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This thread has been linked to the game 'The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct'.
It's not usually a good sign when a game is released without any reviews appearing in the online or offline press. Granted, it's not unheard of for games companies to offer certain website exclusive reviews - often in return for hyping the game up somewhat. But for no reviews at all to appear? It usually means the product is so poor that the games company behind the game thinks it'll damage potential sales. Aliens: Colonial Marines is a case in point. No reviews were put out prior to the game's and the game was awful. So given that a similar situation has arise with The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, you might be feeling a little suspicious. I know I was.
The good news? The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, isn't as bad as Aliens: Colonial Marines. The bad news? It just isn't very good, and is an exercise in total mediocrity. It's not surprising, since the game was churned out in a relatively short period of time, possibly to ride on the coattails of the TV show's popularity. It's also got nothing at all to do with Telltale's The Walking Dead adventure game series, which is superior in every way. The game casts you as Daryl Dixon, one of the show's main characters, who is searching for his brother. Sadly you don't get to play as his brother Merle, since I'd love to see the Daily Mail freak about the game run around as that openly racist redneck. The two aforementioned characters do lend their voices to the game, but generally sound like they really don't want to be there.
Survival Instinct actually takes place before the events of the TV series, just as the outbreak has begun. As soon as you load up the game you'll be struck by just how poor the graphics look, resembling an early X-Box 360 launch title. The first level serves as an intro to the whole affair, with you encountering a bunch of zombies on a hunting trip. There's sort of a little twist there, which I won't spoil, but you'll pretty soon be familiar with the game's format, which involves roaming around, hitting zombies with a blunt object, backing off a bit, and repeating. Yes, you can use guns but typically they attract more zombies so it's not a good idea to use them unless you're really stuck. It's also a pretty linear level, but it's just the intro, right? It must get better, surely? Er, no.
And that's possibly the game's biggest problem. Most survival games - which this pretends to be - give you a lot of freedom. The Walking Dead's levels are pretty linear. The game itself is essentially a road-trip, which is one of the title's few semi-innovative features, and gives you the opportunity to choose whether you avoid main roads or whatever when you drive to your next destination. You may have to stop to pick up fuel or repair your car. The thing is, once you reach a stop, which can include a diner, a motel or a few other locations, you have relatively little freedom to explore. You'll find yourself running into artificial walls - a truck deliberately placed in your way to block you, or worse case scenario, invisible walls. This is annoying at the best of times, but when you're being chased by zombies it can be incredible infuriating to take hits just because there's an invisible wall stopping you getting over a tiny pile of debris.
But fighting zombies is fun, right? Dead Rising and Dead Island proved that, didn't they? Yes they did. But the zombies in Survival Instinct are so completely wonky and inconsistent as to be a source of frustration and occasionally humour rather than being genuinely scary. For a start, some of the zombie encounters are totally scripted, meaning that you can happily smash away at the zombie corpses on the ground only to have them spring to life when you're on the way back from your objective. Sometimes the game actively teleports zombie hordes in. Granted, Left 4 Dead did this - another superior game - but in this game, the zombies actually teleport in front of you on occasions. And the ones that wander around are a bit laughable too. Being stealthy is supposed to be the order of the day, but I was able to stand about five feet away, hitting my hammer against a door-frame without any of them noticing me. When they finally did notice me, I was able to avoid them by crouching and sitting under a truck whereupon they instantly turned around and walked off.
When you do get into a fight with the living dead, combat is a fairly mundane affair. You can perform quick kills if you get behind a zombie, but Daryl always uses his knife for some reason. If you fight them face on, you just swing away at them with whatever weapon you have, which takes four hits or so. If a zombie gets really close, you go into a sort of quick time/aiming style mini event where you quickly move the cursor to stab them in the face. But what if you get a bunch together, right? Zombies are really scary in numbers, aren't they? In theory, but in Survival Instinct, you just do the same mini game, several times in a row. Yes, really. Even if you're mobbed by ten zombies, the mini-game auto-plays for each zombie in turn until they're all dead. It is possible to fail and get killed but it's quite hard and it stops the game being suspenseful at all.
