100 Percent Completion in Walking Dead Onslaught

I don't often get the full suite of achievements in any game, really. I mean, I did 100 percent all the achievements in Battle Bows, but that's my job, yo. When last I talked about the game I had finished the story mode and was sitting on about half of the achievements.

That final achievement is a great head nod to the best line in the TV series.

If I were to do it all over again, I think I'd probably do it in exactly the same way. Basically I played through the entire Story mode twice: once on Survivor mode and once on Veteran mode. If you want to 100 percent the game, you'll have to beat the entire story on Veteran mode anyway, so it absolutely would save time (if you're looking to do that) to just play through the story on Veteran mode, but I liked the story enough I wanted to play through it twice and getting all the materials from the story a second time doesn't hurt. 

Culling the herd in Part 7 of the story

Scavenger missions are essential for completing all the requisitions, which makes sense. Requisitions are only found in scavenger missions and you'll need to complete them all in order to finish your achievements. You'll need all those sweet epic and legendary resources, like fiberglass and batteries, that you find in the later scavenger missions if you want to fully upgrade all your weapons.

Ahh the motherlode!

Really, that's the crowning achievement in Walking Dead Onslaught. Fully upgrading all 24 weapons is the hardest thing to do in the game. That Assault Rifle is the worst of the bunch. It took a couple scavenger runs just to upgrade that thing alone.

A fully upgraded Armory, and no more missions to use them on

Believe it or not though, that wasn't my final achievement I earned. The last achievement to fall was the one for killing a walker with every weapon in the game. I thought I had done it with all of them, but the achievement wasn't kicking off, so I did the only thing I could do and headed into Chapter 7 where the game gives you every weapon in the game . . . and go through all the weapons one by one.

That meant I needed to run up to a zombie, kill it with a random weapon, run back to the house with all the weapons, swap to another random weapon, run back out to a zombie, kill it with a new random weapon, and wash rinse and repeat until that magical achievement bell rang. Guess what it was that I hadn't used yet?  A crowbar of all things. 

A table full of weapons, and I'm opting for a Crowbar?

So once I smacked a zombie upside the head with a Crowbar I got that final double achievement spam. One for the Tainted Meat Achievement that I was actively working on and the final platinum, earn all achievements, reward. Done and done.

It's funny how my opinions changed over the course of the game from always wanting to use ranged weapons to always wanting to use melee weapons, but truly the Katana and the simple Hammer are the best weapons in the game. I ran entire missions without firing a single shot by the end. It was just: run up to a zombie, smash a zombie's head off with a hammer, and done.

Have hammer, will travel!

I had so much fun with this game! I'm pretty impressed with Survios as a company in general. They've got a quality suite of games and, out of their entire catalog, I think I own four or five of their games. They've all been really solid.

Happy Dueling!

Ten Hours in -- Walking Dead Onslaught

I have arrived, folks! I got my 10 hours of play in Walking Dead Onslaught just like I predicted I would, and I feel pretty great about that. Even better, this game got me to start watching the Walking Dead series, of which I'm now solidly into Season 3. And now I really know who the heck Daryl Dixon is. Now I'm pretty happy to get scavenging missions from Michonne and also know how cool it is that I can wield her Katana. Now when I select Rick Grimes as my player avatar, I know who that is and not just "the male option." I get it.

Now if I just had two chained up, jawless and limbless zombies walking behind me

So there you go, can a game from a network series get you to watch the series? Yes. I'm that guy. Ok, so let's talk a bit more about this VR game, and why I think it's pretty great. 

First off, the weapon armory is pretty remarkable. They give you 18 weapons and a bucket full of makeshift stuff to slay zombies with.

Choose yer poison!

Each of these weapons has 4 upgrade options that make them all play a bit differently. At first you're thinking, really . . . a meat cleaver vs. a machete? how different can they really be? At first you'd be absolutely correct in that thinking. Insert blade into zombie skull, done. In reality the cleaver is more of a vampiric, health leeching weapon and the machete is more of a armor piercing and stun weapon. You just have to upgrade them to be that way.

A necromancer's favorite weapon

Personally, I think the best melee weapon in the game is your basic hammer. It literally knocks the heads right off of zombies without much effort, and each time you do it (and once you've upgraded the hammer) it also finds wood resources off of zombies when you kill them.

The easiest way to find ALL the weapons in the game is to simply get to chapter 7 and make sure you search all the upstairs areas. In one there is a weapons cache that has every weapon possible in the game. Once you equip a weapon and complete a mission (whether that's story or otherwise) you'll unlock that weapon in your weapons rack. Having 18+ weapons in a game like this almost seems excessive, but I'll take it. Messing around with various weapons is part of the fun.

There's also achievements (which I'm still hunting for) for using all the weapons and for upgrading all the weapons. 

Second, the embodied actions of the game were seamless and interesting. Pushing doors open felt great. Grabbing handles and pulling sliding doors open made sense. Slotting, pulling, and tugging . . . it was all there and at a couple points I even thought to myself, wow . . . this seems like a lot of work for a puzzle that's only used once in the game, but it made the game so much more fun that it was there.

A pull cord to start a generator! Awesome!

Third, it was really good game sense to have Daryl's story missions unlock based on the number of survivors you had discovered and brought into your town. You never actually eat food in the game, but you find a ton of it . . . and that's ok because food is actually what draws survivors to your camp. Not only do you need survivors to unlock missions, but you also need them to operate your town's buildings. It's just nice to see interesting game design choices like that. I was happy with it.

Alexandria has her fully upgraded windmill. Life is good!

It does feel like they left a lot of space for a DLC, and because of that, it feels like the game is missing a few things. Namely, you need a boss fight with the leader of the Gold 99 faction you're learning about in Daryl's missions. While the final chapter of the game does have some epic zombie herd killing action, you're left at a cliffhanger in the game, and that feels disappointing. A DLC would have answered that call.

The Gold 99's calling card . . . I want to fight their leader!

It also would have been nice to have one more synergistic game loop that involved all the buildings you have constructed in town. Special missions unlocked by the buildings would be a perfect addition to a DLC. Unfortunately since the game was released in 2020 and it's now 2023 . . . I don't think it's going to happen.

I still have 15 achievements left to earn. Most of those are to play through the story mode on Veteran as well as the two weapon achievements I listed earlier. A couple of them are very confusing and will require a bit more research to see how to complete them. I'm shooting to get them all though! 

I'm glad a random post in Blaugust got me to play this game and give it a shot. After earning my achievements, I'll probably hit the Saints and Sinners games next. (Come to find out, I already had them in my game library and didn't realize it)

Happy Dueling!