Our Intrepid Survivor

When Arizona Sunshine 2 begins, you wake up in a dingy trailer, thirsty and looking for a drink. The opened beer bottles around you are variously empty, used as ashtrays, or contain your vomit—a good intro to the game, quickly establishing the pathos of the character you embody for the next 8-12 hours. Soon, a helicopter you hoped might rescue you crashes nearby. You rush to it in desperation, but it’s too late for the pilot. However, you gain a new canine companion from this ordeal. Without knowing his name, you decide to call him Buddy, marking the start of a beautiful friendship and a new quest as you realize the military is trying to locate patient zero, your potential ticket out of hell.

The gameplay in Arizona Sunshine 2 follows a straightforward single-player, narrative-driven campaign. As a fan of such campaigns, I’m all for it. The gunplay, a standout feature of the original game, is wonderful. It’s immensely satisfying to land a good headshot and hear the mushy explosion of a zombie’s head. Along your journey, you’ll find various weapons—pistols, machetes, semi-automatics, Uzis, rifles, machine guns, shotguns, and more. Each feels good to use, has its strengths and weaknesses, and allows you to approach zombie killing in your unique way.

Your holster is adjustable; you can carry two weapons at your waist and another slung over your shoulder. You also have two Half-Life: Alyx-type inventory slots in your wrists for consumables, grenades, mines, Molotovs, or stick grenades. As if that wasn’t enough, Buddy himself has two holsters, allowing him to carry two extra small weapons for convenience. Buddy isn’t just there for company. You can order him to take down zombies and fetch objects. He’s the heart of Arizona Sunshine 2, as in this world, a dog is not only man’s best friend but perhaps his only friend.

The writing in Arizona Sunshine 2 is a standout, with Rob Yescombe’s pitch-perfect writing and Sky Soliel‘s wonderful portrayal of the main character. The character’s range of emotions—frenzied desperation, gallows humor, enthusiasm, tender loving care, and even toilet humor—is all perfectly balanced and appropriate to the story’s context.

And it is a great story. Unless you’re dead inside, you’ll fall in love with Buddy. The last time I felt this emotional about an in-game animal was in The Last Guardian, which had me in tears by the end.

Arizona Sunshine 2 features a fantastic story, with twists and turns, highs and lows, and it will emotionally captivate you.

Oh, Ye Pretty Armageddon

While the first Arizona Sunshine never excelled graphically and relied on its gunplay and wit, the graphics in Arizona Sunshine 2 are atmospheric and superb. They portray a variety of environments and locations and comfortably overwhelm you with on-screen zombies when necessary. The art direction is on point, and the game is frequently just pretty, if your idea of pretty includes rotting corpses and splattered brains.

There are occasional glitches, like zombies’ heads and limbs tearing through doorways and walls, and sometimes Buddy’s body partly tearing through a wall, but it’s hardly a problem.

The graphics on PSVR2 are superior to those on Meta Quest 2 or 3, but they suffer from noticeable reprojection on PSVR2. I hope Sony finds a way to improve this across the platform, as it detracts somewhat from the overall immersion.

Can You Hear Me?

The audio’s standout is Sky Soliel’s beautifully nuanced voice acting, taking you on an emotional journey through the game. The sound design is fantastic, playing a huge part in the feel of the weapons. The guns sound different and satisfying to reload and shoot. The sound effects—from the zombies’ growls to barrel explosions—are great, and the music sets the mood effectively, ranging from suspenseful to action-packed.

Apocalyptic Delights

The story can be played single-player or co-op, taking around 8 hours on normal and closer to 10 on hard. Arizona Sunshine 2 also brings back the horde mode from the original, where up to 4 players can fight off

 increasing waves of zombies in various environments. Your enjoyment will depend on your affinity for replaying story campaigns and wave modes.

Freddy Failures

There’s not much to complain about with Arizona Sunshine 2. It excels in areas where other VR games struggle. Opening cupboards and drawers is easy, climbing works well (though it’s only used in a few areas), and aiming is precise. There are a couple of sections where the difficulty spikes, but remember this tip in times of need: aim for the legs.

There are minor issues, like wonky trolley physics and a potential memory leak causing increased loading times the longer the game runs on your system.

