Not for the faint of heart – The Walking: Dead Saints & Sinners

The Walking Dead, or zombies, became a hit in theaters in 1968 with the film “NIght of the Living Dead” by the famous director George Romero. After numerous sequels, the genre expanded to serials with the famous AMC The Walking Dead series. Of course, popularity has also been appropriated by gaming companies, creating world-famous games such as Left 4 Dead, Dying Light, Resident Evil, Dead Rising and many others. However, recently, the public has gotten bored with the genre of zombies in any release, whether in movies, games or series. The main problem with games, movies and series is that while we can imagine such scenarios, viewers cannot truly immerse themselves in such an apocalypse. With recent advances in VR technology, Skydance Interactive has decided to merge the zombie world with virtual reality. The result of the combination is The Walking: Dead Saint & Sinners.

Action

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is a first-person survival exploration narrative game with role-playing elements and an ambitious VR game. Unfolding in the U.S. state of New Orleans after a plague of zombies has taken hold. There is a corny civil war going on between two factions, the authoritarian Tower and the rebel Reclaimed. Both sides are looking for a key that will allow access to the legendary military vault which is allegedly full of weapons and ammunition. The player takes on the role of an outsider, known only as ‘Turist’ and who has yet to take sides, struggling to stay alive and make a difference. Other than some secrets left behind by developers, there doesn’t seem to be any open links to the comic book or television universes of The Walking Dead.

Unlike the celebrated shooting ranges of other VR zombie games such as Arizona Sunshine and Death Horizon, this is a full-fledged experience without end. The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is more interested in storytelling, exploring and crafting than being solely focused on shooting the undead in the head. He wants to give the player a lengthy and satisfying adventure similar to something you can find in flat gameplay, and that’s depressingly rare on Quest right now.

Gameplay

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners refreshes the zombie genre with the grace and confidence of a well-oiled bowie knife. Killing zombies has never been as satisfying as here, and the awful horror of an unexpected wave of zombies has never been so palpable. The guts and brains of zombies are portrayed with great detail, but what really grounds you in this world is the fact that the weapon has the proper weight. Heavy weapons like axes and rifles require you to grab them with both hands for stability, while small weapons like knives are much lighter and easier to strike precise blows with them. It’s not as nuanced as a game like Boneworks (you can’t handle any object as a weapon), but this combat system is far more tactile and exciting than doing it remotely using a gamepad or keyboard.

Mutated zombies explode and release toxic gases that reduce your health if you get close enough to it, while armoured zombies with helmets are far harder to kill, requiring complete decapitation or extremely precise blows to exposed parts of the head. This increased challenge only increases the intensity of fighting with an entire pack of walkers at once, which is later commonplace, as you have to quickly choose which walkers should be killed in what way and in what order to preserve the durability of your best weapon. Fast juggling real-time inventory makes you make thoughtful decisions to accommodate each fight. As a result, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners never fell into that action RPG trap: boring repetition. The story itself takes about 15 hours (depends on how fast you play), but it was a lot of fun completing cleaning actions and looking for secret recipes yourself.

Gorn among zombie games

Zombie heads are there to shoot. We all know that. But The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners goes a little further. It challenges you to fight them, armed only with a knife or a broken bottle and a sense of bloodthirsty. As the stupid zombie moves towards you, you can stab him with a quick, decisive movement before he has a chance to grab you. Your weapon meets soft meat and bones, and you must use your other hand to help you shake it off or get it out of your head. It’s not for the faint of heart or squeamish. You start to feel wild, like you’re going to take off your hedset and find yourself covered in actual blood spatter. He’s disgusting and gloomy, but great.

What is immediately visible is how tangible everything is. This is a title that’s designed for VR devices, with a physics system that needs to add a little compelling weight to things that can otherwise seem a bit hovering and unsatisfactory. Each object and weapon in the game has a different weight. Take the cardboard, it’s light as air. Take a wooden board or hammer and your virtual hands will drag them around more slowly, and you’ll need both hands. The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is indeed beautifully honed, and after a short period of adjustment you find yourself halfway there and match your movements to your virtual avatar, effectively pretending to be taking on the weight of a weapon or object. It works really well and actually contributes to the feeling of immersion, and this is especially pleasurable in the feeling of struggle in the chest.

Presentation

Visually, what the Skydance Interactive team achieved on a standalone device with its Saints & Sinners port is thrilling. This is one area we were concerned about, since after playing on PCVR, the game style and visual elements played a big role in the experience. But as soon as you enter the world on Quest, you’ll probably wonder how this is possible on a standalone device.

Presenting the visual elements really gives a sense of the aesthetics of the design of TellTale games, while also making them as their own. Where there aren’t a lot of leaves and most of these textures are flatter, it doesn’t diminish the immersion or appeal of visual representations – and that’s what the team needed to do to make everything work and look great on Quest. Zombies and NPCs look great as do the major textures of the environment, making it one of the best visual experiences we’ve had with Quest.

In the sound department, you’ll get what you’d expect in The Walking Dead universe, ambient sounds mixed with the groans of the undead and the noise of feuding factions as they fight over the area. This is rounded off by very powerful voice acting for the characters you’ll interact with throughout the game. All of this actually rounds out the experience provided by the visual elements.

The Walking: Dead Saints & Sinners is available on the official Steam page for €34 and on the official Oculus page for €40 for Meta devices.