‘Zombie Army VR’ Review – Arcade Zombie-Slaying Done Right(ish)

Zombie Army VR is serving up its iconic arcade-style shooting on all major VR headsets. Like the flatscreen games, it’s all about blasting every make and model of Nazi zombie, upgrading some cool WWII-era guns, and experiencing the game’s dark, neon green-drenched universe. While Zombie Army VR tailors its zombie horde action to fit on VR headsets, despite its best efforts, it still feels a little too tied to its flatscreen roots.

Zombie Army VR Details:

Publisher: Rebellion Games
Developer: Rebellion, Xtended Realities
Available On: Quest, SteamVR, PSVR 2
Reviewed On: Quest 3
Release Date: June 12th, 2025
Price: $30

Gameplay

You’re a member of the elite ‘Deadhunter’ squad on a mission to rid the world of zombies, and help the squad’s leader Hermann Wolff find his daughter, who’s mysteriously gone missing in the wreckage of Nuremberg. If you’re looking for an engaging story with tons of lore beyond that little summary, you should probably look elsewhere, because Zombie Army VR is all about unloading as much lead at zombie brains as possible, and not much else.

Like all good arcade shooters, the story, which is mostly delivered via voice overs in loading screens, is built to be skippable, as the game’s replay value comes in playing campaign missions you already beat, or choosing a campaign level in co-op mode so you can kick it with a friend. I didn’t have a chance to go co-op for the review, although I find it hard to believe any game can’t benefit with a good bud at your side, preferably one with a spec-ed out machine gun.

That said, the meat of the game lies in its wide variety of zombies that you blast away with a number of WWII weaponry you find along the way. This includes various submachine guns, scoped rifles, pistols, and shotguns from both Axis and Allies. There is also a singular one-off guns you’ll find in some levels, namely a massive machine gun that only has 100 shots.

You’ll also have grenades, mines, and TNT at your disposal too, that latter of which you can shoot from afar to blast a pack of walkers. Zombie Army is all about funneling a train of walkers into a chokepoint, and letting them go boom, and the new VR entry is no exception.

While you can pull the pin on grenades and toss them naturally, the game also offers a secondary way that lets you automatically fling a grenade with a simple trigger pull, just like you might with a gamepad. That was my first hint that Zombie Army VR is still pretty tied to its flatscreen roots. The game knows you’ll need to throw a literal mountain of grenades, and it’s presenting you with an option to make it ‘easier’, but also less immersive.

Weapon upgrades are also here, with work benches scattered throughout starting zones and mid-level break areas so you can choose your loadout and tack on some necessary bits to keep step with the game’s difficulty ramp. Upgrade packs can be earned at your base’s gun range for top marks in the time trial, won by completing specific level challenges, like killing 300 zombies or never using a health syringe, or also found in levels in the form of a satchel, which encourages thorough exploration. There are a few other collectibles to trawl for, including extra weapons skins and creepy dolls for additional XP.

And XP is the name of the game. Shoot more zombies, more accurately and in quick succession, and you’ll rack up XP multipliers, which in turn will give you a better chance at making your next rank, and therefore getting another Weapons Upgrade. It’s a good system that rewards players for not only trying their best, but going back and trying levels again, which take around 20 minutes to complete.

That said, upgrades feel a maybe a little too standard, offering things like extended mags, better shot stability, and more penetration power, but missing is any sort of optics or site upgrades. As it is, iron sights feel basically unusable on all guns, which could be addressed by providing better visual contrast on models, or maybe some sort of glow-in-the-dark add-on. As it is, shooting is basically an exercise in squeezing off your first shot, then readjusting by following the wispy white trail it leaves behind.

Melee weapons are also littered throughout, offering up a few choice brain-splattering thwacks for when you’re low on ammo, or just looking to beat back a zombie with whatever, be it a hammer, arm bone, or wrench.

You can’t holster melee weapons though, making them more of a ‘spice’ to the overall meal. You can however use your gun as a melee weapon, which feels very natural, since you’ll be flailing about anyway when ammo runs dry.

As for scoped rifles, much of time I hardly ever even bothered, instead opting to fire from the hip and adjusting aim based on feel. Putting the scope up to your eye gives you a fullscreen overlay of the shot, which made me feel a little too hemmed in when zombies are popping up from the left, right and center. There were very few moments when I actually needed a scope anyway, because levels are generally too small for them to really make sense.

