Arizona Sunshine was one of my first real forays into VR when I got the PlayStation VR headset. Games like Job Simulator, Thumper, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, and Batman: Arkham VR were good, but they were more VR experiences instead of full games. Hell, I absolutely loved the Resident Evil 7 VR mode, but that was still just using a controller. Luckily, in 2017 Arizona Sunshine was ported to the PSVR and I got a taste of what a full VR game can be like. Despite some technical issues with the not so reliant Move Wands, it was an absolute blast. Now we have Arizona Sunshine 2 coming out many years later, and while it doesn’t feel revolutionary like the first one at the time, it has some really great additions and a fun campaign.

Arizona Sunshine 2 starts off with our loud-mouthed, quip throwing protagonist waking up in his dingy trailer, ready to do some target practice with his best friend, Fred. During this tutorial target practice a military helicopter comes flying in, clearly in trouble, it makes a crash landing on top of a hospital that is near us. Desperate for any sort of human contact, we go try to help the people. Unfortunately, none of the humans have survived the crash. However, something better than humans crawls out of the wreckage of the helicopter, an adorable German Shepherd. Then over the radio we are able to contact a local military base that gives us directions to them. So, with a new best friend and a spark of hope, we set off on our new journey.

The campaign in Arizona Sunshine 2 has a nice length to it and will take you through some really cool set pieces. With nine-teen chapters all together, it is a decent run time, offering some intense moments alongside some surprisingly sad and shocking ones. I should warn you that about midway and close to the end there are some potentially triggering parts involving animals. If you’re sensitive to that sort of content, you may have some trouble in these areas. For me, it worked in a way that gave me some actual anger and motivation to continue on my killing spree.

Besides that, the rest of the campaign is just some good ‘ol zombie slaughtering fun. A particularly great section happens on a moving train with a well place mini-gun, going through a valley. The level design has a decent variety, mostly going through small towns, sewers, and canyons. However, it does introduce a few set pieces, like an airport and the aforementioned train section to keep things interesting. I had a really fun time with the campaign, and while I didn’t get to try out the co-op mode, the campaign is fully playable with one other friend. If you want to invite three friends, that is supported under its Horde mode, which is exactly what it sounds like. Four friends taking on waves of Freds.

Arizona Sunshine 2 does offer some nice upgrades to the combat system, some changes to past systems, and an overall ton of extra polish to the hand tracking. Obviously I played the first game on the PSVR, which had some extremely shaky tracking, so it is nice having the stability of the Quest 2 and 3 tracking. The big change from the first game is the addition of melee combat. While this works great, it’s not exactly anything ground-breaking, especially since other games have done it better, like The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. However, it is still a welcome addition. What I don’t like is that there is no way to holster or strap a melee weapon to you, so you have to hold it in a hand the entire time until it breaks.

While melee is the main addition to the moment to moment combat, they did change how many grenades or other explosives you can hold. In the first game you were able to attach something like four grenades to your ammo vest. Now you’re only able to store them in your… this will sound weird… hand holes. Essentially, you can put food or grenades in a pouch on each hand. So you can hold up to two grenades if you aren’t worried about needing health in an upcoming section. Perhaps Vertigo thought this balanced the gameplay a bit better, but I missed being able to just pluck grenades off my chest and chuck them.

Since this is a first person VR shooter obviously there is a heavy focus on guns, and there is a lot to choose from here. At any time you can hold small weapons like handguns, revolvers, sawed off shotguns, Uzi’s, or the flamethrower on the left and right holster. Then over your shoulder you can hold one two-handed weapon like machine guns, pump action shotguns, and a grenade launcher. For the most part there are a few variations of each gun also besides the flamethrower and grenade launcher which is a really nice touch. You can then also holster two extra guns on Buddy our doggo.

Now onto the best part of Arizona Sunshine 2, Buddy, our dog companion. He is such a little sweetheart and also a savage killer of zombies. Before you ask, yes, you can pet Buddy, they even have the animation that cups the hand around him so you can pet around his head and ears. You can also play fetch with him using a tennis ball or even a severed zombie limb, and even give him some bites of your food. Don’t worry, he doesn’t have a life bar or anything, just good boy treats. You can direct buddy by aiming him towards a zombie, which will make him run and attack, and aiming at items will make him go a retrieve them. He will also be needed to access certain areas since he is small enough to fit in them.

Unfortunately, not everything is perfect with the performance. There are some issues that come up every now and again. The general performance when I started it on the Meta Quest 2 was pretty rough. Long load times and some framerate stutters left a less than comfortable feeling. I then started it again on the Meta Quest 3 and while it hasn’t gotten its full update for the new hardware, the load times and frames are much better here. Besides that at times there are some issues directing Buddy. Sometimes he just won’t go and attack a zombie or he won’t jump through one of the holes for him to get an item. There was also some issues during the climbing section where if I lifted my hand above my head he would grab my gun instead of the ledge.

There are also some large drawbacks to the visuals and some bad Level of Detail pop-ins. Clearly Vertigo had to cut back on a lot of visual flair to get it on the Meta Quest 2, and while it’s certainly still playable, it’s not the best place to play. Unfortunately, they still haven’t done the full Quest 3 visual upgrade, only the performance upgrade so I do have to talk about the downgraded visuals. While the general art style and design is great with its set pieces and cluttered environments, the textures are often times very muddy. Especially in the more open areas it can feel sort of flat. There are also issues of textures popping in right in front of you or just not at all. While it’s not a deal breaker if you only have a Quest 2, but I expected more on the Quest 3.

Time to rock the show!

Sound design in Arizona Sunshine 2 is for the most part top notch. All the weapons in all the varieties have realistic sound effects for each. The large blast of the .357 Revolver is loud and intimidating, whereas the fully auto Glock with the extend mag makes its nice rat-a-tat-tat. The explosives are equally powerful and pairs well with the visual side of things, with the large blasts throwing zombie chunks everywhere. The voice acting mostly comes from the main character and the military chatting head, but this is well done also. The main character of course has his dark humor and silly quips, but they don’t always land. There are some audio glitches that happened, however. At one point the main character just continued to say the same line over and over until the next checkpoint, or the audio for the whole game would go out.

Arizona Sunshine 2 is a fun game that I would recommend to anyone who wants a good campaign driven zombie game. Sure, the new additions may not be revolutionary, but they are certainly a step up from the first game. Also having co-op in the campaign and four player horde certainly adds to the value of this. If you enjoyed the first and want to see where this one takes you, I promise it is worth it. Fair warning, you may struggle a bit using older hardware like the Quest 2, but ultimately it’s still playable on that hardware.

 

Graphics: 7.5 There are some nice set pieces, but there are clear drawbacks to run on the Quest 2 like low textures and LoD pop-ins.	Gameplay: 8.5 A full suite of guns, grenades, melee weapons, and an adorably vicious dog companion makes for a fun and varied zombie killing time.
Sound: 8.0 General sound effects for weapons, explosives, and environments are well done. Voice acting from the protagonist is good even though there are some audio glitches.	Fun Factor: 8.5 Adding in the dog companion as well as the melee and some really fun set pieces with massive zombie hordes made for a really fun campaign. Then there is also co-op and a separate horde mode to keep you going.
Final Verdict: 8.0

Arizona Sunshine 2 is available now on Meta Quest Platform, PSVR2, and Steam VR.

Reviewed on Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest 3.

A copy of Arizona Sunshine 2 was provided by the publisher.