When it comes to VR survival horror games, you can\u2019t get much better than a nice handful of walker guts to make your mornings pass a bit more smoothly. At least, that\u2019s how things work in this post-apocalyptic version of New Orleans, which serves as the setting for 2020\u2019s exceptional The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners and its brand-new sequel, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners \u2013 Chapter 2: Retribution. That\u2019s a mouthful of a name, pun intended, and yet it\u2019s less of a sequel in practice and more a perfectly serviceable standalone expansion to the original. Rather, it would be, if not for a series of sizeable and often game-breaking bugs that \u2013 when combined with the struggling computational power of the Meta Quest 2 \u2013 frequently make for a jarring experience that would fit right at home in a real zombie apocalypse.<\/p>\n\n
As in The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, Chapter 2 has you romping around the Louisiana bayou as the Tourist, a survivor who\u2019s made a name for themselves amongst the locals following the events of the original campaign. Just like before, you can choose a few options at the beginning of Chapter 2 which determine things like your skin color and whether you play with a masculine or feminine voice actor, but character creation doesn\u2019t get much more sophisticated than that. In its favor, a first-person VR game doesn\u2019t really need a fancy character creator and it\u2019s great that it throws you right into the action after a short but skippable tutorial segment and an introductory cutscene.<\/p>\n\n
Speaking of the action, there\u2019s a lot more of it here than in the original \u2013 at least, prior to the far more combat-focused Meatgrinder and Aftershocks updates, which added an enjoyable wave survival mode and a series of endgame missions that are sorely missed in the sequel. It\u2019s a bit odd for the wave survival mode to be missing here, especially given the addition of new weapons like the chainsaw and the sawed-off shotgun, both of which are plenty of fun to wreak havoc with. It\u2019s satisfying to watch walkers split in half in a shower of blood \u2013 when the framerate doesn\u2019t completely screech to a halt on the Quest 2, that is, which happens more often than might be considered comfortable (especially considering the chainsaw is a melee weapon that requires both hands to use properly).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s satisfying to watch walkers split in half \u2013\u00a0when the framerate doesn\u2019t completely screech to a halt on the Quest 2.<\/p>\n
Whereas the first game focused on stealth by forcing you to slowly navigate a world sparse of resources necessary to fight the gradually overwhelming horde of walkers and hostile humans, Chapter 2 goes all-out with its combat, practically throwing weapons and other important resources at you from the first few steps out of the opening area. The loss of gradual progression from having basically no resources to being a powerhouse does lose some of the original\u2019s nuance; weapons feel slightly less valuable early on, lessening a bit of tension that once existed in regard to inventory management. But with loot more readily available, you don\u2019t need to scavenge with a fine-toothed comb anymore either, which makes for a relaxed change of pace that still feels scary since the quantity and aggression of walkers has been turned up a notch to accommodate.<\/p>\n
The increased action also makes it fortunate that Saints & Sinners still offers the most entertaining melee combat of any VR game short of Blade & Sorcery, featuring a wide variety of fully physics-simulated weapons that generally do feel good to use, each allowing you to creatively carve your way out of danger. Many of these, like the often convenient one-handed cleaver and Michonne\u2019s stylish two-handed katana, are both fantastic for beheading walkers on short notice. <\/p>\n
Michonne\u2019s stylish two-handed katana is fantastic for beheading walkers on short notice.<\/p>\n
Alongside the enhanced arsenal, it also sends a far higher number of enemies at you at any given moment, clearly straining the Quest 2\u2019s hardware. In some extreme cases, Chapter 2 begins to experience frequent crashes and other glitches that just make the whole thing less palatable across the board. One section of the campaign crashed seven times in a row \u2013 forcing me to lose 20 minutes of progress each time \u2013 until I went back to the home camp and threw every loose physics item into the storage bin. It\u2019s impossible to know if that was the main culprit, but by the end of that particular section, I was banging my head against the wall looking for solutions.<\/p>\n\n
As should be expected, there are a few new zones and a handful of new weapons to play with, but Chapter 2 is still filled with way too much content from the original game. Most of the time you\u2019ll be running back and forth through old zones like The Shallows, Bywater, The Ward, Rampart, and so on. A few of these locales don\u2019t even serve any story purpose this time around, and it feels odd that you can still visit them at all \u2013 like some vestigial organ hanging off of an aging corpse. (Please don\u2019t imagine what that would actually look like.) Be warned, however, that Chapter 2 does very little to explain the premise of ongoing events, aside from some expositional dialogue early on, and you might be a little lost if you\u2019re a first-timer.<\/p>\n