The Strolling Lifeless: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution deserves recognition. By no means earlier than have we seen such a verbose title handle to speak so short time saying a lot. It fails to convey to newcomers that it’s a standalone recreation full with its personal marketing campaign, and it coyly obfuscates the truth that this isn’t fairly the fully-fledged sequel Saints & Sinners followers have hungered for.
With that mess of a reputation, we need to talk as clearly as potential that Chapter 2 remains to be nice. It’s extra Saints & Sinners with new horde-clearing toys to play with, gratifyingly demanding night time time expeditions, and extra excuses to threat life and limb whereas scavenging the undead-inhabited streets of New Orleans. The plot is skinny and the brand new additions are restricted, however its sturdy Saints & Sinners core makes this a retribution nonetheless value seeing by way of to fruition.
Foundational to the success of Saints & Sinners is its remarkably satisfying gameplay, with the visceral fight being on the forefront. A couple of minutes is all it takes for the physics-focused melee zombie slaying to click on. There’s a deliberate nature to all of it, be it with the dislodging of one thing sharp from a walker’s sturdy cranium or hurling a two-handed edged weapon that’ll hopefully hit its goal. It calls for brisk however belaboured actions which might be punctuated with rewarding jolts from the PSVR2 Sense Controllers everytime you make contact.
The gunplay is equally strong and proves handiest in opposition to the much more agile human foes that inhabit the dilapidated metropolis streets and buildings. Adaptive triggers and haptic suggestions mix to make every pull of the set off really feel significant, no matter whether or not it’s a pot shot round a nook or a fastidiously aimed headshot. Throw Chapter 2’s new chainsaw or grenade launcher into the combo, and also you’re spoiled with a smorgasbord of harmful playthings to take for a spin and experiment with.
The fight in Saints & Sinners is excellent, and it’s additional elevated by a basis of surprisingly rewarding useful resource administration. Submit-apocalyptic New Orleans is stuffed with stuff that may be recycled for assets and become weapons, ammunition, or upgrades again at your faculty bus base of operations. Emptying your pack of junk and turning it into useful assets that get you a wee bit nearer to the subsequent improve you’ve been eyeing up encourages an infectious itch to get again on the market and scavenge some extra.
Scrap objects are plentiful in Saints & Sinners, however valuables and essential consumables are uncommon, leading to frequent stretches of nerve-racking stress. There are such a lot of components and mechanisms working in opposition to you whereas exploring one of many recreation’s self-contained locations – restricted stamina, breakable weapons, and finite stock area are all limitations to beat. Taken collectively, these mechanics make escaping in a single piece really feel like a mini-miracle, however they’re all issues that may be circumvented with stealthy sleuthing or satisfactory preparation prematurely.
All the things that makes Chapter 2 so nice is basically the identical stuff that made the primary recreation so good. The gameplay is essentially unaltered and there are just a few new areas to discover, so the utterly new story is the closest this chapter involves feeling like an precise sequel. Retribution takes place shortly after the occasions of its predecessor with you as soon as once more inhabiting the position of the in any other case anonymous Vacationer, tasked with working errands for numerous of us across the flooded stays of New Orleans, Louisiana whereas uncovering extra particulars in regards to the cruel faction in energy dubbed “The Tower”.
Exterior of the wonderful use of Axeman as an always-watching antagonist and the large climactic conclusion, the plot is just too trivial to offer a lot motivation. It boils all the way down to being strung alongside a collection of fetch quests for a number of uninteresting characters with dialogue choices that solely assist you to select what diploma of snark to make use of in your reply. In distinction to the primary, Chapter 2 solely has a number of notable resolution factors, none of which have main ramifications on this recreation.
The big selection of dismal ethical dilemmas aren’t replicated in Chapter 2, however there’s one massive new addition within the type of night time time excursions. You’re now capable of go to two locations each in-game day as a substitute of only one, with the second cease happening at twilight when the undead hordes are inescapable however uncommon supplies are plentiful. It matches fantastically into the Saints & Sinners threat/reward balancing act, and makes for much more magnificent moments of desperation as you push by way of undead hordes within the darkness to try to make it out alive with the treasures out of your journey.
The brand new additions with Chapter 2 are made a lot simpler to take pleasure in now that it’s lastly been free of the Meta Quest 2 the place it was completely obtainable earlier than. The gnarly PS1-era fog, clay-like textures, crummy efficiency, frequent crashes, and lengthy load instances are all utterly gone. Exterior of some nonetheless low-resolution property, the {hardware} improve is borderline transformative. When you’ve been ready on Chapter 2 till it may very well be loved at its finest, contemplate that wait over.
Conclusion
It isn’t fairly a full-on sequel and doesn’t do a lot to maneuver the franchise ahead, however Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2 remains to be an extremely pleasant additional serving to of walker-slaying leisure. Its smattering of recent additions and novelties show compelling sufficient to make post-apocalyptic New Orleans definitely worth the revisit, particularly in the event you handed on the preliminary Quest 2 launch for a extra polished, well-performing, and visually pleasing product.
