The War Z is now available to the public. As we reported earlier today, the game is out on Steam. While the game boasts itself as a "free-to-play" title, it costs $13.49 to purchase and allows you to pick up Gold Credits an additional cost. According to the game's developers at Hammerpoint Interactive, you'll need those if you intend on leveling up and outfitting your player character.
Many gamers, who have since picked it up today are now complaining that the game fails to deliver on the many features it boasts upon its Steam store page.
Destructoid's Jim Sterling, who first picked up the story about these accusations of fraud, has rightfully pointed out that screenshots on the official page were entirely staged affairs that bore little resemblance to the actual gameplay. Of the screenshots, many depict hordes of zombies swarming at players seemingly cooperating with each other to survive the onslaught. The scene is not unlike anything you might see in The Walking Dead or Dawn of the Dead, or even Left 4 Dead.
Unfortunately, players complain that the depiction is anything but accurate, as the only real threat players have to face is other players. Even in the zombie apocalypse, hell is other people.
Most of the complaints allege that the game plays like far more of a 50-player FPS with death match instead of a persistent survival-horror game. Other key complaints (via reddit) include:
A Huge Persistent World: The War Z is an open world game. Each world has areas between 100 to 400 square kilometers.
The map in the War Z is far from persistent and consists of a single map which spans only 72 square kilometers.No Classes, No Levels, No Caps: Create your own survival campaign, gain experience points and spend it to learn dozen of available skills
There are no skills you can currently use.Dedicated Public Servers as well as Private Servers
There are no private servers.Two modes of Play: Normal and Hardcore
There is no hardcore mode.Up to 100 Players per Game Server
The max number of players per server is 50.
At this point in time, The War Z is a husk of a game—little more than an alpha or beta, rather than a proper release. None of this is indicated in the game's Steam page, which falsely implies that the game is in a much more code complete state than it is in actuality.
The last time this happened was when Ubisoft promised that From Dust would be released without a restrictive form of their notorious 'UPlay' DRM. Many users, myself included, managed to get the game refunded from Steam for misleading us. It stands to reason that anyone who feels defrauded by The War Z's blatantly misleading features list could receive a refund from Steam, which you can request through the service's support page.
You might be better off getting Max Brooks' very fantastic novel, World War Z, instead of holding your breath for any of the features promised by Hammerpoint Interactive.
