This review will be critiquing and comparing the three games, Arizona Sunshine 2, Saints & Sinners, and Metro Awakening. I have been wanting to try Metro Awakening and Saints & Sinners for a while, and this review gave me a great excuse. These VR games were tied into this review together because of their similarity in genres, horror, and survival shooters. Arizona Sunshine is more of a wild card because it was in a bundle with one of the other two games, and I decided to throw it in for review with the other two games.
Brief overview of the Games
Arizona Sunshine 2 is developed by Vertigo Games and continues the story of the first game. It features a single-player VR first-person narrative-driven campaign. Played as a wisecracking protagonist who gets a companion canine, he names Buddy. You navigate a zombie apocalypse in Arizona, searching for answers and people with your new companion. You believe Patient Zero to be your key to finding other survivors. Released on Dec 7, 2023.
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is a VR survival horror game developed by Skydance Interactive in partnership with Skybound Entertainment. Released on January 23, 2020. It is set in the flooded remains of New Orleans. Players navigate the city and are faced with challenges and decisions that impact their survival and interactions with other survivors. The combat is very physics-based. There is a large emphasis on crafting supplies to survive.
Metro Awakening is a VR survival horror spin-off game from the Metro franchise, developed by Vertigo Games and published by Deep Silver. Released on November 7, 2024, it serves as a prequel to Metro 2033. You play as a doctor navigating the dangerous Moscow tunnel system to reunite with your wife. In this world where nuclear devastating nuclear war took place, making the surface a hell scape. The tunnels of Moscow are a place to find relative safety from the radiation, mutants, and hostile factions.
Gameplay Mechanics
Combat | Winner – Metro Awakening
Arizona Sunshine 2 - The combat is aggressive, quick, and very loud. The game doesn’t seem to have much of a stealth mechanic at all you're often either in combat or not in combat. The focus of this game is mowing down zombies with various guns without a doubt. There are Melee weapons, but they break after three or so uses. Physically interacting with the zombie without a weapon in hand isn’t possible either. Every kill in this game is pretty satisfying. The Zombies will often be missing heads or other limbs of their once whole-ish bodies once done with them. The game's play isn’t much more than that, though. You aren’t given much more creativity than point and shoot. This simplicity does make it fun, unfortunately, this game scores the lowest in this category for me only due to the fact that there isn’t any real change to it. Later in the game, I believe it will likely get very intense with there being a larger number of zombies. I remember hearing about this gameplay loop and simple numbers increase, potentially getting annoying.
Saints and Sinners – The combat is slower, strategic, and far more personal. The game encourages stealthy, well-thought-out combat. You can go loud, but there are consequences. All actions in this game seem to have consequences. An example being, depending on how you interact with factions, it will change their hostility towards you. The game is much more physics-based and allows you to physically interact with enemies. This plays into amazing Melee combat with zombies, probably one of the best highlights in gameplay. Weapons do have durability, but last long enough to be usable, unlike Arizona. Gunplay struggles a bit due to weapon physics issues, and ammunition is often scarce in the beginning, at least. Which encourages stealthy offensives and leaves the hand-to-hand combat often the best option. You can grab zombies and enemies, giving you physical control over them. Then you can stealthily and accurately dispatch them. Whereas the other games do not really let you physically touch the enemy or interact with them munch at all. The weapons are all given a weight to them. It immerses you quite a bit more and forces you to be slower and more strategic with your actions. In order to use weapons effectively, you must have range of motion to your swings or stabs. The less range of motion, the weaker the attack. Personally, this is soooo close to winning for me. But the gun have various bugs and therefore difficulty of use. This makes me feel less in control of what it is I am doing. If I played longer, I am sure I might have come across guns that didn’t literally drag, but in the shorter play through, the revolvers I used caused problems. And when I research it, the revolvers were, in fact, a problem. They just drift for some reason. And with two hands, they don’t aim straight.
