Few things i've noticed so far from playing...
The sound on this update is a huge improvement!
The new dynamic music is really great. I love the atmosphere it provides. There are some great sounds..Some of them sound like something you'd hear from an 80's zombie flick like Day of the Dead. Love them. The zombie walking sounds are much improved for me. I can hear them whistling through the grass, I can pin point where they are and what surface types they are standing on. I like the impact sounds when you hit with melee, though I think they could be a bit more 'meaty'. The discard\throw sound is improved. The echos are better..Just all around huge sound improvements.
I know I've talked about outdoor performance suffering compared to before, but the performance indoors is just amazing compared to any Alpha before it. Even with all the reflections and all other effects maxed out - and throwing torches everywhere trying to stress it - the game is just buttery, silky smooth in the POIs - which makes for satisfying combat. The occlusion is doing a great job here. This will also potentially help when base building where you can build more complicated scenes without worrying about frame drops. Overall, just a huge improvement.
Not enough zombies outdoors. I went outside to the wasteland at night and stood under a lamp post with its light on and made all kinds of noise and barely attracted any zombies at all. It's not dangerous enough. I don't know if the detect range is too low or what..but I was making all kinds of noise and standing in bright light and you'd think I'd have all kinds of zombies after me since I was in the wasteland..but, nah..it was disappointingly easy to just stay outside all night. I had two zombies come after me and that was it.
The textures are a massive improvement all around aside from the cars and occasionally the sky. Something looks off on the textures with the cars and sometimes the sky. Depending on the time of day, the sky has an almost compressed, dithered look - kinda like what a game would look like if it was running 16-bit colors instead of 24-z. But, everything else i've seen looks amazingly crisp and detailed.
I did not find the initial start either too tedious or too superman - it was about right. But, I don't like that you can't boil water out of a tin-can and can just easily boil it out of a glass jar. It takes away from that early survival state where you're looking for a cooking pot ASAP. To me some of the best and most thrilling experiences in this game has always been in the early game. I like feeling like there's a rush to get some essentials, but it's relatively easy to get going faster now than before.
I am getting lots of 'junk turrets' from zombie loot. Fat zombies give a lot of them. Could just be random luck, but sure seems like I'm accumulating an excessive amount really quickly.
Rage mode was a great idea I think. It definitely adds another layer to everything. I like it.
Melee combat has more depth and options than ever before. It's massively improved compared to where we started from. Hits and swings have more weight to them now..there's more options for different melee types, and again the sound helps tremendous with the whole thing to make it all feel a lot more realistic.
Anyway, I've barely had enough playtime to really give a lot of feedback - but those are some of my first impressions.
