The Midnight Walkers Brings the Hardcore Zombie Genre Back to Life
Zombies aren't the monsters here.
The Midnight Walkers has a brilliant vision, blending the hardcore elements of the rising extraction shooter genre and zombies.
The fear of fighting zombies and potentially other players, along with losing all your hard-earned gear when you die, adds a different level of immersion. While those might be intriguing enough for some zombie fans, is The Midnight Walkers worth trying out?
The Midnight Walkers Emphasizes the “Hard” in Hardcore a Bit Too Much
While there is definitely a niche for extremely difficult games, especially in the extraction shooter space, The Midnight Walkers walks a precarious tightrope in finding the right balance, and the steep learning curve does it no favors.
Most players will have a hard time learning the mechanics, scavenging loot, completing quests, and dealing with different types of zombies. They also have to think about fighting other players, learning each class and its skills along the way.
The walkers themselves are already a challenge, and getting matched up with experienced players as well could mean an inevitable end for you.
That said, when you become more comfortable, the game becomes exciting and fulfilling. Even dealing with walkers is quite fulfilling since one mistake can cost your life. Slashing or swinging your weapons and hitting an object through the attacking motion will stagger you, making things rough in small spaces, and adds another layer of strategy to think about.
You’ll also have to think about this while fighting tougher walkers, such as a runner that leaps and attacks in an unorthodox way, tough construction workers and police officers, tanks, and more.
With everything you’ll have to learn at the start of your first match, you basically will feel overwhelmed, no matter how accustomed you are to playing these games.
It Gets Better, But Sticking Around is the Hard Part
After 10+ hours, you’ll start to feel more confident going into raids and maybe even switch to the survival game mode, where it is even more punishing – but more rewarding. You’ll eventually crave tougher zombies and target floors with extremely high-value loot.
Looting starts to feel less overwhelming, and you just pick up whatever is available and sell everything. You’ll start hoarding good loadouts and picking fights with other squads.
But it is such a mountainous climb to get to this point, especially if you start a few games with a bunch of high-level players in the lobby. Players are matched by gear score, which is hard to translate into power. Powerful players can still enter the low gear-score lobbies and wipe everyone, but this is easily fixed with a few balance changes and queue mechanics.
As for balancing across classes, it is a bit rough, as some classes excel in PvP and become mandatory choices for squads. Each class feels unique, and there are many improvements to be made. They have their WiP projects displayed on the game, especially when you hover over the class menus.
As of the early access launch, The Midnight Walkers is in a decent state with a lot of potential. Even now, the game brings a breath of fresh air to the zombie genre, so if you have a squad to play with, it is definitely worth playing already.
