/VERDICT
Saints and Sinners
likely won’t get
the credit it’s due,
but its zombie
survival simulation
is a watershed
momentforVR.OVERALL SCORE
88 %%
Saints and Sinners’ melee combat is among the best we’ve
seen in any VR game, but the VR systems are also well refined
across the whole experience. Every ranged weapon handles
differently. Revolvers, for example, need to be reloaded with
individual bullets before you flip the chamber back into place.
When wounded, you heal by manually wrapping a bandage
around your wrist. You can grab your backpack by reaching
over your left shoulder, then remove or insert objects you
find, making for a wonderfully intuitive inventory system. The
only slight disappointment is the crafting, which is more about
picking items off a menu than physically building objects.
It all amounts to a fine VR experience, but it’s the broader
systems that make Saints and Sinners such a compelling
survival game. With each day that passes, the number of
available supplies in the city dwindle, while the number of
zombies in the streets increases. This means you need to
balance completing your objectives with ensuring you’re
sufficiently equipped to stay alive. Should you waste an entire
day just looking for resources, or is it worth upgrading your
weapons to make zombies easier to kill?
You don’t just need to worry about the long-term problems
either. Alongside the zombies, there are two human factions.
One of these is known as the Tower. Each time you enter the
city to explore, you have just half an hour before the Tower
rings every church bell in New Orleans, causing the zombies
to swarm onto the streets. Ideally, you want to be gone before
this happens, so you have to think carefully about how you
approach your chosen objective. Is it worth scouring the streets
for scraps, or should you try to sneak into one of the faction
bases where resources are more plentiful?
The result is a highly dynamic survival experience that
constantly requires you to make difficult decisions, and where
small actions can have much larger ramifications down the
line. The production values are also superb, particularly for a VR
game. The comic-book art style works well in a VR headset and
the story, while not massively original, is sharply written and
convincingly acted.
Strangely, Saints and Sinners’ only real shortcoming is the
one hinted at in the title. There’s a morality system at play, but
the game doesn’t explicate it very well. As you explore, you’ll
come across survivors who you can help by giving them food,
or kill to steal their loot. However, the effect of this isn’t clear.
Similarly, the game doesn’t explain whether killing faction
members (which is often necessary to complete missions)
affects your moral standing. There are also several side-quests
that offer more clear-cut moral choices, but they’re entirely
optional. The whole system seems tacked onto the end, which
is odd considering it’s one of the game’s main selling points.
Fortunately, Saints and Sinners is otherwise so well made
that one weak system hardly matters. Half-Life: Alyx may be
touted as the do or die moment for VR gaming, but Saints and
Sinners has pipped it for demonstrating that VR can support
quality full-length games.
RICK LANE