izigame.me

(For reference for my review, I played TWD: S&S with an HTC Vive)
TWD Saints & Sinners is an extremely frustrating game to talk about, being as it's so highly praised and to be honest, all the pieces are basically there for it to easily be one of the best VR experiences on the market right now. Unfortunately, it also genuinely feels like a committee met before the release of the game to implement as many frustrating mechanics as possible to sap the entire experience and genuinely make it no longer a joy to play. Where should I begin?
Let's just start with the most egregious from a marketing standpoint - the game just flat out lies to you. Those screenshots where you see dozens of zombies? Yeah, there's a cap of maybe 15 at once. And you will only ever see that many when the bells ring and "stir the horde", basically your daily time limit. You can definitely get big groups, but the most I ever saw at once without the bells was 10 and it was towards the absolute end of the game.
Speaking of lies, "The number of dead has increased, supplies have dwindled." Neither of these two things are true when the days pass. Maybe you could argue that yeah, you can get more zombies at once as the days go on than you can in the beginning of the game. But the spirit of the ominous "oooo the game perpetually gets harder and supplies run out" message is completely farcical.
On the subject of supplies, you will spend the first week of the game being able to craft basically nothing interesting and leveling up your base, and when you finally complete your base stations realize that there's no reason to hold back on resources because the game absolutely floods you with them. There will forever be stuff to pick up off the ground (which is the game's favorite place to put loot besides drawers). And once you finish the game, you will be absolutely dripping with the loot boxes that contain the best stuff to the degree that you will only ever be specifically looking for sugar for meds and food. Which is just lying on the ground basically everywhere in soda cans.
Weapon durability is a mechanic I actually generally like. What I don't like is when the weapon durability seems designed specifically to enforce the resource grind. It'd be one thing if your weapons broke and you found other ones, creating a cycle of improvised weapons. But the crafted weapons have substantially better usability and durability than the stuff you find - in fact, the vast majority of weapons you find break extremely fast. Combine this with the fact that zombies respawn instantly the moment you turn around, often within 10 feet of you, and you will realize that the most fun thing this game has to offer - killing zombies - has been disincentivized.
I rarely used the guns because for whatever reason your characters wrist wobbles left and right any time you move while aiming, making your shots often go completely wild. Nothing says "good controls" like forcing your characters hands to do stuff you yourself aren't doing in a VR game. And perhaps the most baffling choice is that every single one of the faction NPCs (and Muggers) carry guns - guns that explode into a broken junk gun the moment they die. This doesn't always happen, sometimes they will leave behind a nearly broken weapon with some bullets in it, but 90% of the time you are not going to be able to pick that gun up and use it.
Maybe you want some spooks and scares? I didn't find the game particularly scary - it's definitely dark, but this is more to do with the cereal box toy flashlight that the main character wears on his chest that requires you to shake it to recharge it every 45 seconds and barely illuminates the exterior facing rooms of a house in daylight. I found myself more frustrated with how dark it was because I couldn't see what I was doing. I tried to find some way to adjust this online but even after editing the .ini nothing seemed to help. This is basically only an issue for interior areas, and definitely seems designed to be "scary". But when you can't see the knobs of doors that you're trying to grab because it's pitch black save for a tiny flashlight beam it just becomes frustrating. And honestly the games only real method of spooking you is the cheap jump scares you'll get when a zombie breaks down a door as you try to open it. The first time this happened to me I was startled because the door fucking exploded like there was some new type of Juggernaut zombie behind it. But nope, just a regular walker that I then proceeded to grab and put a screwdriver through it's eye like normal. Very questionable.
Finally, in really making the game just not fun to play anymore, walkers will start spawning with additional types that put the last nail in the coffin for this being a good time killer after the story was over. The first of these are "diseased" zombies, who you can tell because they look like zombies except sick. But wait, normal zombies basically also look sick? Yeah, the only way you can really tell these ones apart from other ones is they have flies buzzing around their heads. Flies. Which are very challenging to distinguish depending on what HMD you have. So what do they do? Anything dangerous or interesting? Well, they are just regular walkers but they reduce your max HP when they die near you and make you sick. Okay, so they add tedium as you now have more resources to grind to get your max HP back. What about the other zombies? Well, as the game progresses, Faction NPCs get the brilliant idea to armor up as their war continues. And then they die, and become armored zombies. So now you've got zombies that resist headshots and more specifically, can't be immediately brained. This is... baffling decision wise. The controls are already somewhat finicky, but watching my axe bounce off a zombies head as he rolls away like gelatin because he has a half broken kevlar helmet or ballistic face mask is just really fucking dumb. Did I mention that if you shoot these uparmored NPCs IN THE FACE, they still rise as these "Elite" Walkers?
I could complain about more things - like how the rigging of how your gear hangs on you feels designed specifically to get you to pick up the wrong item, or accidently drop your gun or weapon when trying to holster it - both of these things will happen frequently. I could complain about how lazy the zombie guts mechanic feels - how you can basically only take guts from one type of zombie who spawns extremely rarely, to the point where for the story missions they want you to use these guts they just leave them on the ground like other loot.
But honestly, I do think that the Walking Dead Saints & Sinners has it's good parts. I found the story to be extremely disappointing since I cared about virtually zero of the NPCs, but it does have a functional story, which for VR makes it feel like more than just a toy or tech demo. The gameplay, when it works, is pretty satisfying. Walking up to a human NPC and blasting their face apart with a revolver for talking shit to you doesn't get old. Decapitating zombies with a katana is fun for a while.
Unfortunately, there are just genuinely too many flaws and bugs and things I found that just lessened the experience for me to recommend this. Certainly not for 40$.