My quick impression for what it's worth:
Overall I'm enjoying the game, but I do think some of the common criticisms are valid. Melee combat isn't exciting or interesting in any way. I would love to be able to target other body parts or be able to sneak up on zombies and one-shot them if they were unaware of my presence. I think Dead Island / Condemned / Xeno Clash / Dark Messiah / Fallout 3, pretty much any other FPS melee game has done it better, which is disappointing since it's such a huge focus of the game.
It NEEDS some kind of proper stealth mechanic. Even if you can't outright avoid combat I would like to be able to sneak up on some of the more oblivious zombies and take them out quickly and quietly.
I also don't get much survival horror from it at all. It isn't really scary to me personally (I realize this is a matter of taste) but for me the "Dark Souls" style death system actually makes it less scary than say a game where you lose story progress and your items and have to reload a previous save. Since I'm using the cricket bat 90% of the time anyways, if I feel like I'm going to enter a difficult section I just shortcut back to the safe room, drop off my valuables and then suicide run until I get past it. Clearly that's a decision I'm making on how to play the game, but even looking past this system (which I'm assuming is meant to add suspense) I don't find the environments, or frankly silly looking zombies, to be scary.
Also, I started a thread (that got closed because for some reason this game always ignites a firestorm and people wouldn't quit shitting up the thread) about how I was experiencing what I called input lag. I feel like it might not be true input lag, but just laggy aiming. It's present in single player and multiplayer even using the IR pointer in multiplayer mode. I never really like this kind of design decision because it makes the game more frustrating than difficult.
With all these negatives out of the way, I actually enjoy a lot about the game. I think the use of the gamepad is pretty awesome (except for aiming with it, I think that was a poor design choice and I'd like to be able to toggle that off). I really don't think the graphics hinder the experience at all, and I actually like the lighting effects and some of the environments. I have definitely enjoyed it and I'll beat it for sure (which is actually pretty rare for me nowadays) and I would recommend it, but I really hate to see how close it is to being a truly great game and just falls short.
On the whole it reminds me a lot of Dead Island. It's not really survival horror to me, it's just a very slow-paced FPS that has zombies in it, but it's fun.
