Don't get me wrong, the combat is kind of? cool. I had to laugh when my friend knocked down a zombie and promptly threw a knife straight into its brown eye to kill it when it was bent over trying to stand up. Then he walked up and pulled it out.
And it does look fairly difficult at times, it's got the tension of zombies spawning in bushes and sneaking up on you fairly often. The real survival draw is the order in which you find weapons and the rarity of guns and ammo. The guns follow the same kind of item system as the melee weapons (Weak, flimsy, strong, sinister, military, ect...) but the effects that I saw were no where as interesting as Borderland's fairly detailed item generation. These things are like, damage, durability, all on a sliding scale. Maybe it ramps up more significantly? But after watching my friend wander for a long time at around quest 5 or 6, level 10 or something....it was fairly boring. The exploration and looting isn't all that interesting, you can't interact with shit and like most of these games, "open world" is liberally interpreted at times. It's on the level of Borderlands, where you're looking for two things. Money, and bizarre weapons like paddles and shovels. Tack on a few meaninglessly collectibles like the ID Cards and hey, you've got yourself a "AAA" game.
I'm sure at the end game, the weapons you craft are fairly whacky and maybe even the item generation expands beyond the three traits I saw on most weapons. Blunt, bladed, it didn't really seem to make a difference. Maybe on the bigger guys, who knows.
As a single play through, or doing your first time through strictly on co-op, I could see someone feeling their money is not wasted. But replay? When the zombie spawns aren't even varied and repop infinitely, I really doubt another character or those few weapons you didn't get are really going to make it worthwhile. And if the stench of disappointment is something you can't stand these days, keep your money and wait for a sale. Because I'll put money down this game is going to discount faster than Chinese baby food. Every 30 seconds you're going to notice what the game isn't doing more than what it is doing.
And let's not forget that it's fairly buggy too.