The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

good game

Saints and Sinners is an incredibly visceral VR game, both because of its commitment to immersive VR elements and in terms of the violence you are required to enact. The environmental design of apocalyptic New Orleans is outstanding. Dust rolls through the unkempt streets as ambient tones emphasize the looming threat of the undead that could be around any corner. It's the sort of game where keeping your ears open is essential for survival. S&S was definitely created with the strengths of VR in mind and the tension it delivers is delicious. However, there are a number of glaring issues with the game that hold it back from being an essential VR title. The lack of Quest support on PC leads to some initial finicking. If you're using Virtual Desktop, check the custom Steam community controller bindings and read their descriptions. Also, don't forget to change the gun-aiming angle in the settings as it seems to default to a very high Vive Wand orientation. The low frequency of saves was a problem for me a few times. S&S saves while moving between locations, so only in full-day chunks. In some instances, death at an inconvenient time and place leads you to have to choose between losing all your current supplies and a whole in-game day or reloading and losing a decent chunk of real-world time just to replay the same stuff again. The way two-handing any weapon is treated is blatantly counterproductive. I've never quite understood the obsession with "realistic" VR physics that don't comply with how your IRL body is actually moving. If anything, simulating the weight of objects to such a deliberate degree looks and feels cartoonish as you fight against the momentum of your flailing in-game limbs just to swing an axe down or keep a rifle steady. It takes so long to find the sights of the wobbly two-handed guns that there's almost no use for them unless you've got a comical amount of distance and time on your side. Even pistols suffer from this wonky nonsense. Other VR gun games without weighted hand physics feel so darn precise and tactile in comparison. Thankfully, you’re able to get through the game with basically just a handful of pistols and knives. Headshots one-shot everything, so why bother with all the heavy stuff? I finished the game with over one hundred shotgun shells and over one hundred and fifty rifle rounds in reserve. I rarely used two-handed melee weapons for anything besides breaking barriers. After a few attempts at using them, any bows I found went straight into the recycle bin. I also didn’t engage with the generic crafting system as much as the game wanted me to. I only put resources into it for a few essential upgrades/tools, like more backpack space, a better type of knife, basic revolver ammo, and soup. I thought the game was twice as long as it really was because the crafting benches were so hungry for resources. There are a ton of secret recipes to unlock, but they feel unnecessary and are tricky to track down. I was initially disappointed that I failed to find most of these secret items. Considering the simple tools that I got by on, all those optional things feel like wasted inclusions. Interiors are far too dark, the in-game brightness setting doesn't work, and the flashlight is as dim as the NPCs. Being in the dark is, of course, scary and part of the experience. It just would've been nice to be able to see more than three feet in front of me, or at least have the flashlight properly illuminate any reasonable amount of darkness. While I very much appreciate that there is a decent story and ample narrative structure to the entire game, the whole "humans are the real monsters" zombie narrative is pretty dull at this point. Moreover, S&S also features a generic "angry fascists vs freedom-loving crazies" conflict, which is equally predictable and redundant. All that said, I did very much enjoy S&S. It’s got the atmosphere, pacing, and polish to make even basic exploration and salvaging feel intensely immersive. Its flaws as a frankly unoriginal survival horror zombie game stand out all the more because the game has such a stellar trajectory as a VR title. It’s not a game for the faint of heart though. I would certainly recommend it if you’re fairly comfortable with being anxious and a little scared in VR.