Metro Awakening – The game is slow-paced and fast-paced at the same time. You can be minding your business and suddenly get plunged into combat within seconds. It is much more horror based than the other two, enemies are quite threatening and don’t reveal themselves easily. You are often caught off guard by sudden attacks from mutants. And other times the music will intensify warning of danger. Either way, every encounter, especially with mutants, is intense. This makes the combat feel fun, constantly having to watch you ammunition to make sure you have enough to deal with whatever comes next. There is stealth and it works, just doesn’t shine. The only melee combat is in stealth, otherwise hands off and shooting. Despite this I believe metro Awakening wins out in this section for me due to the combat being exhilarating. I feel threatened and its intense. Whether in the buildup or combat. It doesn’t let me toy around with my enemies because that would be a death sentence. You must be fast acting, or end up suffering the consequences.
Exploration | Winner – Saints and Sinners
Arizona Sunshine 2 – It's linear and features chapters to its story. Which allows you to easily revisit a section after playing through it. The world is fun and doesn’t feel bland whatsoever. It has you go through various locations such as a biker bar, gas stations, sewers, military bases, and airports. In these locations can explore. It does have some side areas where you can find useful items and loot in, but once again, it is linear, so you cannot progress in any other way than the set way they have for you.
Saints and Sinners – This game is pretty much a fully open world. They have set places for you to explore, find gear, food, and medicine. The story progresses through your exploration of this flooded post-apocalyptic New Orleans. You pick up objectives as you encounter things through your exploration of set locations in New Orleans, and can choose to do or not to do something with the information you write down in your journal as a task. You could go through the game ending everyone you came across and still progress to new areas and survive. An example of this is the first area you enter, where there is a lady asking for help. You could very well kill her; nothing stops you. Then stumble across what she would have pointed you towards later, or never stumble across it. The only really restricting factor of your exploration of this world is some invisible walls. Some buildings that have nothing to offer don’t even let you walk up their steps. Despite this, the places you can explore are expansive and have various ways in and out. This one definitely offers more than the other games in this category.
Metro Awakening – The games feature a linear chapter-based story. There is always a correct way forward. As you push forward through the tunnels of this world after a nuclear fallout, there isn’t much more than some minor deviations or ways you can move forward. It isn’t an open world. Its chapter system lets you go back to previous chapters, but overrides progress in those chapters previously made. The game is very focused on immersion and story. So dark tunnels are filled with detail that immerse you as you explore. Spending too much time exploring in the other two games dragged it on too much in the beginning and broke my sense of fear and intensity. This game felt more streamlined and less repetitive; everything you move onto is new.
Survival elements | Winner - Saints and Sinners
Arizona Sunshine 2 – The game gives you guns to spit led at zombies standing in your way. And throughout the environment, leaves food like pizzas (the hardest thing to eat in this game), beef paddies, and floppy hot dogs to heal when mistakes were made. Other than running, gunning, slicing, and eating, you are given a dog that can help fight alongside you. This game doesn’t have a complicated health system, a small but not very usable crafting system, no stealth, or a complicated stamina system. The crafting system only helps you threw some parts, and it’s not very easy to benefit long-term from crafting anything, making it not a notable addition to the game. It’s very simple: gun down zombies and don’t get eaten. If bit, eat to heal. If there are a lot of zombies, get some distance and gun them down.
Saints and Sinners – This game, by far, has the most complicated health maintenance system of the three games. You are presented with two bars on your HUD. One being your health, and the other being your stamina. The game has an interesting system that if you eat bad food (often food found out while scavenging), it decreases the maximum HP you're able to have. Leaving you weaker, and if low enough, you get sick and cough. Which alerts enemies to your position. To cure the sickness, you need medicine. The Medicine restores your maximum HP cap but doesn’t heal. You will still need bandages to do that. And why eat food? Well, as you exert yourself in this game, it uses up stamina and slowly decreases the number of stamina you have with fatigue. So, food replenishes that which can get you sick, which needs medicine, and wounds/ healing need bandages. Keeping quiet also reduces enemies’ awareness of you, keeping you alive. You will also need to craft items in this game to best your odds of survival, due to every item having a durability and eventually breaking. Being wary of how much ammunition you have, or how much longer your weapons are going to last is a matter of life and death.
