We’ll be checking out the new Meatgrinder Update for The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners which adds a much-requested repeatable Horde Mode full of waves of enemies. The base game is very story-driven with a heavy focus on survival mechanics, so this will be a slight departure adding a score system and more frantic combat.
Our The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners Meatgrinder Update stream is planned to start at about 11:00 AM PT and will last for around an hour and a half or so, give or take. We’ll be hitting just our YouTubeand I’ll be streaming from my PC via Oculus Rift S playing on the Oculus Home Store while Jamie and Zeena join in a webcam call to hang out and help out with chat.
You can watch the stream embedded via YouTube right here. Set a reminder if you’re reading this early!
You can see lots of our past archived streams over in our YouTube playlist or even all livestreams here on UploadVR and various other gameplay highlights. There’s lots of good stuff there so make sure and subscribe to us on YouTube to stay up-to-date on gameplay videos, video reviews, live talk shows, interviews, and more original content!
And please let us know which games or discussions you want us to livestream next! We have lots of VR games in the queue that we would love to show off more completely.
Developer CM Games announced that its VR debut survival horror FPS game Into The Radius is leaving Early Access on June 20. The game initially launched on Steam and other platforms in 2019 in Early Access with less content, but now the game will enjoy a full release with all the content added during the development cycle over the last several months.
Set in an open-world Soviet wasteland, Into The Radius is a survival shooter with a sprinkle of horror as well. When we interviewed Brandon Marsh from CM Games earlier in the year, he described the game as “much more of a survival / stealth game, not a straight forward guns blazing FPS.” You need to use your navigation skills and prepare the right equipment for each mission, using modifiable weapons that will also need to be maintained to avoid jams.
The Early Access build started with just the open map and a handful of missions, leading some players to note that it had a slow pace and felt a bit unfinished. However, Marsh also noted to us back in February that a lot of content was being added during Early Access, such as more maps, voice acting, the full storyline and special missions, as outlined in the Early Access milestones. Once the game reached Milestone 6, it was ready for a full launch, which is now set for June 20. There’s even a new gameplay trailer to celebrate the launch, which you can view embedded above.
It’s clear that Into The Radius has come a long way since the beginning of Early Access. It launches for PC VR on June 20 on the Steam and Oculus stores, plus it will also be available through Viveport Infinity.
I think it’s safe to say a lot of us have Walking Dead fatigue. What started as a groundbreaking comic book flourished into a promising TV show and a landmark episodic game. But, like a zombie that just won’t die, the series just sort of… keeps shuffling on.
Spin-off series, console tie-ins, AR games; nowhere is safe from the hunger of the undead. A series so refreshingly concerned with the humanity behind such a cataclysmic event soon succumbed to the phenomenon it generated, recycling the same tired tropes, time after time.
I mean, heck, there’s even two Walking Dead VR games on the horizon (this one I played from Skydance and Onslaught from Survios), which is perhaps as embarrassingly unnecessary a piece of brand overlap as you’ll ever see. But I’ll say this as someone that parted ways with the series a long time ago; The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners is the most promising extension of the franchise I’ve seen in years.
Their releases may be too close together to claim any source of inspiration, but Saints and Sinners, developed by Archangel studio Skydance Interactive, definitely graduates from the Boneworks school of VR design. While not every item in the game can be picked up and wielded against your brain-dead enemies, axes need to be swung with heft to make an impact, gun muzzles can be used to bash heads out of the way, and your hands are your first line of defense against the incessant gnashing of a Walker’s teeth.
Combat in Saints and Sinners, then, can be an uncomfortably personal, thrillingly grotesque, and intentionally messy affair. Like Survios’ upcoming The Walking Dead: Onslaught, great pride is taken in the stabbing of heads, though I note a sickeningly authentic feel to this approach. Knives, tools, and even serving spoons must be thrust into your enemy’s brains with intent, and successful blows then dislodged with queasy fiddling. No gory detail is spared either; at one point I take an axe to a zombified-companion, only to accidentally split his chin in two, much to the disgust of the developers and PR representatives in the room.
