24.3 hours played
Written 29 days ago
Lets start with a few basic things folks might want to know. Despite the minimum graphics card being stated as a RTX 2070, it runs perfectly happily on my ageing GTX 1080ti. The rest of my PC'S specs are around the minimum too (except for memory. I'm running 64gb of cheep DDR4). The headset I use is a Rift S, so the whole setup is a bit of a potato by modern standards, but it still runs this game perfectly well. Even on this PC, the game still looks stunningly beautiful. One of the effects worth looking out for are flames billowing out of a burning fuel bowser train carriage. As someone who's spent many an hour quietly sat by a camp fire watching the flames, I have to say how the fire moves in this is stunningly well put together, and looks almost exactly like how a fire doused with a lot of accelerator (ie, Petroleum) flows into the air.
The game supports smooth locomotion, but also has a very usable set of "Comfort" options (For those, like me, who can feel travel sick from being in an elevator !!!). You get all the settings that 99.9% of people might want or need to combat their motion sickness. It also has easy options for seated/standing, and height offsets. Climbing ladders can be set from realistic to just having to place your hand on a rung to teleport to the top. All handy stuff.
Our unnamed protagonist talks for a fair amount of the game, sometimes he's just yelling funny abuse at the zombies, other times he's having a complete one sided conversation with his dog. While some of the dialogues a bit "NSFW", it's all brilliantly scripted and funny as hell. He really gives off the vibe of a guy who's just clinging to the edge of sanity due to spending so much time all alone in an apocalyptic wasteland.
The only thing I can say about the plot without spoilers is.......... Yes. It has a plot. It's quite a basic plot, and objectives change occasionally, but there's definitely a story rather than the protagonist just waking up one day and thinking "I'm getting up now and going out to kill zombies". There's an evolving plot (and funny quips) that keeps you wanting to carry on killing zombies.
There's areas of the game where you can "John Wick it" and run in all guns a blazing, there's sections where it's better to pick off a mass of "Freddies" from a safe distance, and a few areas where the winning strategy is to.......... run screaming like a frightened schoolgirl until you find safety. 🤣. When the Freddie's are near in large numbers you can hear then as an unnerving background drone. That's great for atmosphere because you never know if the ones you can hear can get to your location or not.
The gun mechanics are also good. Again, there's multiple options for how you use them. You can go full on immersion and do the whole "eject magazine, grab a full one, slam it into the weapon, and rack the slide" thing (usually while a horde of Freddie's are bearing down on you), or you can go the other way and have it set so you just eject the empty, then pull the weapon to your ammo pouch to reload. There's a huge range of weapons that you find on your travels, it's a shame you can only carry two side arms, a long gun, and a couple of grenades or land mines tucked into your gloves (as you do). This makes grabbing the gun you want from your current arsenal pretty easy, but it sort of limits your choices........ Or it would, if it wasn't for one unique feature of this game......
You acquire your four legged friend pretty early in the game. Along with being useful for fetching things you can't get to, and attacking enemies on command, he also has a tactical vest on. This gives you (IIRC) 2 sidearm slots, and 2 slots you can put landmines, grenades, tennis balls, and while I haven't tried it, presumably food. This means if you run out of ammo and there's still a few zombies standing, you can switch your sidearms with a still loaded one he's carrying,, then use that to make the last walking dead enemy..... Erm...... Dead?...... More deader? UN undead?....... You know what I mean. It also means you could have 2 different weapon loadouts for different scenarios. A couple of powerful single shot weapons for when you're trawling corridors with minimal zombies, or ammo hungry full autos for stages where all the Freddy's friends come rushing up to you at once. You could also just load him up with land mines for the next time you find yourself in a position where you know that as soon as you shoot the lock off a door you're going to get swamped with zombies.
Again, the work that went into your dog must have been immense. When you stroke his head his ears get folded in pretty natural ways, and his fur gets moved quite convincingly too. The dogs actually got a character all of his own. He'll hunt out sleeping zombies, then assume the attack position while growling. It's handy heads up that you haven't finished killing everything in an area yet. He'll wander round sniffing stuff when there's no threat.... he also pees on random things...... I'm not sure that I've seen a virtual dog peeing on stuff in a game before, but the action doesn't feel particularly out of place in this game. If you're fine with immersion breaking for comical effect, the games littered with hats, masks, and helmets that you can wear........ And you can also put them on the dog too !😄. It's a ridiculous feature, but for some reason it amuses me. At one point you can find a huge jack-o'-lantern with glowing eyes. If you put that on the dog you won't miss him while he's off urinating on a pile of dismembered zombies again. 😁
The environmental damage and collision physics are a bit hit and miss. You can shoot some things and they'll explode into pieces, or rebound the item off at speed, but others just stay in place and take no damage. Zombies have point of impact damage, so you can choose to blow arms and legs off with a few well placed rounds, and a head shot may explode their skull, or barely slow them down. It's all down to the weapon you hit them with and what kind of zombie it is.
My first run through took me a cautious 5 hours. I died a few times because I chose the "Guns blazing" rather than the "Running like a schoolgirl" tactic when getting swamped, but most of the time it becomes obvious what you SHOULD be doing pretty quick. There's several "Hell no!" moments where the best thing to do is backtrack at speed and find a pinch point where the mass of zombies have to bunch up to get to you (if you miss the one you were spraying bullets at you'll probably hit a few of their friends behind them). My second go through took another 5 hours, and was done to see if there was anything I'd missed first time round (There was quite a few things). My third run took about the same time again, and was done to try and get some more of the achievements. None of these play through's felt like a chore. It was just as fun (and funny) in the returns. To me this feels like one of those rare games that I'll want to revisit multiple times over the next few years, and that's just the main campaign. I've not even touched the horde or coop modes yet !
I'm thinking due to it's replayability, the game being relatively short doesn't feel like an issue, and the comical dialogues are so good that they're still funny on followup play throughs. I bought this when it was on offer for (IIRC) 30% off, but I wouldn't feel cheated if I'd paid full price for it (And I actually bought the Arizona Sunshine Remake at full price off the back of this one being so good). For me, it ticks pretty much every box for a great game.
OK, there's a few less than perfectly polished aspects to the game (like Buddy sticking his head through walls to bark at zombies, my sidearm occasionally disappearing during load screens, and being able to peak through a few gaps and see no textures beyond), but all in all it's still an awesome game.
