Screwing over friends and fixing up windows in COD: World At War’s Nazi Zombies, one of gamings best spin offs

“George! Get your snout out of the lucky dip weapons box and board up the back window! George?! GEEEOOOORGE?! Annnnnnd now we’re all dead. Wunderbar.” The original Nazi Zombies may well be the greatest minigames ever conceived - there's a reason why it's become one of the biggest features of the series. You, three friends, 20 waves of Hitler’s finest goose-stepping brain-biters, and the naughtiest gun armoury of all time. What could possibly go wrong?

Honesty time: I can remember almost nothing about Nazi Zombies’ parent game, Call Of Duty: World At War. I recall it was the first COD to dip back into the increasingly stale waters of WW2 after 2007’s Modern Warfare tore up everything we knew about the series. I think Gary Oldman might have phoned in a paycheque playing a shouty Russian dude. And that’s literally it. Suffice to say, for me WAW may be the least memorable shooter in the megaton franchise’s history.

Then again, it did give us Nazi Zombies, so I can look past its overly vanilla story mode. Call Of Duty: World War 2 revealed its take on the undead-blasting minigame, and with that likely to be in a lot of stockings come christmas now feels like an ideal time to replay what initially seemed to be a throwaway curio. It’s since blossomed into one of the series’ most enduring staples. Not bad for a minigame which is essentially equal parts zombie murder and glorified carpentry sim.

You’re not just a hopelessly outmatched soldier locked in a creaky country house as coffin-dodgers try to break through every single window and door, oh no. In reality, you’re more harassed handyman than Ash Williams wannabe. Killing zombs is important; boarding up window frames and hammering doors is everything. Surviving Nazi Zombies’ increasingly frenzied waves demands tight coordination and constant communication. Fail to regularly talk to your teammates, and you’re all toast. Said communication usually devolves into all four of you screaming at each other over headsets, begging your pals to repair that window in the kitchen you’ve all forgotten about.

Away from pretending to be a trigger-happy Tim ‘The Toolman’ Taylor, World At War’s undead ace in the hole revolves around guns. Specifically, how you’ll happily screw over your chums’ desperate DIY efforts to nab yourself a better one. That little diatribe I opened on recalls a time when I was utterly obsessed with Nazi Zombies.

Every night after work a gang of my colleagues and I would all furiously fire it up, laugh our asses off, then contemplate how something so simple could be so intoxicatingly addictive. The ‘George’ in question was my then editor of this very website, GamesRadar+, and competent a shooter as my ed was, he also loved a sly spin on the minigame’s randomised weapons crate when no one was looking.

The Mystery Box, to give it its official moniker, elevates Nazi Zombies to comedy genius on a level with Monty Python. On the surface, it lets you spend all that money you accrue from whacking the undead to buy better firearms. In practice, it’s a joyous comedic device which encourages players to forget there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’ as they rush off for an elicit spin on the crate when they think their pals aren’t watching. The ultra addictive appeal lies with the fact you never quite know what the Mystery Box will produce, as the weapons it spits out are randomised. The Holy Grail remains the laughably lethal Ray Gun; a firearm so overpowered, you’ll gladly abandon your window-fixing duties in the vain hopes of landing one.

Of course, there’s an undeniable futility at the heart of the mode. Fighting back endless undead onslaughts is akin to trying to sweep leaves during a hurricane. Yet despite my greedy comrades, and the slim chances of success, I’ll always cherish Nazi Zombies’ hysterical brand of chaotic camaraderie.

This article originally appeared in Xbox: The Official Magazine. For more great Xbox coverage, you can subscribe here.

CATEGORIES
Dave Meikleham
Paid maker of words, goes by many names: Meiksy… Macklespammer… Big Hungry Joe. Obsessive fan of Metal Gear Solid, Nathan Drake's digital pecks and Dino Crisis 2. Loves Jurassic Park so much, may burst at any moment.
Latest in Call of Duty
A player wearing a gasmask and holding a gun during the shooter, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
Call of Duty season 2 brings back Gun Game and a fan-favorite Zombies weapon we haven't seen in 10 years
A player wearing a gasmask and holding a gun during the shooter, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
136,000 Call of Duty accounts have gotten banned since ranked launched for Black Ops 6: "We’re not slowing down in our mission to shut down cheaters"
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War reportedly surpasses Red Dead Redemption 2's huge development costs, with a massive $700 million budget
Black Ops 6
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 makes headshots deadlier while cutting back on weapon sway and recoil: "We will be keeping a close eye on sniper balance after this change"
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 movement.
Black Ops 6 player spent nearly 20 hours grinding to Prestige without getting a single kill, all by spamming Spy Cams
Black Ops 6 Zombies
Call of Duty hacker says "I had my fun" after reportedly getting thousands of Warzone and Modern Warfare 3 players falsely banned
Latest in Features
Key art for Assassin's Creed Rogue Remastered showing Shay Patrick Cormac in a black and red outfit that's a cross between Assassin and Templar armor, with his ship The Morrigan behind him
Assassin's Creed Shadows can wait – I spent 40 hours mopping up the map in the one game in the series everyone skipped
Avowed screenshot showing a corpse-like figure's face with glowing purple mushroom/spore growths
I thought I was going evil in Avowed, but one quest changed everything I thought I knew about morality in this RPG
Yakuza 0
10 years on, Yakuza 0 is still one of the strongest entry points to a franchise ever made
The Witcher 3 screenshot of Geralt
Avowed and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 tap into the same thing that makes The Witcher 3 so compelling – and it's something I'm always looking for in RPGs
Marvel Rivals Spider-Man
Spider-Man has become every Marvel Rivals player's worst nightmare
The Iron Mask
The 32 greatest swashbuckler movies ever made