Metro Awakening – This game puts you in an intense world where ammo conservation and quick reactions are key to survival. Using what tools, you have to best fit the situation at hand will help ensure your survival. The game has you quickly reacting to threats or even stealthy taking out and maneuvering around enemies. When hurt, you use a syringe gun with vials you find and scavenge off of the dead or the environment. This heals you to full health. For stamina there isn’t much to it, but it does run out very fast. Running for short distances is all you can muster. Throughout your play through you must collect as much ammunition as possible, keep yourself in the best health as possible, and maintain a healthy supply of gas mask filters for radiation zones. You are also presented with the test of periodically recharging your light with a handheld crank or risk being plunged into darkens, where the starved twisted creatures thrive and hunt.
Story and Setting
Narrative | Winner - Metro Awakening
Arizona Sunshine 2 – The story is told through the character as you push through the apocalyptic world searching for answers. It starts off with the protagonist in a sorry state, having tried to kill himself through alcohol poisoning. Then a helicopter crash-lands, delivering your new companion and news of the remaining survivors looking for patient zero. The first infected. As you push through the hostel-infested deserts of Arizona, you can pick up objects, and your character will comment on them, building his depth and character. Your character cracks jokes and speaks with your canine companion instead of the zombies he once did before. The story unfolds as you travel, discovering its secrets along the way.
Saints and Sinners – In this game, there is a story to be had, but you decide. You are referred to as the tourist by those you meet in the world. You have come to New Orleans after hearing of a mysterious cache of supplies that is called the Reserve. From my play through it seemed you can choose who you side with or where you progress, interacting with other people and factions. Your choices will make or break the city you have come to. Choosing to make enemies or friends along the way. It allows a lot of freedom with how the story plays out. The choice is yours, whether you’re a saint or a sinner.
Metro Awakening – The story is told through the character's eyes as he attempts to reunite with his wife. They immerse you in the story with interactions with other people and the community there. At times, visions play out, showing you snapshots of the past… or of what’s to come. The story unfolds before you as you explore the world. Visions with mysterious voices, your own as you speak with allies, or the enemies' chatter as you stalk from the shadows. The world reveals the story, and you experience it. I felt immersed and invested in the story far more than with the other two. This can likely be due to the playthrough only being first impressions. I didn’t get to live in the shoes of the tourist from Saints and Sinners or connect with my dog like in Arizona. Metro gave me a connection to the story faster and more efficiently.
Environment | Winner – Metro Awakening
Arizona sunshine 2 – The game is set in the desert of Arizona. Through cities, towns, sewers, and airports, you will fight hordes of zombies. It's often dusty, and everything has a sun-faded tan look to it. Worn and dead. The graphics are ok, nothing to run home and tell everyone about. But the game runs smoothly regarding frames, Lord forbid you put anything in shopping carts though. Nothing tanked is performance, but the real demons and monsters show themselves when you do that. Explained further in the Physics category.
Saints and Sinners – This game is set in the city of New Orleans after it was flooded and taken over by the dead, or as the game calls them, Walkers. The world you explore is in ruins, skies are always cloudy. Darkness looms around every corner. The world rotted with the dead. And you lived, picking the scraps left. Saints and Sinners barely loses out to Metro cause the environment was just so much better looking in Metro Awakening. I didn’t get to any of the further on areas, so I was restricted to a smaller area. Making nothing really pop out because I had already seen it too many times. The game's graphics weren’t that good. Zombies looked amazing, NPCs were ok, and the outside wasn’t the best. They had those obvious 2D pictures of trash everywhere, and I think something bothered me with how the cars looked. It has a cool art style, but it’s clearly dated.
Metro Awakening – The game is set in the Metro system of Moscow after a nuclear war. There are times when you see the surface, but rarely. You are constantly underground in a very dark tunnel system. Constantly having to recharge your light when entering a very dark area so as to not be plunged into darkness. The environment is very detailed and very full. This is the only game that gave me problems with frames. If you throw a bottle, there’s a good chance that when it shatters, it will tank your game's performance. I was playing on the Quest 3, and nothing from any of the other games does it. Just these bottles. It’s likely due to the individual glass pieces getting collision physics and then colliding with one another and everything else. Other than that, the game's beautiful graphics leave the world feeling very real and run-down. Collapsing tunnels and blood stains from corpses being dragged into vents and holes leave you constantly on edge, never feeling safe. They are in the walls.
