What If... Zombies?!

Introduction

A rare and much-anticipated Halloween themed update, and one of the few times a new gamemode debuts with a theme to match. However while Zombies for Halloween sounds great on paper, the decision to tie this update to a single episode of "What If...?" Season 1 is baffling and squanders a lot of potential.

A Zombies update could have been a great opportunity to zombify a bunch of random and interesting characters. This kind of happened with the 2 seasonal uniforms, but the main update's 4 uniforms were quite underwhelming in choice and visuals. An especially big L for Strange where they picked the ugly Defender uniform for the movie and then picked the wrong MCU Zombie Strange.

• Characters

  Good meat..

  Doctor Strange [What If... Zombies?!]

  Doctor Strange [What If... Zombies?!]

  Strange is clearly someone at Netmarble's favourite as he rockets up to potentially the best PvE character in the game for the third or fourth time. The skill cooldowns might take some getting used to, but a short cooldown on skill 4 makes it very easy to align cancels onto a rage proc. He's also quite proc-friendly for the first time.

  The damage speaks for itself. He scores insanely high in AB, an easy 12m in ABL despite the lack of a good 2nd support for Blast Male Villain. He joins Ghost Rider in being absolutely cracked for WBL even with a Rage, and seems to go crazy in certain restrictions of Zombie Survival too.

  The cherry on top is that he's knocked Magneto off the Blast Villain pedestal, opening up many more options: no need to buy a Deluxe Pack, no need to buy a Christmas uniform, just get around the Zoctor. An even bigger win if you already had him at Tier-4 with the relatively mediocre previous uniform.

  Captain America [What If... Zombies?!]

  Captain America [What If... Zombies?!]

  Another good uniform for an existing Tier-4, Cap's uniform wisely does not overlap with the ABL-centric Doctor Octopus and Hulk. Instead this uniform increases his proc-friendliness, making him a great WBL choice and pretty solid in PvP too.

  While the previous [Back to Basics] uniform is a pain, it's worth noting it's not that old and you could double-dip Cap in Combat Hero/Villain restrictions in WBL if you own both uniforms. It might not be worth going back and buying Back to Basics if you don't already have it though.

  From the new player perspective, this is a great addition as Cap is available in the extremely limited First Purchase Tier-3 Selector and the Tier-3 Guided Quest pools. A nice refresh to the early-game characters to go along with Iron Man's upgrade last update.

  M'Baku

  M'Baku

  Not often that a no-uni-transcend winds up in the top section but M'Baku's 6th skill has been anticipated for a while. He's a meta general support all the way to late-game (for ABL) and crucially a free unlock from Legendary Battle.

  This makes him a no-brainer choice for some of the early-game rank up tickets for new players, providing a guaranteed useful Premium to use those tickets on. Pretty good update for new players when combined with Cap's new uni and Okoye being free from selectors.

  Okoye

  Okoye

  The prayers from around the time of the Wakanda Forever update have been answered but no one really cares anymore. There is not much to be said here - fairly standard Tier-3 character, no support to speak of, but free selector characters are always welcome.

  Bad meat..

  Wong [What If... Zombies?!]

  Wong [What If... Zombies?!]

  Another entry in the streak of crap Tier-4s that ran through all of last update. Speed Male is a death sentence, Speed Villain has just had Gwenpool take over, and for some reason this uniform removes all the proc-friendliness of his previous one.

  The intent is probably that he's a niche Tier-4 that will perform decently and not often be banned on Otherworld. It is getting exhausting seeing characters be sidelined like this and it would be much more appealing if less versatile characters in PvE restrictions were made to be very strong to justify the drawback. Rather than giving up and throwing them in the PvP pile for 99% of the playerbase to never touch. Horrid.

  Falcon [What If... Zombies?!]

  Falcon [What If... Zombies?!]

  Completely baffling choice for a uniform given that his Tier-4 is clearly still being reserved for the movie next year. This uniform keeps him at Tier-3 and makes him a Speed Villain Zombie support. May be the most unnecessary thing ever.

  The intent might have been that Wong and Falcon would be a good Speed Villain ABX team, but makes no sense coming out after Gwenpool. As it stands this uniform is about as useful as its own left arm.