Overall, the positives far outweigh the flaws. You’ll be drawn in by the writing, laugh with the main character, empathize with his loneliness and newfound enthusiasm for Buddy, and appreciate his moments of reflection. Meanwhile, you’ll enjoy action-packed gunplay, varied environments, and well-paced set pieces.

Freddy Thrills

In summary, I had a fantastic time with Arizona Sunshine 2. It’s a sequel that surpasses the original in every conceivable way, setting a new standard for single-player narrative-driven campaigns in VR, especially on Quest and PSVR2. It’s focused on what works, providing a fluid experience from start to end, and is easy to recommend to anyone with a beating heart who hasn’t been bitten by a brain-eater. Stop reading this, get the game, and enjoy it!

I absolutely LOVE this game, and I will make no bones about that fact. It is fast, furious, addictive carnage that has eaten my free time with the same wild abandon that my 8-year-old devours cake. Despite this, I can easily see that some gamers may not be impressed with The Cabin. Certain design limitations could grate on some, and the breadth of the content does not match the depth of the gameplay loop. 

But honestly, I don’t care. Journalistic objectivity aside, I BLOODY LOVE THIS GAME and if you’ll forgive me for the indulgence, I intend to review it from that consciously biased point of view.

THE STORY SO FAR

From a narrative standpoint, there is not a lot that you need to know in Drop Dead: The Cabin. The game acts as a prequel of sorts to Soul Assembly’s previous title, Drop Dead: Dual Strike. There are some pleasing callbacks to that game’s unhinged protagonist, Dr Monday, but nothing so heavily cerebral that you need to have played the other game to follow the plot. 

Players begin having woken up in an unsettling forest setting with no idea where they are or what might be happening. In short order, you find out that you are now part of a hideous experiment involving everyone’s favourite virtual punching bags…zombies. From there, the game sheds any need for story and doubles down on intense action and fast-paced, visceral carnage. 

NO NAZIS HERE

There’s some fundamental common ground between The Cabin and the hit 2009 Call of Duty DLC, Nazi Zombies. You begin in an enclosed space and soon enough, Zombies start to pull panels off the boarded-up windows in an attempt to get in. As you kill said zombies, you accrue points that act as a currency of sorts, allowing you to open doors to new areas and loot crates full of slaughter-based goodies.

At that point, however, the similarities fade away, and The Cabin begins to assert itself as a decidedly more nuanced affair. Although set within a wave-based scenario, The Cabin is far from just another wave shooter. Unlike its aforementioned spirit animal, this game has a clear objective and an actual way to win, but you are going to need nerves of steel and a few hours of practice to get there.

LOST IN THE WOODS

Each run begins in the titular cabin. However, players are free to choose which path out of the cabin they wish to take. After escaping the initial creepy confines, there is a decent-sized external area to explore, complete with locked doors, huts, and crates beckoning the player to take a chance and spend their points on some hidden loot or weapon. 

The first few rounds will invariably happen in these areas but survive long enough, and the game will force you deeper into the woods. There are several tertiary sections within the game, however only one will be available to take per run. These sections tend to see the difficulty increase and provide mini missions to survive amidst the knife-edge tension of sheer survival. 

Although each run has the same beginning and end goal, the relentless barrage of mayhem that ensues ensures that every run is unique. Underpinning the chaos are seemingly simple fetch-and-defend tasks necessary to access the final stage of the game. Following that, the only thing left to do is summon your best Arnie impression and “GET TO THE CHOPPER!!” Sounds easy enough! That shouldn’t be a problem now, should it?

LOL. 

It ‘effin is.

TRIAL BY ORDEAL

From the very beginning, The Cabin sets about engulfing the player in a stylish vignette of action and mystery. The broader premise and objectives are all covered in the tutorial, but enough is left unexplained to make the first dozen or so attempts frantic escapades in strategic trial and error as you try to come to grips with what it is you need to do to survive.

Then, just when you think you’ve got it, you die. 

A few minutes later, you die again. 

Make no mistake, Drop Dead: The Cabin is deviously and deliberately difficult. Soul Assembly have artfully introduced some roguelike progression elements in a similar vein to one of my other favourite wave survival games, Crashland. The more you play, the more perks you unlock and the more accessible the gameplay gets, almost creating an inverse difficulty curve. It’s hard to imagine players lasting more than 5–10 minutes until they’ve invested a decent amount of time dying. This fact both increases the intensity of the action and pushes the player back for “just one more go!”

