Arizona Sunshine

Arizona Sunshine is straight-up fun to play, and the game’s sound design is particularly noteworthy… Pop on a set of decent headphones and the 3D sound comes alive with braying zombies all around you, with things becoming nerve-wracking pretty quickly.

Still as good as it was on PC with full support to the PlayStation VR ecosystem, but after six months its lack of originality is felt more.

If you’re serious about PlayStation VR and love first person shooters, Arizona Sunshine is a no-brainer. Mowing down mobs of the undead is immensely satisfying with a great spread of weapons and plenty of opportunities to have some fun. The campaign is well-paced, supplying small but welcome diversions to break up the action with little morsels of story here and there.

Arizona Sunshine is a frenetic, VR powered, zombie blasting romp that stands as the next must-have title for the PSVR Aim Controller.

Arizona Sunshine is a game that allows players to chill out and blast zombies to pieces in the comfort of their own homes, living out their dreams of slipping into a world where they can use an epic arsenal of weapons to completely eradicate a shambling threat. That may not be the highest bar to clear, but Vertigo Games accomplishes it with style.

Kinda ugly and bereft of new ideas, but also challenging and fun. Sets a higher bar for PS VR co-op, too. [September 2017, p76]

It's a close as you'll ever want to get to an actual walking dead scenario. [Sept 2017, p.91]

Arizona Sunshine has the advantage of putting the player at the center of the action, thanks to a control system that fits in to the many devices offered by the PlayStation 4 platform VR, but asks us to overlook the occasional tracking issues.

While Arizona Sunshine might have been an incredible game on other VR systems, the PSVR version seems to be lacking due to the platform’s limitations. An intriguing narrative and impressive voice acting make Arizona Sunshine an enjoyable, if short, experience. Some minor glitches hold the game back, but excellent sniping and comfortable controls make up for these inconveniences.

Arizona Sunshine is a just OK zombie game that, with the exception of being a PlayStation VR title, doesn’t really differentiate itself from other, better shooters. The Move wands add immersion to the action at the expense of comfortable and sensible movement (I’d kill for the option to move backward). For those who feel that graphics matter, the game is not especially pretty. Frequent texture popping and load-in ruins already bland and uninteresting environments occupied by 3D models that range in quality. At its worst, it looks like a middle- to late-stage game for the PlayStation 2. Take away the novelty of VR and free aiming, and you’ll find there is nothing to differentiate Arizona Sunshine from any other run-of-the-mill first person shooter. Wait for a sale or, if the urge to play a VR shooter compels you, consider Farpoint instead.

We are happy to see another game on PSVR that is truly worth being called a game. The controls could have been better, but even like this Arizona Sunshine is great.

A fun VR adventure plenty of action packed levels full of zombies, explosions and gore. A bit repetitive and short though… and one of the worst Spanish dubs ever heard.

I was surprised that many of the complaints players had with the original PC versions weren’t addressed in this release, but I still had a lot of fun shooting zombies in virtual reality while listening to a nuanced narrative of a survivor fighting to maintain his sanity as the Arizona sun sets on the horizon.

If you can get past its frequently frustrating controls, there's some decent zombie-shooting fun to be had in Arizona Sunshine.

Arizona Sunshine tries to deliver another great shooter experience on the PlayStation VR. While it partly succeeds, the game also has its down sides. Controls often feel clunky, and there are some technical problems that really kill the fun while playing.

Arizona Sunshine is interesting and enjoyable if you like the genre, but it doesn't have much content or something that makes it unique. Also, in Spanish, it has one of the strangest (ok, one of the worst) dubs ever.

Vertigo Games has created a hugely enjoyable FPS videogame for the early days of VR, but one which will undoubtedly look dated in just a few months.

Arizona Sunshine hinges on a neat concept and delivers an enjoyable singleplayer experience, which - unfortunately - has been put together rather sloppily. The amount of pop-up alone is enough to give any sane person a headache.

There’s certainly a few hours of cheesy fun on offer here, and the inclusion of online co-op and a horde mode certainly help. But despite the decent amount of content for £30, it’s hard not to feel like your hard-earned cash would just be better spent on a traditional PS4 game.

Arizona Sunshine offers an enjoyable slice of zombie shooting action that left us relatively satisfied. The basic gameplay and dated graphics make the price tag sting a little though.

Arizona Sunshine could be so much more than it is. It's an overly linear game with few if any surprising moments, zombies that don't behave in particularly interesting ways, and a story that accomplishes the bare minimum to keep you moving from point to point. It's middling.

If it wouldn’t be for the VR integration this would be a run-of-the-mill zombie shooting gallery. But even the heightened immersion and the Aim Controller support can’t save this mediocre experience.

Aiming with the Dualshock 4 is the most unsatisfying way to line up shots, but it was surprisingly more accurate than using the MOVE controllers.

A fun game ruined by poor implementation. [Issue#190, p.79]

A good game with good ideas but a leak in the final release. Poor Voice acting making the experience lose the ambience.

It’s not hard to see why Arizona Sunshine comes so highly acclaimed: its undead slaughtering story mode is undoubtedly dated, but the novelty of virtual reality keeps it alive. Unfortunately, this PlayStation VR version toys with Sony’s full roster of input options, and never really settles upon one that feels right. It’s a shame because there is a lot to like here, from the vibrant visuals to the generous helping of solo and multiplayer content – but without a comfortable means of controlling any of it, your enthusiasm will very quickly cool.

This could have been a pretty good zombie shooter, but it is coming up short on the technical side. This experience is giving VR its bad name: it confuses your head so much that you simply can't enjoy what this should be about: killing zombies.

Arizona Sunshine’s appearance on PlayStation VR splits its time between posturing as an inarticulate calamity and performing as capable virtual reality shooting gallery. Simple luck appears to be the dividing line, leaving the player to decide if a lengthy campaign, vivid environments, and zealous gunplay are worth putting up with fussy controls, hostile conduct, and anemic hardware.

I really wanted to like Arizona Sunshine, but as it is I really have a hard time recommending it. The horrid snap movement controls and twitchy aiming make it very difficult to have fun with, even though the concept is sound. Everything this game does wrong, and games like Farpoint do much better, and the things this game does well are plagued by the mediocre presentation. I truly love the concept and some ideas that Arizona Sunshine presents, but overall, it's just too broken of a game to get a high level of enjoyment out of.