The Walking Dead Onslaught VR Review: Immersive But Lacking

I was invited down to XP-VR in Stoke on Trent to play The Walking Dead Onslaught on it’s VR release date.

I’m a big fan of The Walking Dead even putting up with some of the slower seasons until The Whisperers finally alive and breathed new life into a dwindling franchise.

Today I had the honour of being invited down to the Stoke On Trent based virtual reality gaming arena XP-VR to try the franchise’s latest VR gaming title.

Earlier this year Saints and Sinners was released to critical acclaim so I was very excited to try out this next Walking Dead release.

This was only my second time playing VR games so i’m completely new to the entire gaming experience with only beat sober and a few shooting demo games under my belt the first time around.

I strap myself into the wonderful harness at the arena and start my tutorial.

Rick, Michonne and Daryl all appear in this VR experience and whilst the game is detailed the level of detail is certainly not on par with Saints and Sinners.

In fact it’s worlds apart.

What the developers have done with Onslaught is take away the depth of gameplay and detail and replace it with a smash and grab action fest.

The sheer joy of grabbing a walker by the throat and stabbing them in the head never gets old but once you start recklessly swinging at hoardes of zombies coming you way over and over and over again, this is where things get dull.

You can switch it up with a few guns and practise your shooting but eventually it wears thin.

It certainly feels like COD Zombies without the barrier restrictions. It’s just wave after wave of zombies with not much depth or fear involved.

As a player in a zombie game you want a sense of dread, a sense that something is around the corner.

In The Walking Dead Onslaught you’re running into battle going crazy, there’s no strategy, the entire game is one big tutorial of mastering your zombie killing skills.

You can go down the story mode with Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) featuring heavily throughout as the only actor to be vocally involved in the game.

Other characters make appearances but their voices have been replaced with other actors.

When you look down you can see you’re dressed as Rick or Daryl but when Rick opens his mouth the voice certainly isn’t that of Andrew Lincoln’s.

The movement within VR really annoys me, when I’m standing still if my character moves forward my head just melts down and I get some serious migraines. Thankfully a teleport mode made the movement a little easier for my little brain to digest.

Other than using a rather pretty looking Alexandria as a hub to upgrade weapons and build a few things there isn’t much else to do.

You can’t really form relationships or do side quests or anything of the sort. You simply go out, collect stuff, come home, build stuff, upgrade stuff, repeat.

With no sense of dread of fear it almost defeats the object of what a Walking Dead game should be about.

If i were you I’d stick to Saints and Sinners as that is a Walking Dead game to truly be proud of.

If you want a mass frenzy shooting gallery free for all then I’m sure you’ll get some temporary kicks from this little number.

Thanks to XP-VR in Hanley, Stoke on Trent for inviting me down to check out the game the second it was released!