Zombies are the perfect enemy for video games since you can callously kill tons of them and never be questioned as some sociopath. They’re the perfect punching bag. Zombies aren’t thinking and have no sense of individuality and in most cases, they’re undead in fiction, which further separates them from humanity.
What if zombies could also be your friends or make them work for you? Welcome to ParadiZe is a base builder, survival, action RPG where players have to endure a zombie apocalypse while also trying to use them as labor. At least that is what is promised. What you get is far less exciting in execution and does not fulfill its potential.
From the minds of How To Survive comes another absurdist survival-action game… but with zombies! How does the addition of the undead shake up the overhead, twin-stick formula? Are zombies completely played out? Find out our Welcome to ParadiZe review!
Welcome to ParadiZe
Developer: EKO Software
Publisher: Nacon
Platforms: Windows PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Release Date: February 29, 2024
Price: $29.99 USD
Welcome to ParadiZe is set in a world where we figured out how to turn a zombie menace into a valuable commodity. Why not put the undead to work? They never get tired and they’re such basic creatures that they can be programmed to do all kinds of menial tasks or can be your friend too.
Zombots are programmed zombies used to build a utopia. Like in every video game ever, the utopia crumbles and everyone has a bad time. Not this is any concern to the player who thrives in situations like this. The only things gamers have to worry about are staying alive and moving deeper throughout the large maps to collect parts to build a rocketship to escape the zombie-infested planet.
The premise is very thin and is held together by rapid-fire black humor. There are twistedly sardonic scenarios that treat human life with complete farcical bitterness that wouldn’t be out of place in a Paul Verhoeven movie. The ludicrous amount of bloody violence and dismemberment is hard to take seriously, which helps maintain a sense of levity despite the dire circumstances.
Once you get started and get a feel for the simplistic combat, you’re ready to begin building your zombie army… of one. Sadly, Welcome to ParadiZe does not deliver on the promise of using zombies as labor or as a force to battle other hordes of zombies.
It is very confusing because the game does feature many scenarios where there are autonomous zombots doing tasks, and yours can also join in. Yet, you can only get one to be at your command. Welcome to ParadiZe is clearly capable of being like Overlord or Pikmin, but with zombies, but it isn’t that at all.
What you are getting is more akin to a half-assed Diablo with a lot more looting and base-building. Players will find themselves protecting structures from zombies and fighting a lot. If your zombot falls, you can revive it or just grab another one since any shambler is a candidate for reprogramming.
Most of Welcome to ParadiZe is rummaging through junk and frisking corpses for loot and resources. You always need a thing to combine with another thing, to make a thing that can combine with another thing. Since you always need resources, it’s a good idea to make a zombie do all the legwork.
Your zombot can be made to do a lot of the menial tasks, if the game were more like Pikmin 4, where you had command of a swarm of them and had to direct different zombie types to do different things, Welcome to ParadiZe would have been a more engaging game. As it stands, it falls short of being anything more than a tedious grind with action as mindless as the undead.
The maps of the areas are also very large and since there is a limited stamina mechanic, exploration can drag on for an eternity. Too often you’ll find yourself slowly trudging along and wasting stamina to dodge roll for some speed or wasting it on a sprint, only to encounter a wandering horde of zombies.
Your character’s stamina recharge will be too slow and you’ll be playing an absurd game of “keep away” while it restores. If you don’t sprint through, then Welcome to ParadiZe becomes utterly boring from the tedium of scrounging and slowly progressing through the areas. It’s a terrible catch-22.
You don’t even need to capture zombies for your base-building because early on you can make a generator that spits out zombot workers. There are not enough base elements to work with and most of the experience is swatting threats that come near your resources while also going out to collect stuff to bring back.
Everything is premade and there is no real customization. Most of the systems are automatic and the skill trees only make it more simplistic and automatic. Anyone who is into “dandori”-style games where the goal is to optimize, organize, and command, then Welcome to ParadiZe will disappoint with its lack of depth. There is far too much mindless combat and not enough strategy involved.
The experience is so tedious and agonizingly repetitive that the main gameplay fails to maintain interest. At best, Welcome to ParadiZe is functional and simplistic enough for a child to pick up and play, but anyone will probably find this to be the cure for insomnia.
Welcome to ParadiZe isn’t without its merits. It is an appealing-looking game, ran well on PlayStation 5, and it is mercifully short for what it is. The average gamer could potentially reach the end in under 15 hours, so it won’t feel like work. It is functional, mediocre, forgettable, and can be charitably considered a guilty pleasure.
Welcome to ParadiZe was reviewed on PlayStation 5 using a code provided by Nacon. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Welcome to ParadiZe is now available for PC (via Steam), Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.