The difficulty is enhanced by a fiendish level of resource scarcity that remorselessly demands that players become expert marksmen. Waste too many bullets on a single enemy, and you will quickly find yourself outnumbered and out of ammo. As your stats increase, you begin to earn perks that increase the rate that ammo becomes available and how much of it you can carry. Although still scarce, the game takes on less a sense of frustrated panic, and more a balanced, frantic fight for survival. The Cabin is good right from the beginning, but once you hit this point this game is… 

SO. MUCH. GOD. DAMN. FUN!  

TAKES TWO TO TANGO

Drop Dead: The Cabin offers both single-player and Co-op gameplay, but the latter is definitely where the game shines. While the single-player mode is entertaining, the game is such that it’s borderline impossible to survive solo for more than 10 minutes for all but the most hardened of players. If you are a gamer who is looking for a primarily solo experience then I would honestly not recommend picking up The Cabin as the current lack of difficulty settings make the experience prohibitively challenging.

The good news is that you don’t have to go it alone, and every element of the gameplay on offer is geared towards the 2-player co-operative mode. Clear communication and teamwork are essential as you wade through the hordes of the undead. Coordinating your strategy, calling out ammo drops, and defending each other as you are overwhelmed are not just necessary, but a huge part of the fun. Sprinting desperately through a mass of enemies to revive a fallen comrade with a hasty high five is almost as thrilling as saving your partner from certain death with a well-timed barrage of headshots. 

When played as intended, with a good partner by your side, The Cabin offers some of the most addictive short-session action that I’ve encountered in VR. During our review, Omar and I collectively put in about 18 hours of gameplay and never stopped wanting to try again. I was sneaking runs into my workday. I was opting out of social events to stay at home and play. I was concocting new strategies instead of being a good parent. I was hooked.

In short, we really, really like this game.  

IT’S NOT ALL SUNSHINE AND RAINBOWS

It’s fair to say that, so far, this review has been glowing, but it’s important to note that this game will not appeal to everyone, and it would be remiss of me to ignore its limitations. I have in the past criticised fun games for a lack of content, and this is a fair criticism to level at The Cabin. 

For starters, The Cabin offers only one map. Although this map is varied with the majority of it locked and only certain areas accessible in each run, the fact remains that after a few hours, you will have seen it all. Also, every run starts in the cabin, and the first few minutes end up feeling very similar. 

Similarly, the range of weapons and enemy types on offer is just enough. The weapon selection feels deliberately small as a way of reinforcing the difficulty and reliance on skill (GIT GUD), but there is definitely room for improvement here. Additional weapons that lean into the ammo scarcity motif would keep the difficulty high but provide players with more options, which are currently lacking. Similarly, special weapons that allow a time-limited burst of ultra-violence would be a fantastic addition, giving players a one-time-only way of escaping certain death.

All in all, it is highly conceivable that many players will find the offering in The Cabin disappointingly sparse, and this is the main reason this review won’t score the game even higher. 

PURPLE SPLATS AND RAT-A-TAT-TATS

Graphically, Drop Dead: The Cabin is a class act. The art direction is superb, carrying the cartoonish style from Dual Strike over faithfully while simultaneously giving it a creepy overhaul to make it feel more intimidating without becoming disturbing. The environments are dark and brooding without being obscure or relying on a fog palette to hide the draw distance or create an atmosphere. 

The enemies are distinct and well-animated, and the overall effect of a stylised haunted forest with experimental zombie adversaries is an absolute joy to inhabit. Another great touch is the ability to use your Meta avatars, which adds a great connection to the action. Even though the art style of the avatars doesn’t quite match the rest of the game, it is easy to disregard this in the heat of action and, as such, it doesn’t create a disconnect. In fact, it’s actually supremely engaging to look over your shoulder and see a proper representation of your friend rather than a random character model. I hope that more games take a chance and employ this feature.

The sound design is equally excellent, with solid-sounding weapons, imposing enemy noises and a soundtrack that perfectly rises and falls in line with the action. Overall, the sound enhances every tangible element of the game’s tone and character and makes it easy to understand everything happening around you quickly and efficiently, no matter how chaotic the action gets. Bravo.

UNDEAD AND LOVING IT

Drop Dead: The Cabin manages to be so much more than merely the sum of its parts. While there are limited elements that may put some players off, the simple fact is that with a good partner, The Cabin offers some of the most enjoyable and intense short-session action currently available on the Quest – highly recommended.

