I really wanted to like this game.
Killing zombies is satisfying, New Orleans is a great setting and it's done pretty well, and at the beginning looting new stuff is fun. My first couple of hours into the game were amazing.

However, the overall experience I had killed the game for me and I'm really not driven to keep playing after I've beaten it, which was about 17-18 game days in.


In terms of responsiveness, the game is a hit or miss. There were many times that I went to brain a zombie with a knife or screwdriver and went to swing / stab, only to have my arm fly into the zombie's shoulder or around its head and get grabbed because of it, and thought "Wow, that was annoying." Some melee weapons feel great, but sometimes they just feel outright janky. I mainly used the Night Shift (big combat knife) for most of the game because it felt good to use and was the most responsive. Fun and satisfying when it works, annoying slog when it doesn't.


Ranged weapons suffer different problems. The bow and arrow felt really great to use after some getting-used to. Unfortunately, most other ranged weapons just felt really... off. The weight never felt correct for any two handed gun, felt like I was swinging around a barbell until I manage to latch on with my other hand. This made me want to avoid most two handed guns until I got my hands on an assault rifle or shotgun, and even then I found myself using the bow and arrow, knife, and pistols most often. Pistols took a little getting used too, but using them felt do-able.

EDIT: The hitbox for the bow and arrow is VERY generous. As long as the arrow comes close to the head, it will go into the head. I'm not too mad at this because I can see the developers not wanting to make using the bow too difficult, but it did feel much less satisfying landing shots when I noticed some shots that looked like they were going to miss but end up clipping into the head instead. You can also rapid fire arrows by just pulling the string back again, which makes the bow insanely powerful.

Enemy AI was minimal. For zombies, that's a no-brainer, it's understandable for them to have simple AI of running at the player when spotted. However, the enemy survivor AI also seems to adopt the "run directly at and try to kill the player with little concern of self preservation" tactic, as I found myself hiding around a corner of a car or building, making noise and waiting for each survivor to charge me and pick them off until moving on to the next group of enemies.

The story was also passable at first, but I couldn't get invested into any of the characters. Henri and Casey were cool I guess, everyone else was bland and forgettable. Additionally, the story was rushed towards the end as the story wraps itself up and all loose ends through somewhat anti-climactic and rapid missions. The two warring factions are uninteresting and hardly interact with each other, except for the skirmish here or there. The Tower is a powerful group that originally was led by Mama who is missing, and its hinted that Georgia likely killed her in order to assume control and is now led by Georgia, a sadistic c-word who rules with an iron fist. The faction leader of the Reclaimed, JB, is not introduced until the mission before the last one. His presentation was... bad. He presents you with a decision to flood the Reserve, a hidden military cache of supplies. He does this while giving you his monotone musings on the greatness of humanity and it's addiction to survivalism and that this could somehow be a chance to fix that addiction by destroying the cache of food, medicine, and weapons, and 'save' humanity from itself. I didn't get it, as the only way that really makes sense is that he knew that the discovery of the Reserve would be loud and dramatic and would draw both groups simultaneously into a blood bath. The only reason I sided with him because Georgia was depicted as a ham-fisted c-word that threatened to cut my tongue out when I first met her. This choice barely matters, as it only seems to affect who is shooting at you during the last mission.

Spoilers for second to last mission:
In a decision to kill a leader of a faction and join the other, I decided to kill Georgia, the de-facto leader of the Tower, and that was that. There were no repercussions to that happening other than having members of the Reclaimed not fire at me during the last mission. JB says something along the lines of "Wow thanks for helping me, I might've died! Please remember to flood the whole Reserve, because that's my whole purpose as a character in this game!" and then runs off and is likely killed off-screen, as he is never seen again. It had zero impact on the game and zero impact on me. The factions 'at war for control' rarely really seemed at war with each other. Also I could be wrong, but I could swear I heard Georgia's voice during the last mission, even though I had shot her dead the mission before.

Overall, I wish I could give a "meh" review. Game was enjoyable at many parts, especially the beginning, but quickly lost it's charm and fun. The story is bare-bones and didn't have seem to much love (or thought) put into it. The only interesting character was Casey. And he doesn't even come with you if you save him. "Thanks for saving me! You're the only person that I've trusted for a long time, and without you I wouldn't have made it out... I'm going north now bye!"

Also, I straight up shot May at the bell tower because I had no idea it was her when I walked in. I just saw a crazy lady trying to kill us all, so I capped her. Then I walked up and then realized what happened, but I didn't feel anything from it. Maybe its because I'm used to The Walking Dead and killing off family members if they have a family tie because its tragic, but I really didn't get much when Umbra died either, just kind of a "damn that sucks."


I might go back to kill a few zombies here and there, but I don't see myself playing again to see the other endings or try and finish more side quests.

EDIT: They've added The Trial, which is a fun gauntlet of killing a bunch of walkers while getting coins to spend on weapons and upgrades. It's fun, but it brought out a huge flaw that wasn't much of an issue in the story for me: stamina. They want to making killing herds of zombies fun, but its near impossible to manage your stamina when the wave becomes a constant flow of zombies and the recharge timer resets on a kill. Your character is very unrobust and their arms will turn to noodles the second that bar runs out. Killing walkers is still do-able when you're in a stamina 'cooldown' but your arms will suddenly feel like they're floating around until your character eventually decide to breath. It takes awhile for it to recharge, even with the beignet food upgrade. The main way to remedy this during combat is to avoid sprinting, but the player moves so SLOW. It feels like a cheap limitation rather than an interesting survival mechanic. Dying because my asthmatic ♥♥♥♥♥ of a character, in a LIFE-OR-DEATH situation, can't even use a knife because they were too tired is frustrating. It's a knife, not a dumbbell.

That being said, lopping off heads with the katana feels great. It's my go-to weapon now, because decapitation takes way less stamina than just braining.