Yesterday, Survios announced the long-anticipated release date for The Walking Dead Onslaught. The zombie survival game touches down on September 29 on PC and PS4 with support for VR headsets. But you’ll also be able to play the game on the upcoming PS5.
In a press release announcing the release date, Suvios noted that “The Walking Dead Onslaught’s PlayStation 4 version will also be compatible with the next-gen PlayStation 5.”
To our mind, that makes Onslaught the first PSVR game to be confirmed as backward compatible on PS5. Note that this wording makes it clear that we’re not talking about a native version of the game on PS5, but instead the PS4 version running on the console.
Why is that news? Well, simply put, we don’t know how far backward compatibility on PS5 will extend. Sony initially suggested that most of the PS4’s most-played games would work on the console, before later specifying that the ‘vast majority’ of the older console’s entire library would run on the device. Onslaught seems to be the first PSVR game we can count among them.
Last week Sony also confirmed that all your existing PSVR peripherals will work with PS5 to play PS4 games. The PlayStation Camera will need a special adapter to work (which Sony says it will ship out for free), but the DualShock 4, Move controllers and Aim controller can all still be used.
Wide-ranging backward compatibility support will be crucial for PSVR on PS5, but we’re also wondering if new PS5 games will support the headset. Last week IO Interactive announced that Hitman 3 would support PSVR, but is yet to clarify if that’s on PS4, PS5 or both. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the situation as we lead up to PS5’s holiday 2020 launch. Onslaught, meanwhile, is available to pre-order on Steam and Oculus now, with PSVR pre-orders coming soon.
The Walking Dead Onslaught, the upcoming zombie VR game based on AMC’s TV show adaptation of the universe, has announced a release date of September 29th. Developer Survios published a new gameplay trailer highlighting the game’s zombie slaying action.
Not to be confused with The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners—a VR game released in early 2020 by Skydance Interactive and based on the comic book universe—the upcoming Walking Dead Onslaught was originally due to launch in late 2019 but was delayed into 2020.
Today Survios announced the release date for The Walking Dead Onslaught on September 29th and made a Standard Edition and Deluxe Edition of the game available for pre-order with a discount and in-game bonuses. A new gameplay trailer was released alongside the announcement:
Survios is promising a full campaign where players will “embark on an original story following the events of the war with the Saviors. Players will fight as Rick, Daryl, Michonne, and Carol to gather needed resources to rebuild the settlement, restore society, and prepare for an onslaught of walker-slaying mayhem.”
The game boasts 24 weapons along with an infinitely replayable ‘Scavenger Mode’ which lets players fight their way through zombie hordes as they gather supplies.
Set to release on PSVR, Oculus PC, and SteamVR on September 29th, The Walking Dead Onslaught will be priced at $30 for the Standard Edition and $40 for the Deluxe Edition before a 10% pre-order discount.
Digital Pre-Order Bonuses: Offers exclusive Sheriff Rick and Hunter Daryl character skins, Gold Katana and Gold Knuckle Knife weapon skins, and a pre-purchase discount on participating platforms.
Digital Deluxe Edition: Includes Iconic Show Weapons Pack: Lucille, Rick’s Mace, The Red Machete and Tyreese’s Hammer, Alexandria Crafting Starter Kit, The Walking Dead Onslaught Mini-Soundtrack and Art Book. Additionally, purchases via the PlayStation Store will also receive a special PS4 Theme and Avatar pack.
There will also be a physical release of The Walking Dead Onslaught for PSVR available on OCtober 2nd in EUrope and October 13th in North America via Perp Games.
The release of The Walking Dead Onslaught will bring Survios full-circle, in a way. The studio was one of the earliest dedicated to VR game development and in its earliest days had been working on a motion controller-based room-scale VR prototype called Zombies on the Holodeck, well before commercial VR headsets had even been announced with motion controllers or room-scale tracking.
After a year’s delay, we finally know when The Walking Dead Onslaught is arriving on VR headsets and we won’t have too wait long.
Survios’ zombie-slaying game touches down on September 29. That much was confirmed by IGN with a new trailer for the game that gives us our first look at gameplay in over a year.
Unlike The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, which is set in the world of the comics, Onslaught is based upon the TV show, starring a familiar cast of characters. Players will take up arms as Darryl Dixon and more in an all-new story that sees you slicing and shooting your way through hordes of the undead.
The gameplay here looks far improved from what Survios showed a year ago. We spoke to the team earlier this year, at the time confirming that the game’s co-op support was being stripped out in favor of doubling down on story. Based on what we’ve seen here, we’re hoping that decision has paid off. The chance to sling a sword as Michonne is certainly an exciting one.
Saints & Sinners — developed instead by Skydance Interactive — ranked highly on our recently refreshed best VR games lists, so Onslaught will have some tough competition at launch. Pre-order bonuses for the game include new skins for Darryl and Rick, plus golden katana and knuckle knife weapons.