Despite sometimes clipping through each other, zombies were a highlight. Most of the fan favorites are here, which you’ll recognize from the series other games: a variety of walkers, helmeted walkers, heavy armor walkers, MP44-shooting zombies, screaming kamikaze zombies, and also a sniper zombie that can magically fly to various vantage points. Character models and scripted movement feel on point, as they lunge out you when closing in, voicing increasingly terrible moans along their way.

You’ll be hard-pressed to see more than a dozen zombies on screen at a time though. As soon as you kill the last straggler of the wave, you won’t have to wait long for the next. While I was hoping to get a truly massive wave at some point, the game doles out harder zombies in smaller numbers to amp difficulty.

In the end, Zombie Army VR’s boss fights are somewhat of a letdown, as they’re few and far between. There is some continuity in how to beat them, although bosses generally felt more like summoners who only spawn your standard range of zombies in no particular order. I was waiting for some big one-off reveal, or something to make me go “wow,” but that never came.

Immersion

Zombie Army VR has most of the trimmings of a true VR-native, although I think it has a bit of an identity crisis on its hands.

At first, manually reloading a weapon felt really engaging, and a good source of friction to heighten the zombie threat. As the hordes grow though, and you start expending more bullets per second than you can reasonably find, it becomes apparent that Zombie Army VR just isn’t paced for this to really make sense in later stages of the campaign. At least not for me.

I’ll admit this right here: halfway through the game, I toggled on ‘automatic reloading’ in the settings, and was much happier for it. Even now, after having beaten the game’s five hour campaign, it felt like an all too unfortunate sacrifice at the altar of immersion to keep friction low so I could keep pace.

I hate to feel “happy” for intentionally making a VR game less immersive, but when four kamikaze bombers, an armored mega-zombie, and a half-dozen helmeted runners are on the way to stomp me to death and send me back the last checkpoint, all the while a sniper zombie is shooting overhead, in just doesn’t feel like a situation where I should be reasonably asked to eject a spent mag, grab the new mag from a pouch, charge the first round, and then have to do it again less than 30 seconds later.

Maybe it’s a skill issue, but maybe (just maybe) Zombie Army VR knows that reloading is generally too fiddly for such a fast-paced game; hence the automatic reloading toggle, which exists across all of the game’s difficulties—easy, medium, hard.

That said, the game’s visuals are pretty impressive when played on Quest 3. Levels are fairly dark, although there’s a lot of interesting decay and environmental variety around to keep you gawking. Your standard swath of regular items, like wine bottles, a pair of boots, and motivational posters in German litter the game too, making the apocalypse feel like it just happened a few days ago. Quest 3 has some environmental fog as well in larger levels, but I never found it distracting.

As for object interaction, it is a bit on the ‘cheap’ side, as in the game expects you to force-grab highlighted items at all time. The game however makes a great effort by making weapons physical objects that have appropriate weights.

Oftentimes I’d have my three-slot inventory full, and a another hand dedicated to keeping another previous bait grenade in-hand, leaving me to push a button with the barrel of my gun. In that respect, the world works as you’d expect it, which is a great feeling. Switch guns from left to right felt a little less intuitive, requiring you toss it in the air slightly and catch it with the other hand.

Comfort

Zombie Army VR offers all standard locomotion options and rotation methods. Kill cams and narrative reveals can quickly accelerate you out of your body halfway across the map though, which can be jarring if you’re not ready for it. Kill cams can be toggled off in the settings, and there are only a handful of narrative reveal ‘zooms’, making the game mostly comfortable for most anyone.

‘Zombie Army VR’ Comfort Settings – June 11th, 2025
Turning
Artificial turning
Snap-turn
Quick-turn
Smooth-turn
Movement
Artificial movement
Teleport-move
Dash-move
Smooth-move
Blinders
Head-based
Controller-based
Swappable movement hand
Posture
Standing mode
Seated mode
Artificial crouch
Real crouch
Accessibility
Subtitles
Languages	English, French, Italian, German, Spanish (Spain), Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified, Traditional)
Dialogue audio
Languages	English
Adjustable difficulty
Two hands required
Real crouch required
Hearing required
Adjustable player height