The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners - Chapter 2: Retribution isn't quite as shambolic on PSVR2
Painting the town dead.
I was an absolutely massive fan of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners when I played it on PC VR. Scavenging my way through the mini open worlds of post apocalyptic New Orleans was super immersive and the way that the virtual weapons had a feeling of heft and weight to them brought a great sense of realism to the proceedings.
Playing that game truly felt like I was starring in my very own episode of the TV show and it was this feeling that inspired my classic VR Corner video series 'The Walk-Ian Dead'. The Walk-Ian Dead spanned three episodes before it got cruely cancelled due to criminally low viewing figures and it took place during the first few hours of the first game. Thanks to the long-awaited release of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners - Chapter 2: Retribution on PSVR2 however, I've brought that series back for a special one off episode of The Walk-Ian Dead Season 2 that you can above these words.
In it, you can watch over 30 minutes of gameplay taken from the PSVR2 version of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners - Chapter 2: Retribution, all accompanied by some wacky roleplaying courtesy of me.
What you won't find in the The Walk-Ian Dead Season 2 though is very much critical analysis. Mainly because I was too busy shooting myself in the groin accidentally. That's what these words are for though, so if you want to know my first impressions on the PSVR2 port of Saints & Sinners - Chapter 2, read on!
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners - Chapter 2: Retribution initially released exclusively on the Quest 2 and I avoided it like a rampaging horde because the reviews at the time were not kind. It was very buggy and it didn't run very well on Meta's standalone headset at all and, while things are significantly improved on the PSVR2 especially in graphical terms, there are still areas with noticable jank here and there that I can't rememeber being present in the original.
While Saints & Sinners felt like it was made specifially for PC VR, what strikes me about Chapter 2 is that it really does feel like a game made for the Quest that has then been scaled up for PC and PSVR2. At least in the first couple of hours, the areas you head to feel smaller than the sandboxes of the original, if they're not just being lifted straight from the first game that is. While there looks to be plenty of new areas to explore, there's a definite reliance on retreading old ground here. This is definitely a 'Chapter 2' and not a fully fledged sequel.
In terms of gameplay there seems to be way less focus on stealth and resource management in Chapter 2 aswell. At least in the early hours of the game, guns and other weapons are never in short supply and in fact, I ended up having more weapons than I could carry on multiple occasions! Ammo was plentiful as well and this changed up the feel of the game into something more akin to an action shooter rather than a stealthy RPG. I get that they probably had to do this to appeal to the Quest 2 market, but it robs the game of the tension that I loved from before.
Talking about guns, Chapter 2 does come with a selection of new weapons although I've only been able to use one of them, the SMG, so far. You can see me using that to straight up murder about 15 people in this week's VR Corner and, while it admittedly felt nice to use, I was basically unstoppable with it.
There have been a couple of quality of life improvements over the original though, with the most welcome being the toning down of the strict stamina penalties. In Saints & Sinners my character would regularly run out of puff after only a couple of seconds of sprinting and this led to a bunch of frustrating deaths as I tried to outrun zombies at the speed of a crawling baby. In Chapter 2 however, these things are way more forgiving, which I presume is to do with the way the gameplay has now been given a much faster-pace.
If you loved the first Saints & Sinners as much as I did there's still a lot to enjoy here and I'd say it's worth a shot as you'll still get a lot of gameplay for your cash. It's just a shame that it doesn't really feel like the true sequel that the original game rightly deserves.