Originally announced as a PCVR exclusive in 2019, Vertigo Games made waves recently when they announced that the game would launch simultaneously on PCVR, PSVR, and Meta Quest 2. This news came as a blow to Quest 1 users who would need to wait until Q2 of 2022 for their turn but was a welcome surprise for owners of the newer headset.

In 2017 Arizona Sunshine was a veritable masterpiece in VR gaming. Still, times have changed, and it remains to be seen if Vertigo have managed to bring their undead shuffling into the current generation of mobile VR.

FROSTY THE SNOWBREED

For those who hoped that After the Fall would be a more modern take on Arizona Sunshine’s format or a faster-paced take on Saints & Sinners, it’s not. After the Fall is not an epic narrative-driven campaign. There are no branching pathways or character choices, nor is there any physics-based melee. However, what it does have is a series of incredibly intense, multiplayer-focused, fast-paced shoot fests. After the Fall strips away many of the pretences of modern gaming and serves up relentless action like a severed head on a silver platter.

Set in the not too distant future, After the Fall takes place in a snow-covered, post-apocalyptic iteration of Los Angeles in which Hell has, quite literally, frozen over. A new breed of undead have taken over the surface, and these SnowBreed roam the world en masse. The sparse narrative sets up the player as a Harvester, a gun-toting warrior who risks everything to harvest from the surface to keep the human race alive. Don’t really need any more than that, right? 

One thing you will definitely need, though, is a squad. After the Fall does have a single-player mode, but its co-op multiplayer is at its heart. Single-player mode simply replaces your buddies with AI ones. After the Fall is a multiplayer shooter, and playing it without real people is almost as odd an experience as trying to play it without the shooting part. But more on that later.

GOTTA CATCH EM ALL

At release, the game consists of five levels, each taking around 30 minutes to complete. Once these levels have been beaten, you could be forgiven for believing that was the end of the game. Vertigo Games, however, are banking on the fact that you will be left wanting more. Hidden within each level are additional credits, items, and weapons that will be taken back to the game’s hub if carried successfully through to the end of the run. Here the player can upgrade and refine their favourite loadout ready for the next run. 

Trust me, you do not play After the Fall in order to complete it and then shelve it. You play After the Fall to relentlessly search for items, which you use to better your ability to continue to search for items which in turn you use to better your ability to… well, you get the picture. If this kind of gameplay loop is something that you see yourself enjoying, then you are in for one hell of a ride. The action is great, the level design is good, and the mechanics are excellent. If, however, you demand a clearer sense of purpose and progression in your games, then you may need to approach After the Fall cautiously. 

If the gameplay loop sounds familiar to you, you might be familiar with Valve’s Left 4 Dead games. After the Fall ‘borrows’ the same general style and loop. A party of four, killing zombies and trying to find their way to the next safe house, to replenish their supplies and saunter forth to kill more zombies. 

If you’ve been hoping for a VR version of L4D, this is as close as you’re likely to get unless Valve decides to make one themselves.

THERE’RE TOO MANY OF THEM!

Where After the Fall really shines is within its core loop of large scale action. Each level is essentially just a series of happily violent set-pieces connected by pathways that lead you towards the next kill zone. Your troop will wander in and have no choice but to blast your way out. 

Rinse, Repeat. 

Above all else, what makes After the Fall so enjoyable is the sheer volume of zombies that it throws at you and your party. Horde after horde of frozen undead will literally teem out of the walls, holes in the ceiling, or just flood over the walls to charge at you in unrelenting waves of death. It operates on a scale unlike anything else on the Quest and is worth playing just for the chance to experience that thrill. 

There are only around six different enemy types, but you will dispatch them in their hundreds. For the most part, you will be dealing with your standard running or crawling zomboids, but thrown into the mix are several larger, more challenging enemies that will demand your attention no matter how deep into a horde you find yourself. From exploding Eaters to fast-moving, armoured Brutes, these variant opponent types add a dynamic element to the combat that makes it all the more manic. 

There are also Boss fights, although, in fairness, there is only one type of boss that is repeated on every level. Don’t get me wrong, the boss fights are fun to beat, but the repetition is somewhat disappointing. Overall, the enemy types are good, but I wish more were included at launch.

