Really fun game. I wouldn't say it's scary but it is definitely tense when you're running out of time with a horde closing in, trying to get back to safety. The games challenge lies in managing your time and resources and maintaining a cool head when things go south. A single walker is not a threat but when there's more and you start getting sloppy with the swings and aiming, that's what kills you. The amount of story seems scarce with only a few named characters but it's serviceable.

+Satisfying melee combat
+Deep survival RPG mechanics
+Semi open world gameplay
+Immersive interaction with NPCs
+Choices Matter

-Some questionable gameplay mechanics
-Poor AI implementation
-Several technical issues

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is set in a flooded post apocalyptic version of New Orleans, where you play as “The Tourist” as you try to survive a harsh zombie infested world. It is set in the comic book universe instead of the live-action TV series, as evident in the art style and graphics very similar to the Telltale series.

In the middle of all this are two factions fighting for New Orleans, where you are free to choose which side you want to be, if any at all. There is freedom to forge your own path with various branching out dialogues, quest lines and story elements. Ofcourse, it all comes with consequences and different endings. Saints & Sinners will definitely put you in tough situations as the story plays out, so prepare to make hard choices.

This game reminded me a lot of Bethesda’s Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, how they handled the factions and your choices in the game. Not as long and expansive but it’s got the same formula. I think you can even kill everyone and it may or may not make things easier.

One of the best things I love about Saints & Sinners is the interactions with NPCs. They react accordingly to your actions. Touch them and they will react and complain. Point your gun at them and they will tell you to lower their weapon or they might get angry. Leave them in the middle of a conversation and they will stop talking until you return. Quest items must be taken from your inventory and physically handed to them. It all makes for a very immersive VR experience.

New Orleans is divided by the flood into different mini open areas traversable on your raft by means of fast travel. Loot is randomized everywhere and also a very important aspect of the game. You will need food, liquids and medicines to stay alive. You also need to gather junk for scraps to craft weapons / tools. At the same time to level up your workstations to expand your available crafting options and increase your character’s stats. There is no leveling up by experience. Again it’s only through the crafting upgrades.

The whole gameplay system got overwhelming at first, mainly because I was not used to this kind of depth in VR games. A surprising but a welcome step forward for the industry. The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is indeed a proper zombie survival RPG game.

Every time you leave your hideout and visit other areas by raft, you are given a time limit to explore, loot, and do missions. If the time expires a loud church bell gets rung, attracting a horde, making it very hard and virtually a death sentence. The time limit mechanic adds so much to the tension and suspense that The Walking Dead series is known for.

They made the day and night cycles streamlined instead of being directly tied to in-game time. As soon as you return to your base it skips to night time and the game doesn’t allow you to do another run; you have to go to bed and start a new day. A pseudo day-night cycle system so to speak. Every day survived also slightly increases the population of zombies and scarcity of loot spawns. Again adding to the tension.

Melee combat is one of the best I’ve seen in VR and perfectly captures that Walking Dead atmosphere; the unsettling, but strangely gratifying thrashing of walkers’ heads already seen in the TV show a thousand times.

A dynamic damage system is present in both zombies and humans. Stab wounds, sliced heads, opened guts are all properly shown and depend entirely on how and what weapons are used. Swings, stabs, throws, and kills are all very satisfying.

Every object has simulated weight, it doesn’t actually match your arms in real time and there is a slight delay. As a result things get a little floaty, sometimes to a fault. Large melee weapons are quite difficult to handle at times. Guns on the other hand are much worse. It doesn’t feel like it’s in your hand, instead it feels like you’re moving your gun through a string while it’s floating on the water.

Saints & Sinners tries too hard to incorporate all its gameplay features into real elements in the game world that some of it instead becomes counter-intuitive and just adds unnecessary complexity.

Every single crafting recipe and stats upgrade is printed on paper, all pinned on your hideout’s bulletin board. An actual trashcan to put in all the junk material and scrap them. Backpack that you have to take out with one hand to see and arrange the inventory. A diary that you pull out from your chest to see the map and quest journals.

