Well, by now most people have seen the WWZ movie. Now you can play the card game loosely based on it! As with big-budget movies based on an ever-growing franchise, World War Z was bound to have licensed tabletop games out sooner or later. WWZ in fact has two. This game and a board game. (Expect a review of that in the coming weeks. It would be up sooner, but I’m still recovering from moving and need to unpack everything.)
Each player is in charge of a continent, trying to fend of the zombie hordes, while ensuring that the other players’ continents fall. (As an aside: That’s kind of a jerk move to make, right? I mean, this isn’t a personal thing where only one or two people are dying if your trip your buddy, this is making sure that hundreds of millions to billions of people don’t make it and join the zombie hordes. I mean, sure zombie movies can be pessimistic, but that’s taking it to a whole new level.) You do this by securing your four borders. Everyone’s continent starts off surrounded by zombies, and you have to secure each side by placing soldiers or weapons there. You start with five cards in your hand, and during your turn you draw a card, and then either place a soldier or set of three weapons on one of your borders, place a zombie on an opponents soldier, or discard. The first person to secure all four borders wins.
Sounds pretty familar, doesn’t it? Oh, don’t get me wrong, while they are very similar, they’re hardly identical. However, Zombie! Run For Your Lives! seems to have the overall advantage on WWZ. It has more card variety, more character, and the visuals are more fun. You have to grant, though, WWZ has the license behind it and is much easier to find in the U.S. There are also a few rule differences. For instance, where Z!RFYL! has a matching icon system, WWZ has a sort of trump system. Zombies and soldiers are the lowest tier, and can beat each other. Elite soldiers and raging zombies can beat each other and normal soldiers and zombies, but normal soldiers and zombies can’t beat them. And a set of three matching weapons cards lock a border down and can’t be beaten by any zombie. (This actually makes it all but necessary to get weapon sets to lock borders down if you want to win.) While this trump system does an okay job in forcing the game to end eventually (since prolonged games can be an unexpected nuisance to casual “draw one, play one”-type games) it also means that by the time the game starts winding down, you’ll be drawing a lot of cards that will be completely useless to you, which can be annoying.
The components are all right. They’re not bad. I mean, it’s just cards. Even the rules are printed on the game cards. While that is more than a little annoying, I have to admit it’s also a little bit ingenious. I’m sure they’re not the first people to do it, but I’m pretty sure that they’re saving on printing costs by having everything, even the rules, printed on those cards instead of in a separate booklet or sheet of paper. As for the cards, they’re sturdy, printed on a good, solid card stock. However, that also means that they’re kind of stiff. I imagine that they’ll loosen up with enough playing. Watch out, though, those corners and edges are sharp! The artwork is… I dunno, it’s average. The zombies and soldiers are pictures, though I’m not sure if they’re from the movie or not. (I haven’t actually seen it yet. I’m waiting for it to hit the dollar theaters, so sue me.) I think the weapons are 3D artwork, though, which seems odd to me. Did they not have stock photos of those kinds of weapons? I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to use that art, I mean, artists have to eat too. I was just curious as to why they went that route.
As for the gameplay, well, it really does seem very reminiscent of Z!RFYL! As I said before there are enough differences that it’s not the same game. However, they fill the exact same niche: Casual “breaking-the-ice” party games. When you get down to it, these kinds of card games really don’t have that much substance. What I liked so much about Z!RFYL! was its personality and sense of humor. WWZ just doesn’t have either of those, and so the game feels a lot more bland.
Bottom Line: WWZ the card game is just all right. It’s not a bad game, but it’s nowhere near greatness. There are better games that do almost the exact same thing in very similar ways. However, of the two zombie-themed games like this I am aware of, this one is much easier to get a hold of and it’s pretty inexpensive. If you’re a World War Z fanatic and you have to buy anything related to the franchise, or you just want to impulse-buy a simple, easy-to-learn game that you can play with your kids and at parties, then go ahead and get it. But it’s not a “must have” by any stretch of the imagination.