There are six weapon types available, each of which is unlocked as you successfully complete harvest runs. Each of these can be upgraded in many different ways, making up the final core conceit of After the Fall. During each run, you can find new upgrade parts for your guns. With sights, grips, barrels, and magazines, the guns can be systematically improved using the spoils of each previous run. The higher the difficulty level, the greater the spoils, so this provides the final incentive to keep diving back in time and time again, improving both your skills and your arsenal. 

Vertigo have incorporated a range of reloading mechanics and incentivised using the more cumbersome “manual” reloads. Players are awarded an extra 50% harvest score when using manual reloading, leading to more money and bigger and better guns. That is, of course, if you can survive the extra pressure.

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS…MORE!

Sadly, somewhere mixed within this gameplay loop is also where After the Fall trips over its own identity and becomes more of a niche proposition. At least for now, there is a limited range of weapons, enemy types, and levels to enjoy. You can supplement your primary loadout with pipe bombs and health syringes, each of which can be stored, Alyx-like, ‘inside’ your wrists, but there aren’t any other devices, traps, or items that add to the gameplay. This really feels like a missed opportunity.

Even though everything that the game does is great, there’s just not that much of it, and there is a genuine threat of things becoming stale all too quickly. If the Vertigo team had launched After the Fall with 7 or 8 levels, some additional items to spice things up, or maybe even a perk system to give you more reason to grind out your harvest, then perhaps it would feel a little more fleshed out. 

Having said that, Vertigo have announced a roadmap of soon-to-be-released free content that includes additional enemy types, an extra weapon, and a new map.

APOCALYPSE WOW

Although the bot-driven single-player mode can quickly get dull, After the Fall is a real joy to play with a group of people all looking to cover each other’s backs, working together, and having a bit of a laugh while gunning down snowbreed. 

In a multiplayer context, the action in After the Fall stays fresh, the tension intensifies, and the sense of relief your team survive a heavy combat section becomes all the sweeter. This really is the best way to enjoy After the Fall, so if you prefer single-player games, you should definitely factor that in.

It’s worth mentioning that there is also a PvP mode where players can face off against each other in 4 vs 4 gunfights. However, that is more an added bonus than a reason to play. I could experience this mode during the pre-release press window. My impression is that the PvP is decent but not original enough to depose any current MP shooters. If Vertigo threw some snowbreed into the mix and turned it into PvPvE instead…well, that might make it far more interesting…

THIS IS NOT DISNEY ON ICE

After The Fall is not a stunning game visually, but it is a highly efficient one. Anyone who has been following the pre-launch hype train will no doubt have seen the PCVR footage, and so the big question is, “how much worse does it look on Quest?” Well, it looks a lot worse, to be honest, but don’t let that put you off. The team at Vertigo Games have worked pseudo miracles with ATF to translate all the most essential visual elements faithfully over to the Quest. Sure, the textures are a lot less detailed, and there is an overtly blocky geometry to the limbs and chunks of head that fly off the snowbreed as you slay them, but the essence of the game is nevertheless there.

Most importantly, though, so is the body count. 

For all that it lacks in textures and lighting on the Quest, After the Fall more than makes up for it in the sheer number of enemies that the game can handle. There are dozens of zombies on screen at multiple points, and in my hours of playing, I never had so much as a single frame drop. There was only one point in my playthrough that made me think, “Wow, that looks great”, but there were so many moments that made me think, “Holy shit, there are so many of them!”

The Sounds of Death

The audio landscape that Vertigo have wrought is really top-notch and incredibly well suited to the game. The soundtrack is effortlessly engaging, switching between increasingly intense 80’s synth vibes to ambient stillness, allowing you to dwell in the atmospheric spatial audio with ease. Sounds of an impending onslaught mix with the groans and slithers all about you to create just the right amount of unease as you traverse the streets and corridors of each level.

The gun sounds are reasonably weighty, each with its own character, and the rest of the game’s auditory cues combine well to create an atmosphere that walks right up to the line of genuinely unsettling before stepping back in favour of being a little more fun.

The voice acting is limited in its scope but competent in its delivery. There is scant little material to work with, but it fits the game well, bringing some levity to the proceedings and reinforcing the arcade vibe that the game exudes. Overall, the sound is balanced, well delivered, and brings everything together artfully. 

