Contractors VR Zombies is Hot Garbage and Here’s Why

I’ve got to say that I’m not easily turned away from something new in VR. There are so many unexplored types of games in Virtual Reality that even a half decent version of something new to VR is generally an awesome experience. Even if I have some complaints about whatever it is, like in my Cities VR article. I’ll still usually end up playing it a ton and enjoying myself immensely. There’s just not a whole lot of options in VR, and I’m a huge fanboy.

Now there’s already zombie survival in Pavlov VR, but that’s just a direct port of Nazi Zombies from the Call of Duty franchise. Vanilla Pavlov Zombies is so underdone and incomplete that it doesn’t count. Oh, and After The Fall too, though that game has some issues of its own. Here was another chance to do things right. Contractors VR zombies was going to be something grand and new, from a game that had previously had some really stellar updates, and this zombies mode was going to be built in VR, for VR.

Shame it turned out to be terrible.

The Zombies Are Drunk

Let’s start with the obvious thing. The zombies look terrible. The animations are janky and weird, and they’re constantly doing this over-animated dancing with their arms that makes them look silly. They don’t shamble and they don’t run. They kind of… flail their arms as they power walk towards you. They look like they’re sliding over the ground more than walking. I mean look at them for Christ’s sake.

Not to mention that there is very little variance in the character models of those zombies. The same few variations will come at you over and over again with a different colored shirt. Hair guy, messed up face guy, big bald dude, occasional fat dude, over and over again.

Worst of all is that the zombies make hardly any noise. The occasional moan is about all you get. There’s long periods of dead silence while they eerily shamble towards you, only occasionally punctuated by a single sound other than gunshots. It’s weird.

Look at a clip from Contractors VR zombies, and then compare that to a clip from the Call of Duty Nazi Zombies. The Nazi Zombies have so much flavor, they move in such an interesting zombie-like fashion, with some damn character and some noise. They don’t all look the same when they move. They seem… well not alive, but animated.

Ugh. When the Contractors zombies get close to attack you they don’t even really make a chomping noise or a roar or a screech or anything alarming. Then you have to immediately run away and reposition. Oh and let’s talk about repositioning while we’re on the topic

The Gameplay. Also Drunk.

You will have to do a ton of repositioning in Contractors VR Zombies. Not for the right reasons either. I hope you really love constantly reloading while on the run, because you never get a chance to just stand your damn ground and run the zombies through a choke point. Outside of the early rounds there will be enough zombie spawns for some to inevitably spawn behind you.

Are there maybe some secret spots I haven’t found? The options are either stand in a corner with nowhere to run if you get overwhelmed, or zombies will spawn behind you. One of them will usually start attacking you from behind and you will need to run and reposition.

What makes this so crappy and unengaging is that this means there is really no reason to think tactically about the map and the obstacles on it. As long as you have a place to run away to then you will be fine as long as you don’t get bitten one too many times before you run. There’s no funneling zombies into choke points or traps.

Even just run and gun shooting can be interesting, but unless you are constantly looking over your shoulder every couple of seconds, which makes aiming in VR impossible, then you have no forewarning of a zombie coming behind you. Since they can just pop into existence anywhere and don’t make any noise to alert you to their presence, a zombie could be basically anywhere you aren’t looking at basically any time.

After playing enough you will inevitably spot zombies popping in out of nowhere. They’re probably designed to spawn in behind you or right around a corner in front of you so you don’t see them pop into existence. What this creates is a situation where you have no idea where zombies might come from and so no way to plan for how to deal with them. This is just a shooting gallery where you shoot, run, shoot, run, with no thinking. Over and over again in circular patterns.

The Perks Are Drunk Too

Speaking of patterns let’s talk about the progression systems here. Just like in previous Contractors VR survival there’s a system of Perks and Equipment. You get two perk points a round, and you get money dependent on how many times you shot or killed a zombie. Now I’ll put a little disclaimer here by saying that these problems are largely inherited from the previous Contractors VR survival mode, which has the same mechanics, but they’ve been rebalanced and reworked for the zombies mode. That means there was a chance to do something about these problems before release.

For instance, you would be crazy to not go through the yellow tree. It has extremely good benefits that literally every player would benefit from. From a straight up 30% money boost from each kill, to a 1% damage increase every 500 dollars gained, up to 70%. So basically a long term investment towards a whopping 70% damage increase.

Nobody, no matter what other perks they chose or what weapons they chose, would not benefit from this immensely. So the yellow tree fails to be a choice, and just kind of ends up being something you inevitably need to invest in sooner rather than later. Not to is just irresponsible.

As for the other two trees there’s really not much choice either. You will have to take abilities in the red tree. Without the damage boosts they provide even the 70% increase from the yellow tree will not be enough. You will end up firing insane amounts of rounds into zombies while doing practically no damage. I’ve had to refill my entire storage of magazines twice during some later rounds. At the very least you need to invest in the flat damage bonus and the headshot bonus. So, again, investing in the Red tree is not a choice, but a requirement in order to get anywhere.

The Green tree is kind of optional. It generally makes you harder to kill. The green tree is the only real choice you make. Invest in the green tree so that you can take a little more damage without dying, or spend those points on the things you will have to get to have them a little sooner. You’re better off just running constantly and not spending those points in green at all.

There are some hybrid abilities between trees too, they generally suck and are pointless.

Guns are Approaching Sobriety

The one redeeming part of this game are the guns you get to buy. There’s a great variety, and each path in the tree has a theme to it. The path on the top leans on guns that fire fewer bullets that do a lot of damage. The path below that leans on guns that spray a ton of bullets. It’s fun to choose which gun to go for next.

It would be nice if you could have two big SMG or Rifle level guns, instead of just one big gun and a pistol. There are way more choices for larger firearms than there are for pistols. Some of the paths you can go through the gun trees don’t even have a pistol on them.

Having the choice of which gun to get is nice, but not even that is well implemented. That’s because some of the guns are traps, and they take so long to save up for that you will be stuck with that trap gun forever. For instance, check out the Deagle. You can get it super early on and it does good damage for a long time. Assuming you take the right perks of course.

Now take the M1A, which you can get right after the Deagle. It is a Marksman’s Rifle that fires a really big cartridge, bigger than the Deagle does. Check it out in this zombies mode, it does practically no damage at all, despite being semi-automatic. You can tell some balancing was done for this mode, I mean they changed the whole gun and perk tree around from regular survival. Did this get released in a hurry? Was there still work to be done on this?

The M1A is absolutely horrible. You will end up just using the Deagle instead, and that is the better scenario where you have a good pistol to fall back on. If you get a crappy gun and are using the starting pistol, well you might as well start over.

In Conclusion

So you inevitably learn which guns are best, just like you learn which perks are best, which means there’s not really any choices here, just traps to fall into so you have to play over again to not fall into those traps. Other than that the gameplay doesn’t change much. Rinse and repeat the same rounds over and over. The types of zombies, or the number of them, doesn’t change. Even the placement of the armory and perk locations, doesn’t change.

There is only one map that is the same every time, and you will inevitably realize that you should do the same thing every time, or your chances of surviving to later rounds goes way down. Mostly because if you take the wrong perks or buy the wrong gun you won’t do enough damage to cut through the zombies. So you end up doing the same thing over and over again, which is boring.

Maybe if the process of shooting the zombies was fun, then Contractors VR zombies could remain interesting, but shooting the zombies isn’t even fun. It’s just a repetitive repositioning fest that has no tension once you get good at it in a few rounds. It’s just running in circles, popping off a few rounds, and running again. There are no real build choices to make, and no real tactical choices to make. No chances to take, just boredom.