In a year full of really good open world games, I can understand how people would pass up an open world "zombie" game of all things. But, I've put over 50 hours into the game over the past week (got it on steam sale) and I've thoroughly enjoyed my time. It's been the right amount of challenging, but I've never felt like a death was because the game "cheated" me. It's also one of the few games with a "true" night time instead of just a blue filter, cuz you really can't see shit without a source of light.

It's stressful in an awesome way, the way I felt when I first got hooked on Demon Souls. The parkour takes what mirrors edge did and puts it into a game that isn't just about parkour, and it actually works really well.

I also enjoyed the combat, especially early on when every zombie is a threat and you have to try to use your, environment to help you kill them. It also boasts a pretty fun co-op system, in which the higher tier zombies actually use different moves (for example, melee only zombies I've seen start to use a ranged acid attack ) instead of just getting number tuning like most games boasting coop (like borderlands).

The game also has a lot of varied, well put together side quests that really push that "everybody has a story" angle you get after seeing a city that feels very lived in and looting so many abandoned houses. The game also boasts colored loot a la Diablo as well as a robust crafting system that very much encourages you to scavenge. I've been in many situations where I had just enough junk to make a bomb to kill the zombies I needed to kill fast enough to make it to a safe house before night fall.

I feel it is by far the best "zombie game" I have ever played, but also a very good open world game in its own right. I believe it's still on sale for a couple days, I highly recommend it, and I'm bummed nobody else on staff really seemed to get into it besides Brad.

That's not to say its perfect. It has fallout's lockpicking, but harder. There is no option to preview a skill before using, which sucks because some of the skills are bad or are overshadowed by other skills completely, while other skills are game changing and should be tagged "recommended" as such.

It definitely offers more than I was expecting, though. Tech land deserves some love for this one.

P.S. Also there's a super Mario 1-1 level just...hidden in the game world that gives you a shitty tanuki suit. But hey, it's there.

It's an underrated game, if only because of how over-saturated the gaming market is in regards to zombie games.
The best way I would describe it is 'solidly designed'. It's obvious that the developers have played similar games (along with learning from Dead Island) and from that learnt what makes a good open-world game and what can make a bad open-world game.

I played the demo on ps4 and enjoyed it but got massively dizzy. Havent gotten like that since ps1 days.

Some might say its the 2nd best game this year ;)