AFTER YOU FALL

After the Fall is a glorious tribute to arcade based mayhem that delivers some of the most frantic action that the Quest currently has to offer. While not boasting anything that could be meaningfully described as a campaign, After the Fall crafts its own type of depth with an abundance of stylish, adrenaline-pumping action.

Sadly, the content available at launch is “light”, to say the least. With only five missions to play and six weapons to unlock, After the Fall is a game that will be best enjoyed by those who love looter shooters. Whether or not this becomes your new gaming addiction, the intense action and insanely high enemy count alone make it easy to recommend this title to anyone with even the slightest interest in post-apocalyptic zombie madness.

Pass the Twinkies

You play as a new, nameless character among the original pack of survivors from the Zombieland films: Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita, and Little Rock. Looking slightly stilted and voiced mainly by soundalikes, these wisecracking companions give a decent approximation of hanging out with Woody Harrelson or Emma Stone. Woody Harrelson’s brother Brett performs Tallahassee’s voice, and Abigail Breslin reprises her role as Little Rock.

In the films, these characters thrive during the zombie apocalypse with scathing wit and gallows humor, not to mention superb zombie-shooting skills. In Headshot Fever, they don’t fight by your side, but they will provide you with an assortment of firearms and perks, comment on your overall speed, and express disappointment when you break a hot headshot streak.

The crew is holed up in a deluxe mansion as they prepare for the “Zombieland International” competition, also known as the “Nut Up Cup.” Before you can sign up for the Cup, you’ll have to visit locations around town to sharpen your zombie-hunting skills.

Always Double Tap

Each mission is blazingly fast, with a one-minute goal for killing all the undead in an area and reaching the exit along a predetermined path. The gameplay is reminiscent of light-gun classics like House of the Dead, but with a greater degree of depth once you start chaining combos.

True to Columbus’s famous “double-tap” rule, by landing two headshots in a row, you can activate a combo meter and slow down time. Each new combo rings with a satisfying electric guitar power chord. As you play, you’ll discover other clever ways to keep your combo alive, like shooting thrown objects (such as ashtrays, cups, and severed limbs) out of the air.

Although there are only eight main missions before the big finale, they can be replayed multiple times with different goals. You might have to shoot a hidden item in the background, use only a particular weapon, or beat the level with perfect aim. These mission goals will reward you with new guns, perks, and the in-game currency that reigns supreme in the post-apocalypse: rolls of toilet paper.

While the missions are rapid, they do contain additional replay value. You’ll want to revisit each scene more than once as you gain more abilities, just to check off another goal or collect more toilet paper. The developers have also indicated that virtual zombie-slaying runs could become a recurring e-sport event.  

Pants vs Zombies

The developers have hidden a few cheeky jokes into these scenes and keeping with the Zombieland movies’ dark and sometimes juvenile sense of humor. For example, a visit to eliminate your character’s undead parents reveals a kinky camera set-up pointed at their bed and a voyeur zombie lurking in the closet. Later, you’ll crash a zombie bachelorette party, complete with a gigantic fireman-stripper zombie.

This attention to detail also extends to your zombie targets. Many of the zombies in this game actually look different from each other, with a variety of clothing and faces. In many games, you’ll see the same few minions and boss zombies recycled, but Headshot Fever is more imaginative in its approach.

Zombie Kill of the Weak

Cheerful graphics, fast-paced gunplay, and generous doses of humor and personality provide a lot of excitement throughout the brief missions. 

The online leaderboards are a welcome feature. The final fight offers branching paths and a much greater degree of challenge. Still, there’s not much of an opportunity to explore this world at a slower pace or recreate any of the classic “Zombie Kills of the Week” using environmental objects or traps (besides the occasional “exploding barrels”).

While most of the point-and-shoot pistol controls work well, reloading your alternate weapons can feel imprecise. It’s not fun having a horde of zombies tear you apart because positioning your shotgun into the nebulous, chest-high reload zone didn’t register in time.

For a VR introduction to the crazed world of Zombieland: Headshot Fever delivers a fair amount of the films’ attitude and thrills. It never takes itself too seriously, and it often makes you feel like a stylish, zombie-slaying badass, cool enough to hang out with the heroes of the movies. If you like your zombie games on the lighter side, it’s easy to recommend this bloody, energetic blast of a game.

To quote Vertigo:

As before, a blog post with tips from the development team on how to survive Undead Valley will be coming to the Oculus blog later today.