  Weapon Hex [Infected Bioweapon]

  Weapon Hex [Infected Bioweapon]

  Hex breaks the streak of amazing Halloween support uniforms, and continues where Wong left off, being the 6th awful Tier-4 in a row now. This uniform is uninspired in every way: had no business being on the rework poll to begin with, skills are somehow less interesting than the previous uniform, and has nothing to do with Halloween or being a zombie other than looking a bit grey in the face.

  This uniform provides both PvE and PvP support passives for Zombies: on the PvE side it's a nice 45% damage buff to go with Zoctor in ABX, but she can't enter with him in ABL due to the Male restriction.

  The PvP side is more unique, providing Immortality to all Zombies but guaranteeing that they die after the 7 seconds is up. Similar to Franklin's Artifact providing Immortality to the F4, a bit better since no Artifact is required, but this uniform is only the first piece in the very expensive puzzle that would be building a whole Zombie team for Otherworld or AC.

  It's an easy skip unless you are dead set on the Zombie PvP team. The silver lining is that players who don't have Sin or Morgan can play catch-up as a result.

  Abomination [Infected Bioweapon]

  Abomination [Infected Bioweapon]

  This uniform gets props for being the first of all of these Halloween uniforms to actually understand the assignment and be properly Halloween themed. It looks awesome but that is about all the credit it will be getting.

  The support effects are a mess with the leadership now applying to Zombies but the Tier-2 and Artifact supports applying to Gamma Radiation. The T2 Passive has also had the Chain Hit Damage inexplicably removed and substituted with 15% more damage and 45% ignore dodge - which has been tested to show an insultingly small increase to Hulk's ABX/L scores.

  It is utterly baffling that a seasonal uniform for a character as rare as this is not even a noticeable improvement, especially as just the previous summer event gave us Yondu's insane support buffs (keeping in mind Yondu was not a support at all prior). It would have justified the cost of the character, the full-price uniform, and the niche support if this was a tremendous buff to Hulk (and assumedly Red Hulk in 2025), but it's not even a passable one.

  Given the price of the character and the utter irrelevance of this uniform it's 0/2 for this Halloween, making Halloween 2024 the first seasonal event ever to have neither uniform be useful. He is also the first useless Male Halloween uniform.

  Killmonger

  Killmonger

  Transcended with M'Baku. A decent sacrifice to get M'Baku a 6th.

• Zombie Survival

  A nice idea for a mode with lots of interesting mechanics. It turns out to be a lot more interesting on paper than the actual gameplay though - unless it's supposed to be brain-dead to be on theme. It is nice that the mode is purely weekly based (like Squad Battle) so you don't have to worry about running it daily.

  Gameplay

  Sadly the wave survival gimmick is not really the focus of the mode, as a boss spawns with 42 seconds remaining that you have to kill, or you fail. This makes the mode closer to Dispatch than anything.

  Another issue is the boss spawning incentivises you to charge up your ultimate skills and run around doing nothing until the boss spawns. This makes for terribly boring gameplay as you run in circles trying not to get one-shotted by the zombies.

  Visually it's also very similar to World Event (a poor association) and the gameplay itself is incredibly cluttered. It's difficult to track where the boss is on the map, and with higher-level zombies taking ages to die, you can get stuck tracking the wrong enemies for whole rotations.

  The Skill Locking mechanic is the only interesting part sadly. It scratches the Danger Room itch a little with figuring out which team compositions are best each week, but it's definitely a less interesting overall mode.

  Rewards

  The rewards for this mode are fantastic, which actually adds insult to injury given how stinky the gameplay is. Just by running level 1 on auto 5 times a week, you will complete the weekly challenges and be able to buy 300 Carbonadium or Souls of the Faltine. Place decently high and you will be able to afford 300 of the opposite material (potentially with tokens to spare). (It might be best to save up any spare Tokens as the patch notes stated more items would be added in future.)

  Compare this to the average 133 Carbonadium and Souls you can get from clearing 12m every day in ABL for a week and it feels disproportionate to the effort you put in to each mode. Can't complain about more T4 mats though.