The Walking Dead Onslaught lands on PC VR and PSVR headsets this September. No word on an Oculus Quest version yet, though Saints & Sinners is due on the device later this year.
Update: This was originally published for the original DLC release on PC VR, but has been republished today to coincide with the Quest release of the DLC late last week.
Original: Looking for The Walking Dead tips for The Trial? We’ve got all the tricks you’ll need to survive The Trial, direct from developer Skydance Interactive.
The Trial is essentially Saints & Sinners’ answer to a Horde Mode, pitting players against waves of zombies as they fight for survival and earn better gear. As we discovered in our launch livestream last week, though, it can also be brutally difficult. To help you out, Skydance itself offered us a few tips and tricks.
The Trial Kills Bonuses
To build up points in The Trial, you’ll need to earn different types of kills. Shooting your way through the hordes might be enough to survive a few waves, but if you really want to make a mark you’ll need to utilize all of Saints & Sinners’ combat mechanics from melee and firearms to archery. Skydance was kind enough to outline every type of kill you can earn in the mode, which we’ve listed below.
Standard Kills
Melee (get a melee kill), Thrown Weapon (get a throwing weapon kill), Bow & Arrow (get a kill with archery), Kill (standard gun or bludgeon kill), Explosion (kill with explosive damage)
Special Kills
Decapitation (cut a head off with something sharp), Long Range Bow & Arrow (archery kill at long range), Headshot (a headshot kill at mid-range), Long Range Headset (a headshot kill at long-range), Dismemberment (chop off an arm), Multi-Kill (multiple enemies killed with one explosive)
Don’t forget to kill consistently to build up streaks, too; they’re essential for getting better scores.
General The Walking Dead Meatgrinder Tips
Of course, if you want to survive The Trial, stylish kills will only be half the battle. You’ll also need to brush up on your survival skills and learn the ins and outs of the three maps. Below, Skydance offers some direct tips on staying alive for as long as possible.
Stamina And Durability
Conserve weapon durability and stamina by throwing your weapon
Conserve both by getting weapons that can decapitate easily
Crowd Control
Grab Walker heads to push back into other walkers to give yourself space. Use explosives when they are grouped together
Manage your stamina well with crowd control and weapon variety
Weapons Tips
Weapons like Katanas and bows can take you a long way
Beretta has the fastest reload and higher ammo clip size
Rifles can penetrate helmets with their shots
Hanging Walkers
Kill Hanging Walkers to have them drop powerful boosters. They are hidden around the level when each wave begins
Melee Boost provides infinite stamina and durability for the duration of the consumable (60 seconds)
Firearm boost gives you infinite ammo and durability for 60 seconds
Score Multipliers:
Sometimes Walkers will spawn with a glowing ring around their feet. Kill these walkers to drop a zone around the location. When standing inside of it, you receive double points for all kills.
General Tips
You can find craftable recipes in the world so exploring is good
You can also find helpful items like ammo, food/drinks and boosts from Hanging Walkers
There are handy propane tanks around the level you can use to get explosive kills and multi-kills
Exploring the level is beneficial for items and findable recipes, but time it well so that you can make it back to the crafting tables in time to prep for the next wave
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners’ Trial Mode is available now on PC VR, PSVR, and Quest. These tips were originally published in July 2020, but we republished it in 2021 for all the new Quest players going through The Trial.
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners‘ Meatgrinder update arrives today. First revealed in our Summer Showcase, it adds several new features and is available as a free update for PC VR and PSVR players.
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners was one of the first big VR releases this year, and it remains 2020’s best, even with some seriously tough competition. The Meatgrinder update is the first free content update for the game. Its main feature is a whole new mode called ‘The Trial’, which is essentially a horde mode with a few Saints & Sinners twists.
The development team released a dev walkthrough video of the new mode, detailing how everything works, which you can see below. In essence, it’s not an endless mode, but it will get increasingly harder and is aimed at advanced players who want to show off their combat skills. Making your way through each successive wave, until you reach the very end, sounds like it will be a considerable challenge.
You’ll start the mode with just a single screwdriver and enough bitecoins (the update’s new currency) to purchase one weapon of your choice. You’ll earn more bitecoins by killing walkers in each wave, however in true Saints & Sinners style, you’ll get higher rewards for more stylish kills — think headshots, long range shots, using explosives or throwing weapons. As always in this game, the gorier the better.
The update also adds in a new difficulty setting, Story Mode, for those starting a new game. As the title implies, this is an easier setting with reduced health and stamina impact from certain actions, allowing you to focus more on the narrative, if that’s your style. There’s a new weapon skin for the katana as well, called Absolution, which you can see the dev team use in this video.
