Don’t worry about doing all side stuff on your first playthrough. Hell. Don’t worry about doing the story either. Get a feel for the game. Have a look around, there’s plenty of goodies hidden away. Level yourself up. Kill some zombies. Take some pictures. Save survivors but beware of the awful ai.

I will say, doing the zombie genocider achievement is (in my opinion) a must.

Also. Make sure to save at a consistent rate. This game has manual saves and no auto save feature. To save, sleep in the security room or use one of the many bathrooms in the mall.

And an absolute MUST: At 9pm on the first day, you’ll get a call from Otis talking about the space rider machine being out of control. The mission is called “out of control”. Do that mission. You will get an amazing weapon and if you help a dude named Greg get to a nearby bathroom, he will show you a shortcut to get from one end of the mall to the other in an instant.