Intractability
Objects physics | Winner – Saints and Sinners
Arizona Sunshine 2 – The items and objects in this game don’t have much physics when it comes to weight. You can throw and toss things all with similar speeds. You can interact with a pretty large and diverse amount of stuff, too. I think of the three Games, it is second with your ability to interact with things. And it only comes in second because there isn’t much practical use. You can’t do much of anything with the objects picked up. They don’t serve a purpose other than being props. You can open a lot of draws and crates. Most of anything with a handle can be opened. My only gripe is how janky these objects are when they interact with one another. If you were to put anything in, let’s say a shopping cart, the cart would then come to life. Possessed by demons, the cart will drift around and violently shake, often launching or dropping what items were put into it. Objects in this game do not interact well with one another. And when holstering another weapon on your dog's vest, it will fling the gun or object in a random direction, causing a lot of annoying situations and potentially lost items.
Saints and Sinner – This game blew me away with how interactable everything is. Anything with a handle can be opened and grabbed. All objects can be picked up and have weight to them. You can then use these objects and their physics, too. If you run out of tools and a zombie is approaching you, (not only does this game have physics with the zombies so you can push them away or even punch them), you can pick up a bottle, smash it on something, then stab the zombie with the broken bottle. Objects used that penetrate like this then have to be pulled out with force, or they stay stuck in. When removing an object from a Zombie, you can pull the object and have the other hand pushing the Zombie off. You can also pick up bricks or other solid objects and use them as bludgeoning weapons. Flat walls or immovable objects also have physics; you are able to grab physical objects like the walls to peek around corners or even climb. Saints and Sinners easily wins over the others because the physics is actually there. In both the other games, it's minimal or messy.
Metro Awakening – This game has lest interactable environment. There are a select few items you can pic up, and very specific object you can open. They will often have a faint outline indicating you can pick it up. But the game does this very well and it doesn’t feel like a hindrance at all. It keeps the game feeling streamline and not having anything unnecessary steal my focus. Metro still let me mess with the stuff I wanted to mess with. It allowed me to pick up a guitar and run around for a large part of the playthrough I did with it. Playing music by plucking the strings, doing my best to drown out the horrors that lied before me. Which worked really well, cause when the game intensified its music trying to scare me, I intensified mine! Which broke the sense of fear pretty well because I was laughing at the idea of this doctor running full speed into the darkens stumming nonsensical madness, the barrel of his pistol daring something to show itself. And when they did, they met death. The game shortly after I had my fun with the guitar stole it from me which enraged me, and I proceeded to use scorched earth tactics till I cold off. (this is not a negative I was having fun being dumb) And despite my desire to ruin the intense experience some people clearly passionately worked on, I still couldn’t fully shield myself from the intensity and horror. It was always there, looming.
Decisions impacts | Winner - Saints and Sinners
Arizona Sunshine 2 – It doesn’t offer many decisions for you to make at all. Just how you choose to kill and explore the set area given to you.
Saints and Sinners – This game, by far, wins out of these three games for decision impacts. Everything you say and do in this game impacts your playthrough. What you collect, who you help, who you kill, and what you choose to say changes up alliances, enemies, locations of enemies, and overall hostility of your playthrough. It also offers even more options in how you want to deal with enemies and explore your environment. Because front doors are for nerds, there’s probably an open window or hole to be found in the basement you can enter through.
Metro Awakening - Doesn’t give you many decisions to make. It offers a little more than Arizona Sunshine because you can choose to steal in some situations. But even then, it’s not much.
Immersion | Winner - Metro Awakening
Arizona Sunshine 2 – Of the three, it seems to have the least immersion simply due to graphics, janky object physics, and frustrating object launching (my guns learned to fly.. away from me). The game is good, but I never found myself forgetting it’s a game, or forgetting I needed to pay attention for notes. I never lost myself. Had fun but not lost in it.
Saints and Sinners – This game had great immersion. With a graphics boost and some physics issues, I might have been happier with the immersion. The guns were doing very odd movements that my hands were not doing. Which would often leave me frustrated and rip me from an enjoyable experience. It would bring out the immersion and into the note-taking thought process. I would begin thinking about the notes I needed to take on what was going on here. It’s got a full world with depths and character. But some simple mechanical issues and NPCs being a little janky (feet kind of slide around when talking to you) would pull me from the experience a bit.