The Meatgrinder update for Saints & Sinners is available today for players on PC VR and PSVR. We’re expecting an Oculus Quest version of the game later this year, but we’ve got no further details on that just yet.
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners isn’t the only zombie-slaying VR adventure based on the iconic IP for 2020. The Walking Dead Onslaught (official website) from Survios is still in development and it’s changed a lot since the last time we saw it.
Last week I had the chance to chat with the Lead Designer on The Walking Dead Onslaught, Andrew Abedian. We talked about the game’s new direction, revised structure, and the decision to remove cooperative multiplayer.
Original gameplay reveal trailer from E3 2019:
The Game That Never Was
When I played a demo build of Onslaught back at E3 2019 I was struck by the gory combat and attention to detail with regard to things like dismemberment and zombie corpse mutilation. Technically, it was a marvel and really seemed to set itself apart with the inclusion of replayable co-op and a fun, arcade-style mission structure. But that’s mostly been changed now (more on that in a second).
All that being said, Onslaught still has a lot of the same ideas it once did a year ago. At its core, this is aiming to be the definitive Walking Dead experience for fans of the show, not the comic as with Saints & Sinners. You’ll still be able to play as Daryl, Rick, Carol, and Michonne as you fight your way across the apocalypse to gather resources and rebuild society. Survios is also leveraging their experience developing reactive melee combat systems (best seen in Creed: Rise to Glory) to give The Walking Dead Onslaught some of the best and most immediately satisfying zombie killing you can find in VR. That’s all still here, but the structure has changed.
“For this game to really make sense and for us to do this brand justice, we wanted to do a little bit more with it and make it feel like you are literally dropped into an episode of The Walking Dead,” says Abedian. “Almost every decision we have made over the past year has been made trying to move toward that goal.”
The Game That It Became
According to Abedian, the focus is now placed squarely on narrative. The campaign is an original story from the point-of-view of, primarily, Daryl who is fully voiced by Norman Reedus himself. It centers on tension between him and Rick Grimes just before the events of Season 9 in the TV show.
You’ll come back to Alexandria as a safe zone to build up the settlement and spend resources you’ve gathered. There will even be moments where you get to gather around a campfire and chat with Daryl, as Rick, to gain additional context into the story and what’s going on.
Another new element is the inclusion of ‘Scavenger Runs’ which will let you go out on heart-pounding supply runs to get resources, collect weapons, and more to bring back to Alexandria. These are randomized encounters that are replayable — adding some nuance and longevity to the gameplay.
Notably though, all of this is without co-op now. Previously the co-op was a cornerstone feature, but it was continually pushed to the side in favor of other things until it eventually just wasn’t in the game’s scope anymore.
Challenger Approaches
Then The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners came out earlier this year and totally blew us away.
Not only did it pack incredibly realistic physics into a large, sprawling world set in a unique location, but it wrapped all that up into a nice, bloody package with visceral combat. It was, for all intents and purposes, a complete experience and honestly one of the best Walking Dead games, and indeed VR games, made to date.
As a result, the bar was raised.
“Saints & Sinners released and we all talked about the impact,” says Abedian. “We were making the co-op decision around that time, but we had been working with AMC for this entire process and it was very important to us that we make something that is quality, that utilizes the brand and that the people who hold that brand feel like they got quality out of us.”
Onslaught has a few major things it can hang its hat on though. Namely, the all-star cast. Four of the most iconic characters from AMC’s hit show are here and in the flesh. Survios worked directly with producers and writers to make this game as authentic as possible. That’s a big deal.
“After a certain point it became obvious that the expanded feature set to accomplish that feel of being inside The Walking Dead was ultimately the largest thing we could provide as a differentiator,” says Abedian. “If players are coming into our game and they are literally feeling like it’s the show and they have these awesome memories of watching the show, there is no other game to be able to provide that at this current juncture.”
Considering the success Survios has had with licensed VR games, such as Creed and Westworld Awakening, they’re certainly capable of making Onslaught work.
Undying Potential
Just like there is room for more than one Walking Dead TV show, for the most part, there is certainly room for more than one Walking Dead VR game, even if they’re releasing a little too close for comfort. There’s a proven market and fan base now with one success story to look at as either encouragement or perhaps a high bar.
I have faith that The Walking Dead Onslaught has the potential to be an awesome zombie-killing experience and I look forward to wielding Michonne’s sword and Daryl’s crossbow, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’m wistful for what could have been. In a world where Saints & Sinners has already seemingly nailed the gritty reality of zombie survival and the choices that requires, I think the door was open for Onslaught to deliver a definitive co-op experience with replayable mission and a heavy focus on visceral, intense combat. Pivoting to focus more on the story could serve them well well, but I’ll always wonder what the original incarnation for the game would have been like had it been carried through to the end.
