The Walking Dead Survival Instinct Review

The Walking Dead Survival Instinct Review | May 8, 2013
Xbox, Windows, PlayStation, Nintendo

Video games and zombies work well together mostly. When you add in a comic book with a loyal fan base, a very successful TV show and one extremely good video game in the franchise already out there our expectations were very high. This is a prequel to The Walking Dead TV show. It centers on Daryl and Merle Dixon and what they were doing when the outbreak happened and how they ended up in Atlanta. The Walking Dead Survival Instinct is a 1st person shooter/melee and fails to meet anybody’s expectations for what a video game should be. It is just a wasteful and reckless use of The Walking Dead Name. We are disappointed of how bad this game is.

This game has problems from the first time you try to aim. The whole thing makes no sense and has control issues in every way you can think of. The game is set up exactly like the TV show and that is the problem. You can stop the walkers by destroying their brains so your aim has to be perfect every time, hitting a zombie anywhere else does no damage. If you use a gun to take out a walker and there are ten walkers close enough to hear it then you now have ten zombies trying to eat you. The problem gets worse because you can’t out run them and they never stop chasing you unless you get into a building with a metal door or in an area where you can climb up a ladder. The combat is predictable. If a zombie attacks you, you have to hit it three times then wait a second and hit it again, and then it dies. Or, it grabs you and you have to do a mini game where you have to time your strike perfectly and if another walker gets close enough while you are fighting off the first one you have to do it again to the second zombie and then the third and fourth or you just die. You are always taking damage every time there is more than one zombie and when you die you only get half of your life bar refilled.

The combat is not the only bad part. The inventory menu makes it too hard to find the weapon or health you are looking for so you keep getting attacked. You can’t look down the ladder to see if there are zombies there before you climb down and then you get attacked or die because there was a zombie there you could not see. Walkers literally appear out of thin air right behind you after you have cleared out an area. There are very few save points and if you die you have to restart far away from your forward progress. If you stop playing you have to restart the level. It gets even more frustrating when the game freezes up and you have to start over. Even something as simple as being able to pick up items is a test of your nerves.

There are large periods of time where nothing is happening and you are just watching a car drive down the road showing progress on a map. You find survivors but they are useless and if your car can only hold one extra person and you have two in your group, then you just leave someone behind and never see them again. The game is only about 5 to 7 hours long but it is so bad you don’t even want to play it let alone finish it. The only good thing about is that Norman Reedus and Michael Rooker (actors from the TV show) voice the Dixon brothers and there is this silent take down part of the combat that works perfectly every time. About half way through you get an ax and the crossbow, these two weapons make the combat better but not good enough to save the game. The game is really boring, frustrating and a waste of your money.

5.0 out of 10
Not Worth Your Money

5.0 out of 10
Not Worth Your Money

Rated
M for Mature

Rated
PEGI 18