Pros: Fun game sessions, plenty of different maps, four different loadouts to use in a match
Cons: Dated graphics, basic/poor features, only has five game modes, generic FPS
We took some time out to play IDC Games’ new FPS Zula, a modern themed free to play FPS where two rival factions duke it out in an ongoing war, taking players to many locations around the world and battling it out in team oriented matches over multiple game modes. We put in a few hours to check out the game and see what it was all about and digging a little deeper with some of the features.
Upon initially loading in it was clear that this wasn’t going to be some revolutionary FPS with new unseen features, such as the likes of Dirty Bomb or Warframe, the game looked like something from five years ago with its blocky dated graphics and basic looking interface. The game looks like one that is just trying to recreate what free to play FPS’s already exist and what is already popular, without seemingly adding much in the way of features.
Zula provides the basics, at every point it seems like getting away with putting in just enough to get away with it such as the five fairly standard game modes: Death Match, Team Death Match, Sabotage (bomb plant), Capture Flag and Wanter; a “VIP” mode where one player is hunted by everyone else. There’s nothing new when it comes to game modes and feels no different to Counter Strike: Global Offensive (as seen mostly in Asian developed FPS games, albeit Zula is developed by Turkish company Lokum Games). The Mission feature, again, is basic and the missions aren’t something you can be particularly pro-active about trying to achieve as they just revolve around tasks such as getting a set number of head shot kills or playing a certain game mode a number of times. It’s there, but seems like a lack of effort.
The weapons, of which the developers insist there are “over 150” of, which we’re pretty sure isn’t exclusive to weapons (at least not from our count) and is inclusive of all the gear items and boosters you can purchase to equip. From those available in the shop there were 45 main weapons, most of which looked the same, some of which were level locked, half of which were premium currency only. Bit, by bit, by bit your customization options dwindle and the final arsenal roster looks a lot thinner than we’d like. You can customize some weapons using acquired materials from matches, but which weapons they are we’ve no idea as we couldn’t see any mention of which could be upgraded and the half a dozen we’d bought said they couldn’t when we entered the upgrade menu. One of the big things that made us roll our eyes was that there are (from what we could gather) no permanent weapons; everything you buy from the store is on hire for 1-7-30 day periods at which point it ends up back in the shop; so a constant income with most of the weapons and cool items being Zula Gold premium cash currency (fortunately upgrades do stay with a weapon even when you don’t currently own it, and will be there if and when you re-purchase).
The maps seem to be where the most effort has been put into the game, and there’s around two dozen of them to choose from which is fairly impressive, they come in different sizes and environments, ranging from town streets to open construction areas. Whilst visually they might not look the greatest, layout wise and details they’re actually pretty decent. One of our favourite battles was in an underground carpark on a single level filed with cars and crates, but playing in a Team Death Match with “Sniper Rifles” only activated; it was very difficult but once we found our spot we were racking up kills. Unfortunately there do seem to be some community favourites and in Sabotage we found ourselves on the same map three times, which got a bit tedious.
The most frustrating thing for us, particularly as someone who personally isn’t a frequent FPS guy, is that there appeared to be no matchmaking and anyone could enter a room, so we’d often be playing with and against players that were super high in rank and very skilled, where head shot deaths became a big part of our gameplay experience. Whilst rooms generally do have auto-balancing turned on for matches (though it can be turned off) and so the teams were technically fair, from an individual point of view we were just trying to get lucky and it was consistently the same people in a game of Sabotage (bomb plant/defend) that were the last ones remaining in each round. It’s understandable, as the game hasn’t been out all that long so it doesn’t have the population to be choosy with matchmaking, just a bit annoying for us n00bs.
All that said, weak and limited features aside, the game was actually fun and isn’t something we’d say to necessarily stay away from; it’s worth a try, but honestly we’re not sure why anyone would stick around in the game when it’s essentially the same as half a dozen similarly developed FPSs and when there’s more graphically up to date and in-depth feature heavy free to play titles out there.
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