High-powered assault rifles and handguns, meanwhile, tempt Rambo-style action but in practice need much a much more considered touch. If you don’t hold a rifle at the end of the barrel, it’ll flail around with a rubbery consistency, but even if you do grab it with two hands you’ll need to prop it up higher than you’re used to to help account for the weight you can’t physically feel. Skydance has clearly gone to great lengths to balance every weapon in the game, best seen in the measured reload animations which are often specific to the gun you’re holding. They’re unique in their handling and yet streamlined just enough to be manageable, provided you keep your cool under pressure.
It’s an encouraging set of rules and restrictions, suggesting Saints and Sinners genuinely belongs to that most wince-inducing buzzwordy of labels: a ‘next-gen VR game’. And it’s not just the combat that makes that promise.
Structurally, Skydance says there’s a beefy campaign with 15+ hours of single-player action, complete with your standard assortment of stamina meters and crafting elements. Saints and Sinners is set to a moody backdrop of a zombie-infested New Orleans, a series of flooded roads connecting several explorable areas to a main hub environment. You venture out in search of supplies and essentials, meeting other survivors that designate side-missions with the lure of big rewards.
One woman I meet straight off the boat asks me to put her zombie husband out of his misery in return for a safe code. I could comply or, living up to the title, I’m told I could just kill her and take the code right now. Why wouldn’t you just do that? Well, there may be other rewards to gain from accepting the mission and you may want to play the path of the Saint; there are multiple endings depending on the choices you make.
Given the welcome, crunching impact of the combat and the generally impressive production values — New Orleans is convincingly dilapidated and character models and performances are a step above your usual VR NPCs — I’m inclined to believe Skydance when it makes these lofty commitments. Saints & Sinners appears surprisingly comprehensive, almost as if the issues of short VR games with repetitive content were a distant memory. Granted I haven’t played enough to the game to claim it will maintain this quality throughout, but it’s looking promising.
The Walking Dead may remain a dogged franchise with no end in sight, but Saints and Sinners looks to at least put its name to good use. VR has a lot of zombie-slaying ahead of it in 2020 but, from what I’ve seen, Saints and Sinners should be setting an early high bar.
The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners comes to PC VR headsets on January 23rd. PSVR and Quest versions are set to follow later in the year.
On the initial release date it’s only coming to PC VR headsets first, specifically Rift and HTC Vive devices according to the press release. However, the trailer above also lists Windows VR and Index so it should support all major PC VR headsets.
The PSVR version is slated for Spring 2020 with a standalone Quest version coming later in the year. However, it will work on Quest via Link plugged into a PC from launch.
Along with this news is a new trailer and three different tiers for the game: Standard, Deluxe, and Collector’s Editions. The main differences are that Deluxe includes lots of digital goodies for $10 more and then the Collector’s is a whopping $100 more but includes several physical items.
Standard Edition: $39.99
PlayStation VR
Pre-order not available but there is a free Playstation theme available for Playstation players in the coming weeks.
Digital game code + Pre-order bonus cosmetic In-game item: craft recipe for “The Sheriff” (Revolver)
Digital Deluxe / Tourist Edition: $49.99
Digital game code + Bonus In-game items:
In-game craft recipe for “The Judge” (Baseball Bat)
In-game craft recipe for “The Sheriff” (Revolver)
In-game craft recipe for “The National” (Combat Knife)
“Bustomization” New Orleans voodoo dolls
Collector’s / Tower Edition: $149.99
Digital game code + Bonus In-game items:
In-game craft recipe for “The Judge” (Baseball Bat)
In-game craft recipe for “The Sheriff” (Revolver)
In-game craft recipe for “The National” (Combat Knife)
“Bustomization” New Orleans voodoo dolls
Collector’s SWAG Physical Items
Special Edition Reversible Unicorn Backpack / HMD Travel Case
Magnetic Camping Lantern
Concept Art Stash
Collector Saints or Sinners Challenge Coin
Set of 4 Collector’s Pins
Eerie Postcard
16GB “Thumb” Drive
Funnily enough, The Walking Dead: Onslaught, another VR game set in the same zombie-filled universe, was originally slated for Fall 2019 but has been delayed into 2020. That entry is unrelated to Saints & Sinners and is instead developed by Survios.