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct does have its occasional good moments. One time I found myself on the top of a car, with the dead all around me. However, the impact of this moment was diminished by the fact that I realised they didn't do anything other than pawing lamely at the air in my direction, and that I could hit them with my weapon, one by one, till they died, putting myself in no danger whatsoever. The fact you can recruit other survivors - and give them off-screen tasks to do - does sound interesting, but you never learn anything much about them so if they do die, again, usually off-screen, their deaths have no real impact.. And the storyline itself is pretty poor, as are the locations, which often seem a bit samey. This is the complete opposite of Telltale's The Walking Dead series of games, which were absolutely superb with a great storyline and characters who you actually cared about.
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct feels like it should be a budget title, but it unfortunately isn't. It's a full price release with very little to offer zombie fans, stealth fans or anyone who just likes the series. If you want a good Walking Dead game, try Telltale's The Walking Dead. Or if it's just zombies you want, then Dead Island and Dead Rising 1/2 are excellent. This is just a cheap cash that is maybe worth renting for a day or so but which is so utterly mediocre as to make purchasing it a waste of money.
Pros:
It's got zombies in it.
Cons:
It's pretty dull.
The zombie AI is wonky at best.
The combat is repetitive.
So are the levels.
The graphics are dated.
Score: 4 out of 10.
The good news? The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, isn't as bad as Aliens: Colonial Marines. The bad news? It just isn't very good, and is an exercise in total mediocrity. It's not surprising, since the game was churned out in a relatively short period of time, possibly to ride on the coattails of the TV show's popularity. It's also got nothing at all to do with Telltale's The Walking Dead adventure game series, which is superior in every way. The game casts you as Daryl Dixon, one of the show's main characters, who is searching for his brother. Sadly you don't get to play as his brother Merle, since I'd love to see the Daily Mail freak about the game run around as that openly racist redneck. The two aforementioned characters do lend their voices to the game, but generally sound like they really don't want to be there.
Survival Instinct actually takes place before the events of the TV series, just as the outbreak has begun. As soon as you load up the game you'll be struck by just how poor the graphics look, resembling an early X-Box 360 launch title. The first level serves as an intro to the whole affair, with you encountering a bunch of zombies on a hunting trip. There's sort of a little twist there, which I won't spoil, but you'll pretty soon be familiar with the game's format, which involves roaming around, hitting zombies with a blunt object, backing off a bit, and repeating. Yes, you can use guns but typically they attract more zombies so it's not a good idea to use them unless you're really stuck. It's also a pretty linear level, but it's just the intro, right? It must get better, surely? Er, no.
And that's possibly the game's biggest problem. Most survival games - which this pretends to be - give you a lot of freedom. The Walking Dead's levels are pretty linear. The game itself is essentially a road-trip, which is one of the title's few semi-innovative features, and gives you the opportunity to choose whether you avoid main roads or whatever when you drive to your next destination. You may have to stop to pick up fuel or repair your car. The thing is, once you reach a stop, which can include a diner, a motel or a few other locations, you have relatively little freedom to explore. You'll find yourself running into artificial walls - a truck deliberately placed in your way to block you, or worse case scenario, invisible walls. This is annoying at the best of times, but when you're being chased by zombies it can be incredible infuriating to take hits just because there's an invisible wall stopping you getting over a tiny pile of debris.
But fighting zombies is fun, right? Dead Rising and Dead Island proved that, didn't they? Yes they did. But the zombies in Survival Instinct are so completely wonky and inconsistent as to be a source of frustration and occasionally humour rather than being genuinely scary. For a start, some of the zombie encounters are totally scripted, meaning that you can happily smash away at the zombie corpses on the ground only to have them spring to life when you're on the way back from your objective. Sometimes the game actively teleports zombie hordes in. Granted, Left 4 Dead did this - another superior game - but in this game, the zombies actually teleport in front of you on occasions. And the ones that wander around are a bit laughable too. Being stealthy is supposed to be the order of the day, but I was able to stand about five feet away, hitting my hammer against a door-frame without any of them noticing me. When they finally did notice me, I was able to avoid them by crouching and sitting under a truck whereupon they instantly turned around and walked off.
