| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PC | 7.70 |
| Overall | 7.70 |
|
First impressions of Saints and Sinners are great, they nailed the feeling of being in the Walking Dead show. Being able to grab zombies with one hand and needing to shove hard with a knife to pierce the skull is so satisfying, and perfectly recreates how Rick and company take down walkers with ease. The knife then gets stuck in the skull until you yank it out, the little things like that make you feel in the world. As more weapons become available there will be no need for hard skull breaking attacks as there will be long blades that can severe heads with ease, Michone style. Everything involving the zombies works great, I especially like that as the game progressive zombies come with armor and helmets altering how you approach killing them. The other enemies are of course humans and this is where S and S falls into the VR jank category. Guns work and feel good its the hit reaction and how basic human AI is. Gun battles feel terrible, they tend to slightly move side to side and wait for you to shoot them. Your character can take a crazy amount of gun damage so cover isn't really needed. Clearly most of the work went into the feel of melee with the zombies. What is this game, it's mostly a survival game with a story. There is a hub area where you can craft weapons and supplies and unlock many new schematics to create better weapons, what you need are many resources which you gather by exploring New Orleans and gathering junk and loot. You leave the hub and choose one of about 8 areas to visit, all about the same size, small areas each with 2-3 buildings to explore. You have a timer which lasts a good 20 minutes before zombies will totally overrun the area, so you explore, find junk, maybe complete a mission and try to survive. Get back to base, scrap the junk, make new gear and repeat. Each run is one day, each day the dead get more numerous and items get depleted. As days go on small random events play out in the different areas like a gun cache could be found or one of the human factions sent a death squad. I generally liked the progression of the game, the crafting tables give you plenty of goals to work toward and there are hidden schematics to find in the different areas, small riddles being your only clues. The main story involves you helping a man trapped in the "reservoir" a bunker that houses tons of supplies which are being looked for by the two human factions that are in war with each other. You complete missions for this character and another woman to progress the story, which is basic walking dead stuff. Here is where the game really falters, they sell it as a game where your story choices matter, like the telltale game. Early on there is a moment with a side quest where you can rescue a man captured by the rival faction, you go there to negotiate his release and come to find he followed orders that resulted in a small girl being murdered. Do you let the captures kill him, do you kill his captures (who was the brother) and free him. I thought the game would be filled with tense situations like this and the choices would matter NOPE. That and one other moment are the only real moments during the game where you have any choice and it changes almost nothing. Not until the last mission do you really have to make some life and death choices with the main story characters and all you get is about 3 lines of different dialog, no actual endings. Once you finish the post game is one week later is a test to see how long you can survive, you would think this is a perfect opportunity to see how your choices impacted the world, NOPE, nothing changes. Honestly I thought this would be one of my favorite VR games but promise of what could have been was far more interesting than what was given. Graphically its simple cell shaded graphics, like the tell tale game. It's a VR game that runs well, that is what really matters. There is a cool bonus mode that's a score based wave survival mission that really fun. Walking Dead Saints and Sinners nails the feel of fighting zombies better than any VR game I have played. For that alone its worth playing. It could have been something more special if the story aspect was fully developed. That said VR is desperate for great full game experiences, this one is worth trying. |
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Posted by Dvader Sun, 24 Jan 2021 22:05:50
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