Do you plan on picking up The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners? If so, which edition?
Developer CM Games says its VR debut, Into the Radius, is inspired eldritch horror. In other words, the game looks strikingly similar to the Stalker series. That’s a good thing.
This post-apocalyptic shooter is coming to Steam Early Access on November 6. Into The Radius is set in a soviet wasteland in which players explore an open-world, fending off creepy enemies with guns. Check it out in the trailer below.
CM describes this as a survival shooter. As you explore the mysterious Pechorsk Radius you’ll need to learn navigation skills and plan for missions with the correct gear. Weapons, meanwhile, sport realistic handling and can be modified with attachments. You’ll also need to take care of them so they won’t jam.
We could see this going two ways. Much of Into The Radius looks promisingly polished, and it clearly has grand ambitions. It’s too early to tell, though, if the drab environments will lend a sense of atmosphere or make exploring this ruined world a bit of a slog.
Obviously we’re hoping for the former. In Early Access, the game will have much of its map to explore and a handful of missions. However, the developer is promising that the full release, set for Q1 2020, will have over 15 hours of playable story. Let’s see if it can live up to those promises.
Today Skydance Interactive and Skybound Entertainment have announced The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is coming out on January 23, 2020 (instead of 2019 like originally planned) and we’ve already gone hands-on with the zombie-slaughtering adventure.
The Walking Dead, with both the comics and the AMC show, is perhaps the most recognizable post-apocalyptic zombie franchise in the world. Telltale’s episodic series already introduced the universe to video games with its point-and-click-style adventure series packed with meaningful choices and Skydance Interactive is following their lead with the survival-focused, first person VR title The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.
Set in a dilapidated and flooded New Orleans, Saints & Sinners puts you in the middle of a chaotic world split between several factions. There is the Tower, a group located in a highrise downtown that controls the flow of zombies through their use of bells, and outsider groups that are hellbent on making the Tower answer for crimes they’ve committed. The development team worked with Skybound Entertainment, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman’s company, to loosely fit it into to the greater Walking Dead universe.
I played an incredibly enjoyable segment which took place a few chapters into Saints & Sinners at a press event in Los Angeles last week. The general objective of my demo was to find several machine parts somewhere in a small residential area packed with overturned cars, decrepit homes, and, of course, zombies. Skydance had me armed to the teeth for the demo in order to experience the combat in full even though you begin the game with far less.
Saints & Sinners makes full use of all space on your body. I had regular-sized weapons on each hip, an assault rifle over my right shoulder, a backpack full of gear over my left, my notebook with quests and other menus on the right side of my chest, and a flashlight that needed a good bit of shaking in order to work on my left. I felt like an absolute commando with everything on my body to the point where it was difficult to interact with other objects in the world because my gear attached to my body would get in the way. Hopefully that confusion was due to me just learning how to play.
As I trekked through the flooded streets of suburbia I took a few of my melee weapons for a spin on some nearby zombies. As soon as I engaged with them one thing was clear: Saints & Sinners wants you to feel like you’re in a zombie apocalypse, with all the desperation included. Zombies came at me hard and it was not easy to land a kill on most of them. Using big two handed weapons, like an axe, pushed me to be as accurate and methodical with my swings as possible. They needed to land squarely on the head to be effective and smaller weapons, like knives, required a similar approach. Both weapon types got stuck in zombie heads often, making each moment in combat a frantic mess. It was incredibly fun.
I did kill one with a spoon, so I had that going for me.