When you do get into a fight with the living dead, combat is a fairly mundane affair. You can perform quick kills if you get behind a zombie, but Daryl always uses his knife for some reason. If you fight them face on, you just swing away at them with whatever weapon you have, which takes four hits or so. If a zombie gets really close, you go into a sort of quick time/aiming style mini event where you quickly move the cursor to stab them in the face. But what if you get a bunch together, right? Zombies are really scary in numbers, aren't they? In theory, but in Survival Instinct, you just do the same mini game, several times in a row. Yes, really. Even if you're mobbed by ten zombies, the mini-game auto-plays for each zombie in turn until they're all dead. It is possible to fail and get killed but it's quite hard and it stops the game being suspenseful at all.
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct does have its occasional good moments. One time I found myself on the top of a car, with the dead all around me. However, the impact of this moment was diminished by the fact that I realised they didn't do anything other than pawing lamely at the air in my direction, and that I could hit them with my weapon, one by one, till they died, putting myself in no danger whatsoever. The fact you can recruit other survivors - and give them off-screen tasks to do - does sound interesting, but you never learn anything much about them so if they do die, again, usually off-screen, their deaths have no real impact.. And the storyline itself is pretty poor, as are the locations, which often seem a bit samey. This is the complete opposite of Telltale's The Walking Dead series of games, which were absolutely superb with a great storyline and characters who you actually cared about.
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct feels like it should be a budget title, but it unfortunately isn't. It's a full price release with very little to offer zombie fans, stealth fans or anyone who just likes the series. If you want a good Walking Dead game, try Telltale's The Walking Dead. Or if it's just zombies you want, then Dead Island and Dead Rising 1/2 are excellent. This is just a cheap cash that is maybe worth renting for a day or so but which is so utterly mediocre as to make purchasing it a waste of money.
Pros:
It's got zombies in it.
Cons:
It's pretty dull.
The zombie AI is wonky at best.
The combat is repetitive.
So are the levels.
The graphics are dated.
Score: 4 out of 10.
Nope, there's nothing more you need to know. Dead Island: Riptide'll probably be a better option if you've already played Telltale's Walking Dead Game.
I actually loaded the game up again, because I thought I'd give it one more try. About two minutes into the game, I ended up in a room with a zombie banging on the door outside. I opened the door, leaving it at a ninety degree angle. The zombie standing there then turns to face the now opened door and starts banging on it again. What a load of buggy rubbish.
I actually loaded the game up again, because I thought I'd give it one more try. About two minutes into the game, I ended up in a room with a zombie banging on the door outside. I opened the door, leaving it at a ninety degree angle. The zombie standing there then turns to face the now opened door and starts banging on it again. What a load of buggy rubbish.
Ouch! I just watched about twenty seconds of a trailer for this.
Would it be fair to say that I really don't need anything more to know that it's one game I won't be buying?
Ugly just really doesn't sum it up.
Would it be fair to say that I really don't need anything more to know that it's one game I won't be buying?
Ugly just really doesn't sum it up.
It's not usually a good sign when a game is released without any reviews appearing in the online or offline press. Granted, it's not unheard of for games companies to offer certain website exclusive reviews - often in return for hyping the game up somewhat. But for no reviews at all to appear? It usually means the product is so poor that the games company behind the game thinks it'll damage potential sales. Aliens: Colonial Marines is a case in point. No reviews were put out prior to the game's and the game was awful. So given that a similar situation has arise with The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, you might be feeling a little suspicious. I know I was.
The good news? The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, isn't as bad as Aliens: Colonial Marines. The bad news? It just isn't very good, and is an exercise in total mediocrity. It's not surprising, since the game was churned out in a relatively short period of time, possibly to ride on the coattails of the TV show's popularity. It's also got nothing at all to do with Telltale's The Walking Dead adventure game series, which is superior in every way. The game casts you as Daryl Dixon, one of the show's main characters, who is searching for his brother. Sadly you don't get to play as his brother Merle, since I'd love to see the Daily Mail freak about the game run around as that openly racist redneck. The two aforementioned characters do lend their voices to the game, but generally sound like they really don't want to be there.
