It’s been widely publicised that the zombie apocalypse is pretty much the end for humanity. Sure, some may survive out there for a period of time, but not in the way that humanity has been able to for so long. But, Welcome to ParadiZe ponders how best to put the zombies to work for us, so that we, as a species, can continue. It turns out, all you need is a little bit of brainwashing. Welcome to Welcome to ParadiZe!
A zombie survival game – is there any other type of zombie game? – Welcome to ParadiZe is told from an isometric point of view. After your chosen hero gets wind of a safe haven during a zombie apocalypse, they make the pilgrimage there. Unsurprisingly, things aren’t as advertised and this so called ParadiZe is no safer than anywhere else. Still, you are there now, might as well make the most of it.
You are quickly introduced to the main concept of Welcome to ParadiZe; having a small army of zombies under your control. You see, any zombies you defeat can be fitted with a helmet that allows you to control them and, ultimately, make them less deadly.
At first, as you explore the opening areas, the zombies you recruit will help you out in combat. You can give them a weapon and an outfit that will help determine their behaviour. Similar to other zombies, what they are wearing indicates how they will attack you.
Later on, when you begin crafting your own settlement, your captured zombies can gather resources and make sure your settlement ticks over whilst you are out exploring.
Unfortunately for Welcome to ParadiZe, this is the only unique feature. Everything else in the game is a case of something that has been done many times before, just without the confusing menus to go along with it.
Welcome to ParadiZe is heavy on the loot; almost every enemy will drop something of use. And so it is good news that you can carry an awful lot; even several hours in I still had plenty of room left in my inventory. A lot of it will not become useful until you start the building phase of the game towards the end of the first chapter. So you will have quickly amassed a ton of loot, but most of it can be scrapped, which is handily done by holding the Y button. This also scraps duplicate weapons, but don’t worry, unlike many other titles of a similar ilk, the stats between like weapons are identical, so as long as you have one, the others are unnecessary.
Crafting can also be done at your camp, at least once you begin building your settlement. It isn’t any easier to understand in this menu though. In fact, the menus across the board are tricky to navigate. For example, it took me far too long to understand that there are actually three skill trees to level up. Useful tips pop-up from time to time but if another one is queued up, the other will instantly disappear. It may be that the tips indicated there were three trees, but it was gone too quickly for me to read.
There is armour crafting, but again this never appears to be mentioned. Perhaps it is a byproduct of Welcome to ParadiZe being so generic that the expectation is that you will understand how survival games and crafting mechanics already work. On one hand, yes we do as seasoned gamers, but more casual players may find it all a bit too much.
You can also tailor your zombies’ behaviour in these menus, but again, it is unnecessarily tricky. Rather than simply choosing a playstyle for them – something that the game will indicate through archival videos – you toggle up to four parameters. It is worth playing around with these to see what actually does and doesn’t work for you.
Also here, you can equip your zombie with outfits and even select a colour for them. This comes in handy for the – and I can’t believe I am about to say this in the year of our Lord 2024 – drop-in and drop-out local multiplayer! And it works very well having your couch partner lend a hand when needed, as there can be some tricky bottlenecks to navigate thanks to the map layout.
Welcome to ParadiZe is also playable online with a friend, helping alleviate the boredom when the repetition kicks in. Which it will because, as mentioned before, Welcome to ParadiZe doesn’t do anything special that we haven’t seen time and time again in other zombie survival games. You will face hundreds of zombies, have to craft everything from bullets and bandages to weapons and buildings, complete generic fetch quests, defeat bosses and then, just to top it off, face-off against hundreds more zombies.
Don’t get me wrong, Welcome to ParadiZe is fun. But fun without rewriting the manual. A generic zombie survival romp that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The only new feature is the ability to control a few zombies by attaching a headset to them, but if they aren’t back at your camp running menial tasks while you’re away, getting them to be useful in combat is difficult. The menus don’t help with that, and are very crowded, confusing once you start to gather a lot of loot. Thankfully, with a few friends,
Welcome to ParadiZe is just about passable for a weekend jaunt, especially if you are looking to move through yet another zombie apocalypse.