The struggle is intentional, as Skydance told me. They didn’t want me to feel like a zombie killing machine, they wanted it to be about survival. I had a watch on my arm that ticked down to the moment the bells would ring, meaning zombies would be moved by the Tower. While I would’ve loved to stick around to kill some zombies, I knew I couldn’t take them on and come out alive. I had to complete the mission.
I noticed that a nearby non-playable character was shooting at the zombies I was fighting. I made my way into the house they were in and was directed to a man in the side yard. This demo took place midway through the game so I wasn’t caught up on the story thus far, but these people were with the Tower and I had to appease this guy to get the machine parts I needed. He asked me to head a few doors down and try to free his brother from the clutches of some outsiders.
I found the other house quickly and scaled a pipe on the outside by climbing, which is a cool addition to something you wouldn’t think would have any kind of vertical elements. I walked inside the second floor and found outsiders, who were about to execute the brother. As soon as I got close enough all attention was on me.
The leader of the outsiders said the man had killed his daughter and the Tower refused to answer for it. They said that the Tower always preaches community, but pushes away anyone they view as a burden. For some odd reason he asked me to decide his fate. At any point I could have killed the man I was speaking to, one of the three other armed people in the room, or the hostage. The choice was always there and it came with consequences, if I killed a quest giver in The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners I could lose access to missions later on.
It was a difficult decision, but it was only a demo and I didn’t have much time to mull it over. I could relate to the man that lost his daughter so I shot the hostage. Then everyone in the room agreed to go back to the previous house where I had received my orders and kill everyone there. I was caught up in the moment so I went with it.
We stormed the house guns drawn and started lighting things up. I quickly went from using two hands to gun down enemies with my rifle to pulling out my handgun. It was fast and exciting, although I didn’t see many consequences here. The enemy AI seemed downright stupid. They strafed and shot back, but it felt like I barely took any damage. I was hardly even hurt after fumbling with all the equipment on my body right in front of an enemy. Humans are supposed to be more threatening than the actual zombies in the world of The Walking Dead, but that didn’t feel like the case in my demo.
We cleared the house and I found the machine parts I needed on a bed upstairs. It was time to head back to my base camp, a location where you can gear up and craft items, to figure out what to do next. Bells started ringing, which meant the area would be flooded with zombies shortly. I ran back out into the street, weaving between groups of the undead only stopping to kill a few in order to open a path. I nearly died on multiple occasions but finally made it to the the boat that would get me home.
My overall experience with The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners was fantastic. The combat was survival-focused and frantic, the single choice I made in the demo made me pause, and the entire stylized New Orleans Skydance created had me eager to explore more. I’m tempted to say that this could give Telltale’s best game a run for its money.
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners releases on January 23, 2020 but Skydance Interactive couldn’t confirm which platforms they’d be launching Saints & Sinners on. My demo was on an Oculus Rift. They also said the entire story mode would take around 15 hours to complete.
Ein ambitioniertes Entwicklerteam arbeitet derzeit an einem VR-Survival-Game über den ersten amerikanischen Serienmörder H. H. Holmes. Das Setting spielt im Horrorhaus des grausamen Killers, dem so gennanten Castle, in welchem die Spieler im Escape-Room-Stil aus dem gefährlichen Umfeld entkommen müssen.
The Horror of H.H.Holmes – VR-Survival-Game im Escape-Room-Stil
H. H. Holmes gilt als einer der ersten amerikanischen Serienmörder überhaupt und zählt ungefähr 200 Opfer zu seinen grausamen Morden. Dabei ging er äußerst geschickt, aber ebenso brutal vor, indem er seine Opfer, überwiegend junge alleinstehende Frauen, in sein Hotel “the Castle” lockte und darin ermordete. Das riesige Horrorhaus wurde mit zahlreichen Fallen, Geheimgängen, versteckten Räumen und eigenem Folterkeller ausgestattet. Darin befand sich ein dazugehöriger Foltertisch, ein Säurebad sowie eine Gaskammer. Die Skelette mancher Opfer verkaufte er an Universitäten. Nach seiner Hinrichtung am Galgen wurde das Horrorhotel aus ungeklärten Gründen niedergebrannt.
