A month or so ago Tristan reviewed NBA Playgrounds which holds the second lowest review score on our site to date. The first goes to Wander, a game that was so unbelievably broken I’m baffled how it got past any QA team.
So. Let’s talk Arizona Sunshine. I remember my excitement when I saw the reveal trailer which showed off a fast paced zombie shooter in VR—sign me up! I should’ve known to be weary, however, when there was no gameplay to be found, and instead the developer opted to show only snazzy pre-rendered sequences in it’s place.
I waited for our copy as I saw all the early reviews pour in, most of which weren’t good. Naturally, everyone compared the aiming to Farpoint since this was the second VR title to support Sony’s rather excellent Aim Controller. A lot of early reviews pegged the game for its imprecise aiming, especially when aiming down the sights, which is something that will ruin a game of this nature. Not only that, but it’s a sloppy representation of what’s possible in VR and on Sony’s headset, even if it doesn’t have the best tracking technology behind it. By the time I received my copy for review the title received a substantial update with refinements and improvements, with the biggest change being adjustments for aiming with and tighter controls. I popped the game in and put my headset on.
Then, I spent about fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to change the god damn settings until I discovered I needed to pick up a specific prop to aim and navigate the menu……never mind the fact that I was already aiming and doing the right thing, just without the gun they wanted me to pick up. The game’s world is akin to a dated arcade game minus the blistering speed and audio ambience. In Arizona Sunshine, all you hear are your footsteps and zombies groaning. Sure, the game plays some generic suspenseful music at scripted events, but that’s it. I played the first twenty minutes or so and listened to cringe-worthy puns coming from our supposed macho protagonist as I shot at waves of slow moving zombies while I moved even slower. The one thing I will say is the update for aiming must’ve worked because I was popping off headshots left and right without any issues. Everything was a notch or two below mediocre until I came to a sequence where I needed to get keys for a car to get equipment out and I blew myself up. Why did I do that? Because I accidentally used my grenade after trying the key in every single lock of the vehicle. You see, the game never told me how to throw a grenade. It was at this point that I gave up and figured the game was bugged or something and I’d approach it again with a fresh mind. You can watch my second playthrough embedded below and witness me use the key on every lock again with no luck. Then I accidentally hit the right button which unlocked the car and that’s when I found out—I could only use the key fob.
Are you fucking kidding me.
In real life you can use a key or the fob. Talk about bad gameplay design. I got a little further only to get stuck in the world’s geometry trying to cross a bridge to the next section. I then got overrun with zombies and died because you can’t melee and if you can I didn’t go back to figure out how.
That was my time with Arizona Sunshine, an hour’s worth of frustration and disappointment you got to read about in six hundreds more words than this deserves. The only hot thing regarding Arizona Sunshine is the dumpster fire from which it came. Skip it and get Farpoint instead.