And here’s another image of the DLC roadmap so you can keep an eye out if you’re a fan of Arizona Sunshine!

FREDDY OR NOT, HERE I COME

It’s a game about shooting zombies and moving forwards. Not particularly ambitious or original as pitches go, perhaps, but the proof is in the pudding. You play as an unnamed feller who’s making his way through a remote part of Arizona during a zombie apocalypse. At the start of the game, he wakes up in a makeshift camp. A zombie’s head, a victim of one of the traps he’s set to protect himself, rolls in. You assume control, pick up a gun, and away you go.

RETURN OF THE LIVING FRED

The gameplay beats are simple; you explore, scavenge containers and drawers for ammo, and shoot zombies. There are other limited interactions, like finding keys to progress, but nothing that might be construed as a puzzle. Every so often, something will cause a zombie horde to come running, and you’d better pray you’ve found all the bullets you’ll need to survive. 

The simple plot is that the anonymous protagonist is trying to find some other human survivors, slowly making his way to a compound where an automated radio broadcast is claiming there’s an enclave of safety. Sound familiar? That’s because it is. Deliberately so. It’s carefully designed to inhabit many of the tropes of zombie stories we’ve become used to in recent years. 

BOOM! FREDSHOT

Where Arizona Sunshine excels, and why it continues to be popular and well-regarded years after its release, despite other VR titles having surpassed it in many ways – is in its execution. Not in terms of its disparate elements, but the way it coheres. It’s not a graphical showcase, the plot is simple, and there’s a layer of jankiness to the whole thing which betrays its age. But the gunplay is perfect, the feel is sublime. For all the lack of polish in interactions like opening doors and climbing ladders, the headshots feel just right. Reloading is a button press and a quick pull of the gun towards the belt – not Pavlov-style realism, but just enough interaction to feel immersive. There’s always enough ammo if you carefully scavenge; the zombies are a threat en masse, but individually they’re sorrowful things, and taking them out feels like a matter-of-fact, pragmatic gesture.

The overall click and feel of it is crucial; compared to the other zombie shooters on Quest, Death Horizon and Drop Dead: Dual Strike Edition, Arizona has by far a meatier and more convincing shooty-bang. It’s superior to most VR shooters that I’ve played, in fact. 

PRETENDING TO BE FRED

The gameplay in Arizona Sunshine serves the straightforward narrative perfectly, and this is backed up by the pivotal central performance by Sky Soleil as the player. This gives the game its identity. The cheery everyman could be just another generic dudebro, but there’s real depth here. He cheerily refers to the zombies as ‘Freds’ and ‘Freddies’, talking to them as if they’re friends as he guns them down. He’s a guy who’s seen a lot by the time we join him in the game, but he isn’t a standard ex-military grunt. As the game goes on, his cheeriness evaporates, and it’s clear that his joviality has been masking clawing loneliness and despair at his situation. The voice work is excellent in a way that belies the simplicity of the narrative and sells the setting more than any number of contrived plot twists or a vapid supporting cast, could have done.

FRED RECKONING

Arizona Sunshine is not a good-looking game, even in its original Steam incarnation. It’s quite bland and simple, with some less than stellar texture work – I’m looking at you, wooden doors that look like bacon! This is obviously true of the Quest version, too, with other factors like pop-in of scenery and objects factoring in now. The zombies look OK, with a nice variety of models, but the geometry is sometimes so simplistic it all seems a bit early Playstation 2. The upside of this though is that the game runs smoothly on the Quest, and in fact, the loading times are infinitely better than the PC and PSVR versions too.

Where the game comes alive is its brilliant use of audio. The guns all sound great, and there’s good positional audio which means you can hear quite accurately where the Freds are shuffling and moaning from. This, coupled with the lovely untethered freedom of the Quest headset, makes this version by far the best version of Arizona Sunshine you can play.

Jonathan van den Wijngarden‘s score is excellent too, with just the right amount of foreboding and atmosphere. It conveys the loneliness of our hero’s situation and the baking sun, without ever being invasive or overbearing. 

FRED WITH FRIENDS

Online multiplayer is an excellent feature of the game and one which will give the title considerable longevity, above and beyond the roadmap of additional content which is on its way in 2020. The entire campaign can be played co-op with a friend, which works really well as a whole. There are some annoyances. There are a couple of sections where it rubber bands you together in a restrictive way, meaning you can’t entirely have one player sniping overwatch while the other runs among the Freddies. Items crucial to progress are ‘tied to the host’, meaning they can only be picked up or activated by the player hosting the game, which is a bit silly. But it’s great fun otherwise, and quite painless to set up. It’s great fun to play through the campaign with a friend.