Mit The Horror of H.H.Holmes möchte ein Team rund um Regisseur Michael Peterson (bekannt für Insectula! (2005)) die Geschehnisse nun in einer seriösen VR-Erfahrung umsetzen. Darin sollen die Spieler die Möglichkeit erhalten, das Horrorhaus in einer immersiven VR-Umgebung zu erkunden, ums Überleben zu kämpfen und im Escape-Room-Stil aus dem mörderischen Umfeld auszubrechen. Das Ziel ist es, genug Beweise zu finden, um den Killer schuldig sprechen zu lassen. Die virtuelle Umgebung soll ähnlich wie das Original mit zahlreichen Fallen bestückt sein, wodurch jeder Fehltritt der Letzte werden soll. Natürlich treibt sich auch der Serienkiller selbst innerhalb des Umfelds herum und jagt euch erbarmungslos durch seine Mordstätte.
Michael Peterson beschreibt seine Vision in einem Interview mit Cult of Weird folgendermaßen:
“Ich habe schon immer Geheimgänge geliebt und stellte mir vor, wie cool und gruselig es wäre, selbst durch das “Castle” gehen zu können. Deshalb möchte ich das Haus so realistisch wie möglich umsetzen, sodass die Leute es unter authentischen Bedingungen erkunden können.”
Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen, dienen Zeitungsartikel aus der damaligen Zeit und Augenzeugenberichte als Grundlage für die virtuelle Umgebung. Martin Scorsese arbeitet derzeit übrigens an einer Filmadaption von Devil in the White City, welche auf der Buchvorlage aus dem Jahr 2003 von Erik Larsons basiert. Darin soll Schauspieler Leonardo Decaprio die Rolle des blutrünstigen Serienmörders übernehmen.
Wann das Horror-Survial-Spiel erscheint, ist derzeit noch nicht bekannt.
From Flight School Studio, the creators of Manifest 99 (2017), comes a new survival game that maroons you on a small deserted island, leaving you with only your wits and crafting skills at your disposal. Called Island Time VR, the game is slated to release this spring on PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive.
You’ve been shipwrecked on a coffee table-sized island. With only Carl the Crab at your side, your sole task is to survive as long as possible while crafting tools and fending off dangerous animals such as sharks and seagulls. Of course, when you’re not staring at your watch waiting for your hunger meter to reach critical levels, you can always enjoy a beautiful tropical sunset.
Flight School Studio says Island Time VR features an event system that determines when and what amounts of resources are made available to players, something that was no doubt designed to always keeps you on toes.
“The game’s difficulty curve and secrets are designed to be discovered over multiple playthroughs,” said Adam Volker, Creative Director at Flight School Studio. “The player might craft a new item or find new foodstuffs they haven’t seen before. This trial and error is what teaches players to survive as long as they can.”
If you’re looking to try out Island Time VR, you’ll find public demos at this year’s SXSW in booth 2266.
I find myself crouching behind a bush in a lush, tropical forest right off the coast of a beautiful beach. To my left the water is reflecting the sky with wonderful ripples and I can see the leaves of trees dancing in the wind. In my right hand I’m grasping a stone-tipped spear and I’m spying on a small raptor dinosaur. Using my head I physically turn to my left and right, checking my surroundings while wearing an Oculus Rift headset, and begin my attack.
After a minute or two of valiantly fighting, the raptor murders me and devours my corpse, forcing me to start over without any of the items I’d built up over the last few hours of playing. Pools of my blood mingle with the sparkling water. That’s the life of a survival sim gamer.
Ark: Survival Evolved by Studio Wildcard shares a lot in common with other popular games in the same genre, such as H1Z1, DayZ, Rust, Conan Exiles, and others. It’s a genre that fits VR extremely well, but it also has very little representation thus far, other than the recently launched The Solus Project.
