How bullet spongey are the enemies? Does the difficulty affect that?
Zombies should explode on impact. I am thinking free-aim and easy could be a good combo. Not sure how much auto-aim is needed since it looks like you get rushed by lots of enemies at a time, but putting it on easy good help there... looking for a good balance of sense of danger and fun.
I'm playing on Hard, not sure how that effects the enemies. Shotguns work up close and you can usually get one shot kills, the pistol to me is actually kind of tough for up close... but better at medium/long range, imo. Shooting to me is like Uncharted series, especially with the AK-47. Melee is kind of like The Last of Us, but not quite as canned prepackaged - you'll get tired or miss after a few swings, more grounded to me. The game actually needs the survival mode (suppose to come out in June), imo, Hard is not hard enough (that's what she said
).
Loving this game so far, not sure what games the reviewers are playing to score this a a 1.5/5 and 5/10, but its bumping up close to Bloodborne for me Above Horizon for me, and might be higher than RDR2 - although it would be nice, if the loading and transitions to/from cut-scenes were better/faster.
Shooting - Uncharted
Melee - The Last of Us (but more grounded, less prepacked moves... but its still pretty cool)
Player Movement - Horizon with a little more jank (not sure how to express it) and not quite as fast
Trap Setting - Horizon, although I am early yet and only have access to the ones which you can move
Bike/Travel - Red Dead Redemption/Mad Max, better than those, the bike is real fun.... like it just cool to go flying over a hill and before you know it 10 zombies are around you, also fairly grounded but fun
Map/Bases or certain areas - Mad Max, there is a little samey feeling to certain areas, to me it kind of works... but I could see why others might not like it.
Human AI - finding it fairly good for an open world game, much better to me so far than RDR2 and Uncharted, and human AI in Horizon to me was horrible
Zombie AI - I haven't taken down any of the required hordes, and try to avoid the larger groups.... they do what you expect them to do... one negative I have is individuals don't move too much when you throw rocks to distract them - not sure what the issue is there. When you see a ton of them pouring out of a train, its actually terrifying.
Animal AI - I have no idea... I saw some wolves and got on my bike and got the hell out of there
World - freaking awesome design, day/nite cycle is awesome, it rains a lot, the lighting/thunder top notch.... the game is a looker.... foliage is too me the best in any video game.
Graphics - very nice image quality, some of the best graphics of this gen, imo
Performance - this is where there are nicks in armor, loading screens and pauses from cutscenes do have an impact on immersion, but its not horrible or anything... I've also had zombies disappear when I am wrestling with them with my back against a tree..... normal open world bugs
Characters - I'm only 5 hours in, hard to tell at this point... not much story elements... but Deacon talks to himself which is good and explains things... just too early at this point... I don't dislike him like some of the reviewers were going on about
Story - Some people have had issues with the flashbacks... not much story at this point for me.
Communication - The characters sometimes talk via handheld which is kind like a Cortana/John device with Doozer
Menu - Visually awesome, functional... you really don't need to look at that much
HUD - Nice, you can toogle on XP if that is your thing.... survival mode can possible help here
Music - great, not overbearing but you notice it at times
Sound - this is also so so to me, sometimes zombies can sound closer than what they really are... so it kind of scares the shit out of you... also when Deacon is talking to himself, sometimes it doesn't sound mixed enough - hard to explain
Very solid game if you like elements of Mad Max, The Last of Us and Red Dead Redemption. So far, my second favorite game this gen with Bloodborne being #1.... with Dark Souls III up there as well.