The Walking Dead Onslaught is slated for a 2020 release date on SteamVR, Oculus Home for Rift, and PSVR. We’ll keep you posted with more details as they’re available.
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinner’s ace PSVR port is just over a month old, but you can already save a tidy sum in this sale.
Both the Tourist and Standard Editions of the game are on sale on both the US and EU PlayStation Stores. The Standard version has shaved off 20%, taking it to $31.99 in the US and £26.39 in the UK. The Tourist Edition, meanwhile, has 25% off, taking it to $37.49 in the US and £29.99 in the UK. The latter version of the title includes unique weapon recipes and collectible voodoo dolls.
It’s definitely a surprise to see the game on sale so early, especially considering Saints & Sinners made its way into the top-selling PSVR titles of last month. The game dethroned a lot of mainstays for the first time in months. If you were feeling left out after seeing the huge discounts in the Steam Summer Sale (which includes the very same deal on Saints & Sinners), you should definitely check this out.
Not only that, but Saints & Sinners is getting a huge update in July. As we revealed at last week’s Upload VR Showcase: Summer Edition, the free Meatgrinder update will add a new Horde-style survival mode with new weapons and a new map. You’ll be able to put your zombie-killing skills to the test to prove your supremacy.
Elsewhere, we’re hoping to see news on the Quest version of Saints & Sinners, which is scheduled to release later this year, in the near future. Plenty still to come for one of 2020’s breakout VR success stories, then. Oh, and there’s still The Walking Dead: Onslaught from Survios on the way. Norman Reedus had an update for us during the Showcase too.
After surviving a year in the shadows, The Walking Dead: Onslaught is gearing up for its big return this summer, with a little help from Norman Reedus.
New gameplay from Survios’ take on the popular zombie franchise in VR is coming this summer. Reedus has been recording new voice work for the game in his basement, as he’s only too proud to show in the video above. The end of the clip confirms that the game is still on track for PC VR and PSVR, though there’s no release date to talk about just yet.
The Walking Dead: Onslaught is not to be confused with the other VR game set in the franchise, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. The latter title, developed by Skydance Interactive, released earlier this year and is set in the world of the comic book. Onslaught, meanwhile, is instead based on the TV show. You’ll play as characters from the show, some of which are voiced by their real actors like, obviously, Reedus’ Daryl Dixon.
Onslaught will come with a full campaign with an all-new story. We first revealed gameplay for Onslaught at our first showcase last year, but the game was then delayed out of its 2019 release window and we’re expecting to see a lot of changes. Last we saw it, Survios has walker-stabbing down pretty good, so we’re excited to see how far it’s come since then.
Today at the UploadVR Showcase: Summer Edition we revealed the announcement trailer for the Meatgrinder update in The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. This big new update will introduce brutal new horde mode-style battle arenas for a quicker and more replayable way of killing zombies.
Watch the first-ever footage of the new update right here:
This is a big feature that a lot of people were clamoring for even back when the game first came out. As great as Saints & Sinners is with its meaty campaign, massive maps, and reactive sandbox-style gameplay that adapts to your actions, it’s hard to replay a game like that. It just isn’t the same.
But people still wanted more of the experience, so Skydance Interactive are releasing the Meatgrinder update! This new update delivers a handful of maps, one of which is brand new, to let you fight through waves of zombies that get progressively harder as you craft weapons and fend them off for your own survival. There’s even a brand new katana added into the game for this too.
The Oculus Quest version of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is still due out later this year, in Q4, but we don’t know anything else about that yet. For now, the Meatgrinder update is coming to both PC VR and PSVR along with all of its bloody, gory action, in July 2020.
At long last there’s some sign of change in the monthly PSVR charts on the PlayStation Store. Two games released in May have managed to beat Beat Saber and climb to the top.
Skydance Interactive’s The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners and Free Lives’ Gorn placed in first and second respectively in the US charts for last month. In the EU, Walking Dead came out on top again, but Beat Saber edged out Gorn for second place. Still, getting two new games to outsell the usual PSVR staples like Superhot and Job Simulator (which both feature lower down) is a huge achievement.
Neither territory shares actual sales figures, though neither game has physical editions in stores, either.
With a lack of really big releases for PSVR over the past few months, Beat Saber had been sitting unchallenged on top of the charts for quite a while. It’s reassuring to see that new games are capable of climbing to the top, then, especially two great games. The Walking Dead enjoyed a top tier port to PSVR (after reaching Steam’s top sellers list on PC in January) and Gorn finally arrived in need of a few updates that also hit last week.
Fireproof Games’ The Room VR: A Dark Matter is the only other 2020 VR game to feature this month, coming in 10th on the EU chart. Other than that, it’s the usual suspects.
There’s not much on the radar for PSVR in June so don’t expect any other big shakeups. But July starts strong with the long-awaited launch of Marvel’s Iron Man VR. That’s bound to have an impact.