Survival games are always incredibly immersive experiences but once you strap on a VR headset it feels even more visceral and intense. In the case of Ark, things start out very bleakly on the washed up shores of an abandoned beach without any weapons or supplies.
Before long you’ll be punching trees to get wood, picking up rocks, making hatchets, and then hitting trees with that hatchet. If you’re lucky you might be able to make a bow and some arrows in the first hour or two to take down some dinosaurs from a distance. This is the core gameplay loop of Ark and other survival games like it: you start with nothing and slowly work your way up, grinding for increased power, uncovering new crafting recipes, and gradually building up your resources. It’s a satisfying grind when things work out in your favor, but it’s still a grind nevertheless.
And that grind does have a habit of being a horrible chore at times. There’s nothing worse than getting eaten alive by a triceratops when you’re on your way back to base to drop off supplies and you end up losing hours of work in the process. Getting past that fist curve of finding/making gear, making a base, and reaching the point of being able to recover quickly from death is grueling, but satisfying. Whether playing PvE or PvP the importance of teamwork online cannot be over-stressed.
One of the biggest draws of Ark is the seeming focus on prehistoric tendencies. Whereas Rust focuses mostly on building and fighting other players and both H1Z1 and DayZ inject zombies into the experience, Ark is a bit unique. I can honestly say I’ve never played another game that let me ride a T-Rex into battle and tame a small army’s worth of raptors. Yes, that’s right: you can tame dinosaurs and take them as pets. But that focus on the Jurassic-era gets lost in the weeds of feature-creep eventually.
It’s a fate that befalls Early Access-first and Kickstarter-funded games all too often. The developers set out with a specific idea at hand, such as making a survival game, but with dinosaurs. Eventually they add on more features that make sense like base building and lots of crafting. Soon though the feature creep sets in as more and more things are added to the game that serve little to no function with regard to the game’s core premise. And that’s how you get a game that lets you add lasers to the heads of dinosaurs but doesn’t let you move furniture in your house without destroying it first to rebuild it.
The point here is that adding more things to a game (like being able to eventually craft rocket launchers and laser rifles) isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it feels incompatible with the original vision of the project. This is amplified by the very nature of survival games that allow player-versus-player (PvP) combat because new players with nothing but a loin cloth and rock will inevitably find themselves at the wrong end of bullets and laser beams more often than not.
Ark feels like a game that’s a bit of a cross-roads trying to be too many things to too many types of people. Due to the prevalence of custom serves and player mods there are still ways to bypass all of the extraneous features weighing the game down and level things out in a way that makes sense, but the community had to take that mission into their own hands with mods like Primitive Plus.
With games like Ark (and even PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, a battle royale-style survival affair) it’s sometimes difficult to identity what denotes good game design and fortunate multiplayer happenstance. Am I having fun because the developers crafted a legitimately good, well-made, and balanced game that rewards hard work and determination? Or am I having fun because near-death experiences with dinosaurs and my friends never gets old? It’s hard to tell.
The frequent bugs, poor AI, and lack of obvious quality of life features make it feel like the latter, but Ark has plenty of actual good elements as well. Playing a game like this in VR is a freeing experience; one that makes me desperately want to see more PC survival sim games.
Final Score:6/10 – Decent
Ark: Survival Evolved is a good game that gets bogged down by an over-abundance of ancillary features, frustrating bugs, and a horrendous grind. It can be intimidating for new players and playing with friends online is more important than ever. But if you can get past the rough edges and dig into the prehistoric survival fun that makes Ark so special, there is an entirely unique game here that’s unlike anything else you’ll play.
Ark: Survival Evolved is available now on Steam for $59.99 with official support for the Oculus Rift. You can play seated either with a gamepad or keyboard and mouse, motion controller support like Oculus Touch is not included. Read our Content Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.
