I played the PC version.
tl;dr fun enough but nothing outstanding, well crafted AAA open world zombie game, buy on sale
spoiler free summary:
You are a former soldier turned biker ganger who is caught up in a zombie apocalypse. Ride your motorcycle across the post apocalyptic northwest fighting zombies and raiders, doing jobs for settlements, and searching for your lost wife.
The game is competently made but there is a lot of it that is close to paint-by-numbers for AAA stealth/action titles. You have your stealth takedowns, your distraction rocks, shooting and auto-targeting melee. Your "mount" is available right off the bat and upgrading your motorcycle is a big part of the gameplay. I liked how there was fast travel but you had to work for it either clearing zones so you could travel through them, upgrading your fuel tank so you can travel further, and occasionally stopping to find gas. This made it a bit more immersive up until the end when you have a big enough gas tank to travel across the whole map.
In addition to the stealth/action there are bike "races" where you chase down a target also riding a motorcycle. They are pretty awkward but still something different so a very occasionally nice change of pace. Some gameplay elements are kind of filler like the ability to track a deer once you shot it, but midway through the game ammo stops being an issue and generally you use automatic weapons so if you shoot a deer, it is dead.
The story is closer to resident evil but played straight and not over the top ridiculous. The zombies are virus mutants and the enemies sometimes include children and animals which is a nice touch. At the start you are helping camps with survival type jobs and eventually you go on to do missions for the purpose of fighting back against the zombies.
One draw of this game is the hoard mechanic where you sometimes find packs of hundreds of zombies that try to surround you and are instant death if too many get to you at the same time. In the beginning all you can do is avoid and run but by the end you have enough resources and character progression to fight and win against them.
The weapons and gunplay is pretty generic with the exception of the crossbow but since you can only carry 3 weapons and the crossbow takes up your "heavy" slot it is quickly abandoned when you get your first rifle. IMO this is a missed opportunity and the game should have made the crossbow always available in addition to your other 3 weapon slots. Your melee weapons decay so in the beginning you are constantly switching to new ones but eventually you get a talent that lets you repair them and from that point you just carry the best one. Which is good because later in the game the enemies tend to be stronger and not always having a good melee weapons means you would just never use it anymore.
The voice acting of the main character is particularly good with the writing and delivery nicely portraying constantly stressed and anti-social personality of someone who was in that situation but still able to get by. The other voices are passable with the best friend VA also doing a good job. Some of the random encounter survivor voices are pretty bad and sound like they called in an intern to read the lines that day though.
I found exactly one minor glitch where I did a sidequest "search" out of sequence and the area it told me to search for the final piece didn't have it. I eventually found it outside of that area, I assume where I was intended to start the search. But nothing gamebreaking or requiring a reset to fix.
In general I can't say I loved the game but it was fun enough, though by the end I was just grinding to finish. The hoards make for fun visuals and spectacle and even though they aren't necessarily the main gameplay feature, the rest of the game is necessary to make those experiences stand out.
Possibly spoiler filled detailed wokeness ratings ahead - numbers are on a scale from 0-5 with lower being better and >3 that aspect would make the game unplayable
Feminism 1.5: No main npc girlbosses women. One woman is in charge of the slave camp but she is a frumpy short haired dyke-type whose leadership is explained by her running a prison gang before the zombies. There are women marauders that you shoot/stab/axe. Your wife that you are searching for is a scientist and it turns out her research helped start the apocalypse but nothing really comes out of that. Other female characters are a notable npc mechanic who does occasionally give the main character a moral lecture and the doctor of the main camp is also a woman. There is one anti-feminist scene where you and your wife are on a mission to retrieve a piece of equipment an she goes in alone to an area, has to shoot a bunch of zombies while you find your way in, and when you get there she is locked up in panic pulling the trigger on an empty gun and you have to calm her down.
Faggotry 2: The previously mentioned mechanic and doctor of the main camp are a dyke couple. I think there might be a scene where they held hands, maybe hugged? I dont remember any more physical affection than that. There is a line of dialogue that could be interpreted to imply the main bad guy is butt buddies with his camp doctor but it is never made explicit. Otherwise no homos that I noticed.
Diversity/Negros/Anti-Whiteness: 2.5 Two of the three important NPCs at the final camp are black, one is a "scientist" and the other is a competent commanding officer. The doctor at the previous camp in a lesbian relationship is also black. There is a throwaway pre-apocalypse flashback line about the biker gang leader importing negros to troll "racists". Most of the generic npcs are White. Your best friend appears to be latino coded but it isn't explicitly stated. The doctor in the final camp is latino and he annoyingly inserts spanish into his dialog. Refreshing that this game has a consistently strong and competent White male PC who is unambiguously heroic.
Anti-West/Anti-Christian/Subversion: 3 The leader of the final camp is a religious older White man who talks about God's will so of course he turns out to be a villain. I'm pretty sure they animated some of Hitlers hand gestures and postures for some of his speeches but that could be my imagination. He is implied to be Christian because there is a mission to retrieve his stolen bible. There is a throwaway line about the prison population pre-zombies. Also another throwaway line about "truther bullshit". In the first zone there is an implied right-wing anti-government radio broadcast to which the main character generally reacts negatively.
edit: after thinking about it overnight I wanted to add that outside of the mandatory stealth sections this is the type of game that would benefit from playing it at a higher difficulty to help maintain the tension and immersion. So my advice would be to turn up the difficulty normally, and then turn it down during the stealth missions.
Pretty accurate - I've finished the game and agree with this review.
Hordes were an absolute standout - especially when you come across them in caves or at night, it creates a genuinely tense atmosphere of gameplay. I don't think I've seen them done quite like this in any other game.
The story was generally ok - although the 2 half felt a bit weaker than the 1st half. There was a good twist at the end which would have made for an interesting premise for a second game, but sadly I don't think we'll see one.
I liked how even though the story set it up they didn't go over the top resident-evil with the zombie mutants and just kept it pretty well grounded.