At the start of the year, Skydance Interactive launched The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners for VR, bringing the long-running zombie franchise to virtual reality headsets. Saints & Sinners reviews were mostly positive at the time of its release, with some criticism aimed at the game’s overbearing survival mechanics. Now, another Walking Dead VR game has hit the market in the form of The Walking Dead: Onslaught, which is similar to Saints & Sinners but with some key differences.
The Walking Dead: Onslaught plays like Saints & Sinners combat-wise, but with the survival mechanics stripped out. This allows players to kill zombies without having to worry about decreasing stamina meters or managing their ammo reserves. There are pros and cons to this approach, but overall Onslaught ends up being a far less frustrating experience than its Saints & Sinners counterpart.
Onslaught‘s approach to combat makes zombie encounters far less intense. Players will find themselves mowing down hordes of zombies with simple swings of a machete, and they are rarely ever a serious threat on the standard difficulty level. Conversely, this allows Onslaught players to better enjoy the actual act of fighting off zombies with the game’s large arsenal of weapons since they don’t have to constantly worry about stamina meters and losing their weapons.
Killing zombies is the main thing players will be doing in The Walking Dead: Onslaught, and so it was paramount that the developers nailed the basic combat mechanics. Some VR games fall into a trap of making combat too complicated, but Onslaught is easy to pick up and learn. Using the Oculus Touch controllers, Onslaught players can pick up any melee weapons and grip them like they would in real life. All guns pretty much reload using the same motion as well, so players can relax and kill a bunch of zombies with relative ease.
The Walking Dead: Onslaught‘s controls are simple to understand while still being engaging enough to keep combat fun. The game’s controls also give players a variety of options when it comes to movement and the camera. This is especially important in VR games, as players will have different needs in terms of playspace and comfort.
The Walking Dead: Onslaught makes player choice and comfort a priority, and that’s apparent with its general optimization as well. A lot of virtual reality games are bogged down with long load times, leaving players standing around waiting for the game to start. Walking Dead: Onslaught has much faster load times than other VR games, and players are even able to quickly skip the beginning titles to get in the action as quickly as possible.
The Walking Dead: Onslaught has a solid foundation with fun combat. Where it starts to slip up is with its mission structure and pacing. There is a story mode where players take on the role of fan-favorite character Daryl Dixon, and a Scavenger mode where players head out in search of supplies and crafting materials to improve the Alexandria Safe-Zone.
The problem is that Daryl’s story is tied to the Scavenger mode. Players are constantly hitting roadblocks where the game forces them to complete more Scavenger missions before it lets them play the next story chapter. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but there are only a handful of Scavenger missions in the game, and so players have to constantly go back through the same areas to get to the new content. This brings Onslaught‘s momentum to a screeching halt and makes the game somewhat tedious to play for extended sessions.
The story itself is supposedly canon to the AMC Walking Dead TV show and is set during the aftermath of the Savior War arc. Main characters like Rick Grimes, Michonne, Carol, and Eugene are all featured, with Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride reprising their roles as Daryl and Carol, respectively. Josh McDermitt is also on hand to reprise his role as Eugene. New voice actors have been brought in to play Rick and Michonne, and while Michonne’s VA does a fine enough job, the Rick Grimes VA sounds like they’re trying to do a parody impression of Rick from the TV show. It’s distracting, and we didn’t even know it was supposed to be Rick talking until he was actually named by someone else.
Some players may also be distracted by some of the character models in the game, which are definitely far behind the quality seen in other VR games, even at max settings. But while people like Daryl and Michonne look a little off, the zombies have a lot of detail and look great. The environments also look impressive for VR, though having every non-collectible object seemingly nailed to the ground is a bit immersion-breaking.
Collecting items is the main objective in The Walking Dead: Onslaught, whether one is playing through the Story Mode or Scavenger. Supplies allow players to recruit new survivors, which in turn allow them to complete more story chapters and come with other rewards and benefits. Crafting materials, meanwhile, can be used to upgrade weapons and Alexandria itself by constructing new buildings.
Building new structures in Alexandria creates a satisfying gameplay loop, as it makes searching every nook and cranny worthwhile. Not only do these buildings make the Alexandria hub world look better, but they also reward players with bonuses that will make it easier to take on the higher difficulty settings, and in turn get even greater rewards for their efforts.
There’s a trick to the Scavenger missions to keep players from getting out with literally all the supplies possible. As soon as players start one of these missions, they are on a time limit with a large horde of zombies (represented by a red mist) is bearing down on their location. Players can go into the horde, but their health is slowly drained the entire time, not unlike the poison gas in battle royale games.
Having to deal with the zombie horde in The Walking Dead: Onslaught‘s Scavenger missions adds a lot to the experience, as it forces players to make tough decisions. For example, they may hear the radio static that indicates a high-tier loot chest is nearby, and will realize that it’s upstairs in whatever building they’re looting. But the horde is right behind them, and so they have to decide if the reward is worth the risk. This also keeps players from fully exploring the Scavenger mission areas on their first run, which does somewhat alleviate the pacing issues that plague the game later on, if only slightly.
Pacing issues aside, The Walking Dead: Onslaught is a solid VR experience that is a great option for anyone looking for some mindless, zombie-killing fun.
The Walking Dead: Onslaught is out now for Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and Steam. Game Rant was provided with a Steam code for this review, and played the game using an Oculus Rift S headset.
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