Metro Awakening – By FAR the most immersed in a game I have ever been. The horror and intensity of the game keep my mind occupied enough to keep me sucked in and alert ready for what comes next. I found myself being far less journalistic with this game and just playing to play. The atmosphere of this game is so amazing! And little details like having to wipe condensation off of your gas mask are these beautiful cherries on top of this already amazing and immersive game that just enhance the experience. The gameplay doesn’t have to have complicated physics or gunplay. What it has works very well and often doesn’t fail, which is what pulls me from an experience most. The NPCs are so well designed, and the enemies are as well. These mole creatures and their reflective eyes shine in the dark when they look directly at you. Not fully visible in the dim light, mmhh, chefs' kiss. The only things I had a problem with were right at the end of my first impressions play through, where I was doing stealth, and due to a large hit box in my holstered pistol accidentally pulled it out and shot it. Intently plummeting me into combat. There is also this weird thing I noticed that with filters, for some reason, if you pick them up and drop them for another filter, switching between the two quickly will have one disappear. I don’t think it will hurt most players, but I was trying to top up and accidentally dropped the one I wanted, causing one to disappear.
Unique features | Winner - Arizona Sunshine 2
Arizona Sunshine gives you a dog, and a simple crafting system... but that gets used so rarely it barely adds to the game. And crafting systems are not really unique…….. BUT… THEY LET YOU PET THE DOG!!! 10/10!! Arizona Sunshine wins this one for sure! Plus, I haven’t really seen companions in VR games. I have seen plenty of health system iterations, crafting systems, Both Saints and sinners, and Metro have flashlights that need charging. I have played other physics-based games and choose your story games. The only significant feature might be the charging crank, and even then, it’s not revolutionary like PETTING BUDDY THE DOG. Nothing beats that.
Saints and sinners give you a pretty in-depth crafting system, physics-based everything, people that die in-game come back as zombies, the health systems in depth, Night cycles (church bells go off, causing tons of zombies to come), and an ability to choose your own story.
Metro offers a very interesting charger/ generator crank that you plug up to things to give it enough power to temporarily operate. You are given a gas mask to make it through some areas and have to keep up with its maintenance. And a watch that sinks with your mask to let you know when to change filters and when you’re in light. Enough light levels will leave you exposed in stealth. You also get an injector that you can administer heals from.
Points
4 points for Metro, Saints and Sinners gets 4, and “Arizona Sunshine 2” gets 1
Conclusion
I didn’t mean for there to be a two-way tie, but it's honestly fair. Both Metro and Saints and Sinners are Amazing VR games. Sorry, Arizona Sunshine, you’re not a bad game at all, but you just didn’t have enough against these two titans in VR. Saints and Sinners suffered from graphics and random gun issues that bugged me. It also took a bit for it to get fun. But if I had gone in and messed with some settings using developer mode, I might have been able to fix the graphics. But it still doesn’t help fully because it is a dated game. It is the oldest of the three, and VR has come a long way in such a short period of time. Metro, I feel, suffers from replayability. Beautiful game, but with the strict paths you must take, I can see how it could get boring after the first pay through. But I do not know for certain because I haven’t finished it. The game has me well engrossed and committed to completing it. Arizona merely suffers from simplicity. The others offered more experiences to be had. But none of them offered a multiplayer experience. Arizona sunshine offers that. I just wasn’t looking into that area. With friends, that game would go from fun to a blast. Of the three games, my favorite is Metro. So, if I can give a biased point, it goes to Metro Awakening, giving it the win. If you want immersion and a top-tier VR game. Metros the game. It's a beautifully made horror game that was worth the money. If you’re looking for more of a survival-based game with horror, Saints and Sinners is your game. The game is amazing in its own right, its age and minor problems helped give the win to Metro. But most importantly, it couldn’t beat the immersion and intensity of Metro Awakening. Metro is also the game out of the three that I am excited to continue with the intention of beating it. The other two don’t have that tug for me. Try Metro Awakening if you have the time and money. You will not regret it. You also won’t regret the second-place winner, Saints and Sinners, either. Both are amazing games offering experiences like no other.
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