dumps will make anyone’s eyes roll. Players are definitely recommended to shut their brains down and move from point to point, shooting whatever’s in front of them to justify their buyer’s remorse for playing the game.

For a game that was made in 2025, the game environments look pretty dated. It is certainly possible to build VR and non-VR games with better environments (Horizon: Call of the Mountain is a VR game with pretty decent environment design, allowing players to actually admire the place around them while wearing a VR headset). Interiors tend to look slightly better, but that’s not much to say when the exteriors do not exactly look good.

The sounds and noises of the game are slightly better – the music as well as the growling sounds of the undead are done well. However, the sense of dread added to the dissatisfaction when I couldn’t reload my gun and consequently nosedived into a corner by a bunch of bloodthirsty zombies. The music felt like a very odd fit with the environment, considering that barely any thought was given to designing the world, yet the compositions and sounds somehow make it feel unnerving.

Zombie Army VR is a VR game released in a crowded market of zombie shooters that fails to establish itself as unique in any way (beyond the VR aspect). The game lacks polish, and VR interactions aren’t really the best. The world looks extremely dull and can make players throw up even when they aren’t being gargled down by a bunch of horny zombies. Considering other Rebellion titles, I expected more polish, but that’s much better said than done. This isn’t a game I’d recommend picking up unless it shows drastic improvement with constant updates to the core mechanics of the game.

FINAL SCORE: 40/100