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The Walking Dead: Saints And Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution
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In any case, I disregarded this advice. “I don’t need an instruction manual for post-apocalyptic survival,” I thought. I’ve rummaged through this particular abandoned house countless times, after all: InDayZ, inDead Island, in State Of Decay, inDays Gone. I even reviewed the first Saints And Sinners back in February 2020. I know my way around a zombie’s cranium better than anyone.
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners Ch2 l Debut Trailer l Meta Quest 2 + RiftWatch on YouTube
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners Ch2 l Debut Trailer l Meta Quest 2 + Rift
I’ll spare you the details of what happened next. But needless to say, Retribution is just as capable at producing the “Oh god oh shit oh fuck” moments its predecessor excelled at, thanks to zombie-filled sandboxes that are every bit as tactile and emergent as they were in the first game. As for what the sequel provides on top of that, that’s a more difficult question to answer. The “Chapter 2” in Saints And Sinners' overlong title is not idly phrased. This is very much a continuation of the first game, in story, in mechanics, and even in environments.
The plot, for example, picks up right after the climactic events of the first game and the DLC, Aftershocks. The player character, known as the Tourist, awakens in a destroyed hotel room having fallen through the ceiling above, and must immediately make a dash for safety while walkers chase them through the building.
This generated fantastic overarching tension in the original game, complementing the shorter-term terror of literally holding zombies at arm’s length as you tried to pierce their braincases with a screwdriver. Retribution’s direct approach to following up the original makes the power curve less satisfying, however. Your existing crafting stations all start at level 5, while your base has a lot of pre-crafted equipment lying around. This means you’re relatively well kitted-out from the get-go, thus diminishing that long-term concern of whether you have enough supplies to do everything you need to.
There’s also a more straightforward issue with Retribution, namely what you’re actually getting for your thirty squids. There are a few new areas to explore, but most of the game’s real estate will be familiar to tourists who explored the first Saints And Sinners. There are a few new weapons, including a handy sawn-off-shotgun, a micro-SMG, and an incredibly messy chainsaw. But again, most of your arsenal is unchanged. Even your hideout is the same as in the first game, although it has been expanded with a couple of new crafting stations and a much larger storage area.
As sequel-craft goes, then, Retribution brazenly sells you yards of old rope. That said, it is still good rope. Saints And Sinners is one of the best VR experiences around, and the sequel carries over much of that fundamental excellence. The opening mission, which sees players infiltrate a guarded radio station, encapsulates much of what makes Saints And Sinners great. Your objective can be approached in multiple ways, the environment riddled with multi-leveled pathways and secret passages reminiscent of aDishonoredmission. Your objectives and how they change across the mission cleverly ramp up the tension, and the whole thing ends in an extended gunfight which, depending on what your bring to that fight, could play out in countless different ways.
It’s a shame Skydance Interactive haven’t followed up Saints And Sinners with a more ambitious expansion of its ideas, but if you’ve played the original to death, Retribution offers some new areas to explore, and an interesting, if less player-directed, continuation of the story. I’d only recommend this for players who loved the original, however. If you haven’t played Saints And Sinners or were ambivalent on it, Retribution is most definitely not for you.