VERSUS THE HORDE

Where it really shines though is the Horde mode, which can be played single or multiplayer. You know the drill; you have an arena in which you fight waves of Freddies of increasing numbers, and more ammo and weapons spawn in every so often. It’ll test your accuracy and grace under fire, not to mention your friendships if you’re playing co-op. Enormous fun and the two-handed weapon update that has just dropped is superb, adding rifles and machine guns to the game which are a joy to use.

FREDDY FOR THE BIG TIME

Arizona Sunshine is an early achievement for VR which stands the test of time, despite some technical shortcomings and dated visuals. It’s found its natural home on Quest, with a solid conversion that benefits greatly from being cable-free. It’s maybe a touch expensive, but I’d still recommend it as it’s the most solid and satisfying zombie shooter FPS in VR to date, and unique on the Quest. With quite a bit of content already and more to on the way, there’s certainly enough here to keep you going if you buy into it. 

Umbrella Corp Redux

Death Horizon: Reloaded is relatively generic in many respects. The entire game takes place in an underground facility, the kind you’ve seen countless times in Resident Evil-style knockoffs. Bodies and rubble are strewn about, and there are occasionally tanks full of green goo to step around. As per usual, every soul in the facility has become a shambling, undead target for you to shoot.

Climbing The Walls

Over the loudspeaker, a shadowy figure directs you through a series of corridors, offices, and locker rooms. You can teleport a few feet in any direction, which cuts down on VR sickness. Occasionally you’ll find ropes or pipes that you can climb on or across using the grip button.

This is where Death Horizon: Reloaded begins to differentiate itself from zombie conventions. For example, you can hang from an overhead pipe with one hand while drawing a pistol from your holster and firing at the walking dead below. Later, you’ll learn to jump forward using an awkward combination of button presses and gestures.

This climbing mechanic is used sparsely throughout the game, and I would have really liked to experience this combination of platforming and shooting more often. Sometimes you’ll accidentally grab your gun instead of a railing and plummet to your death. But when it works, it helps you feel like an action hero. Maybe future installments will take us outside of the cramped, bleak laboratory, and set the action on the side of a building, or a cliff face, or hanging from a helicopter-like in World War Z.

Armed To The Teeth

The weapons in Death Horizon: Reloaded work reasonably well, even if they don’t really inspire awe. You can holster and wield two pistols, later finding a Desert Eagle that packs an extra punch. You’ve also got some room on the front of your vest for storing an assault rifle or pump-action shotgun.

You can only carry one larger gun at a time, and the shotgun requires two hands to reload, so you may find yourself ditching the gun you’re carrying and picking up a new one along the way. You can also activate bombs by picking one up, throwing it in front of you, and then shooting it. It’d be nice to see more creative weapons or a melee option for when your ammo runs out.

Most of the game consists of straightforward hallways, where zombies will automatically shuffle towards you, groaning to announce their arrival. As a result, you can often hang back, casually take them out, and then move forward. A few new types of mutants will change things up, like zombie dogs that rush at you, or hulking construction worker zombies who swing sledgehammers. You’ll also encounter spitting zombies and some faster varieties, but that’s it.

Drop In And Say Hello

One other clever gameplay mechanic worth mentioning is that zombies will occasionally crawl out of vents or drop from the ceiling. These appearances can give you a little jolt if you’re not paying attention. I gasped a few times from surprise zombie attacks, but it’s nothing like the intense terror of a game like Dreadhalls.

Death Horizon: Reloaded offers just a few unusual twists on what you would expect from a zombie shooter. The climbing mechanic is underused but refreshingly distinctive, and I enjoyed the taunting voice-over from the game’s mysterious host. At under two hours on normal mode, Death Horizon: Reloaded lacks longevity. You can, however, always attempt impossible mode, which gives you one life and no checkpoints, in exchange for a spot on the high-score leaderboards.

Like a zombie approaching a well-armed commando, Death Horizon: Reloaded is short-lived and moderately creepy. It’s got a handful of well-constructed scenes, and the platforming holds real promise for future installments. I’m eager to see what’s next for this series.