Their take on flashlights doesn’t help too; the circle is too small and doesn’t provide proper ambient lighting so you only see a tiny circle of illumination. Furthermore, it’s just strapped onto your chest so it doesn’t follow your head or arms. You have to grab it out of your chest and hold it if you want to be able to see things other than your front.

The inventory holster / pouch system also sucks. Very poor placement. It’s too much towards the front, constantly floating in front of your view. It can block and interfere some of your interactions especially when crouching. Instead of picking up objects or activating some items you will instead grab your things like the flashlight or one of your weapons.

The almost perfect combat system is tarnished by the devs’ decision to put a stamina system. Sure, they simulated stamina just like weight. Maybe it adds to the tension like State of Decay, but nothing feels more irritating than having two layers of stamina in a VR game; one for your actual body and another for your virtual body. I should be able to do virtual things as long as I physically can.

Weapons are also too frail, they’re so easy to break it’s more annoying than being an actual challenge. You can’t repair them either, you have to craft a brand new weapon if you want to continue using it. Good luck if you don’t have the recipe for it yet.

You will also get traumatic flashbacks of early 2000s AI when it comes to stealth and combat. It is pretty basic. NPCs just stand around when fighting, both in gunfights or against zombies, generic patrols and an iffy detection system. There’s lots of room for improvement.

The game runs smoothly even with the resolution set to 120% on my rig: i7-8700k, 32GB RAM, and GTX 1080. The graphics aren’t very demanding, thanks to its comic book inspired art style. Using an Oculus Quest with ALVR, I was able to play wirelessly and experience full locomotion scheme to its fullest. The game initially did not run for me at release due to issues with the developer’s SteamVR implementation with Oculus Quest, that has since been fixed.

As for bugs and issues, I have experienced some weird scaling / proportions while playing. My virtual arms are too long. There’s no amount of resetting the view so far has fixed this. Sometimes I’m also too tall or too short. I wish there was an option to manually calibrate your height and arms.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is a beautifully designed story rich game with lots of depth, freedom, and replayability. Definitely one of the best VR games so far. Another proof that VR can also have great games in both story and gameplay.

"This product was reviewed with a key provided by the developer for free"

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First of all, I gotta give praise to the devs for adding the physical crouching basically within just one day, along with some other features. That's some great work right there!

Besides that the game is just awesome. I was hesitant at first, because some horror games are a little to stressful for me, but this game is just too good to pass on. There were some moments, like zombies through doors, that made me scream, but it was still fun somehow :P

The combat, stealth and looting are great fun. Graphics are pretty good, and the game is well optimized. This game runs maxed out at 150% SS without dropping frames on my RTX 2080 Ti. That's sadly not that common for VR games.

Overall this game feels like Fallout with zombies. It's really worth the money.

Hope the devs will continue their great support for the game and add content in the future. It made it straight to the top of the best VR titles out there.

Get it now on humble bundle for 17 bucks, plus other 7 games, totally worth it.

Was running around and looting until I suddenly see this sobbing woman. I go to her, and she asks me if I can spare some bandages so that she can help her wounded children. I decide to give a bandage. She thanks me, gives a a box of stuff and then runs away. As she is running away I see a walker on their way to attack this poor woman. I run as fast as possible and kill the walker. While swinging my right arm to stab it, I also swung my left arm to compensate. I hit her with my left arm. The woman says "HEY! Watch yourself!" and falls to the ground. She isn't moving anymore. She is dead. R.I.P. her children. But she dropped the bandage that I gave her, and I noticed I wasn't at max health. I might as well use it, she is dead after all.
Afterwards she became a walker, so I killed her again.

Step.1 Talk to someone
Step.2 Grab you kitchen knife
Step.3 Stab them in the head
Step.4 Launch Walking Dead Saints & Sinners

Ricky dicky doo dah grime

f*** the school level

Great Game. Best VR Game I have played so far.
Note to dev's, Co op would be nice

1 week in romania