Survival Instinct actually takes place before the events of the TV series, just as the outbreak has begun. As soon as you load up the game you'll be struck by just how poor the graphics look, resembling an early X-Box 360 launch title. The first level serves as an intro to the whole affair, with you encountering a bunch of zombies on a hunting trip. There's sort of a little twist there, which I won't spoil, but you'll pretty soon be familiar with the game's format, which involves roaming around, hitting zombies with a blunt object, backing off a bit, and repeating. Yes, you can use guns but typically they attract more zombies so it's not a good idea to use them unless you're really stuck. It's also a pretty linear level, but it's just the intro, right? It must get better, surely? Er, no.
And that's possibly the game's biggest problem. Most survival games - which this pretends to be - give you a lot of freedom. The Walking Dead's levels are pretty linear. The game itself is essentially a road-trip, which is one of the title's few semi-innovative features, and gives you the opportunity to choose whether you avoid main roads or whatever when you drive to your next destination. You may have to stop to pick up fuel or repair your car. The thing is, once you reach a stop, which can include a diner, a motel or a few other locations, you have relatively little freedom to explore. You'll find yourself running into artificial walls - a truck deliberately placed in your way to block you, or worse case scenario, invisible walls. This is annoying at the best of times, but when you're being chased by zombies it can be incredible infuriating to take hits just because there's an invisible wall stopping you getting over a tiny pile of debris.
But fighting zombies is fun, right? Dead Rising and Dead Island proved that, didn't they? Yes they did. But the zombies in Survival Instinct are so completely wonky and inconsistent as to be a source of frustration and occasionally humour rather than being genuinely scary. For a start, some of the zombie encounters are totally scripted, meaning that you can happily smash away at the zombie corpses on the ground only to have them spring to life when you're on the way back from your objective. Sometimes the game actively teleports zombie hordes in. Granted, Left 4 Dead did this - another superior game - but in this game, the zombies actually teleport in front of you on occasions. And the ones that wander around are a bit laughable too. Being stealthy is supposed to be the order of the day, but I was able to stand about five feet away, hitting my hammer against a door-frame without any of them noticing me. When they finally did notice me, I was able to avoid them by crouching and sitting under a truck whereupon they instantly turned around and walked off.
When you do get into a fight with the living dead, combat is a fairly mundane affair. You can perform quick kills if you get behind a zombie, but Daryl always uses his knife for some reason. If you fight them face on, you just swing away at them with whatever weapon you have, which takes four hits or so. If a zombie gets really close, you go into a sort of quick time/aiming style mini event where you quickly move the cursor to stab them in the face. But what if you get a bunch together, right? Zombies are really scary in numbers, aren't they? In theory, but in Survival Instinct, you just do the same mini game, several times in a row. Yes, really. Even if you're mobbed by ten zombies, the mini-game auto-plays for each zombie in turn until they're all dead. It is possible to fail and get killed but it's quite hard and it stops the game being suspenseful at all.
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct does have its occasional good moments. One time I found myself on the top of a car, with the dead all around me. However, the impact of this moment was diminished by the fact that I realised they didn't do anything other than pawing lamely at the air in my direction, and that I could hit them with my weapon, one by one, till they died, putting myself in no danger whatsoever. The fact you can recruit other survivors - and give them off-screen tasks to do - does sound interesting, but you never learn anything much about them so if they do die, again, usually off-screen, their deaths have no real impact.. And the storyline itself is pretty poor, as are the locations, which often seem a bit samey. This is the complete opposite of Telltale's The Walking Dead series of games, which were absolutely superb with a great storyline and characters who you actually cared about.
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct feels like it should be a budget title, but it unfortunately isn't. It's a full price release with very little to offer zombie fans, stealth fans or anyone who just likes the series. If you want a good Walking Dead game, try Telltale's The Walking Dead. Or if it's just zombies you want, then Dead Island and Dead Rising 1/2 are excellent. This is just a cheap cash that is maybe worth renting for a day or so but which is so utterly mediocre as to make purchasing it a waste of money.
Pros:
It's got zombies in it.
Cons:
It's pretty dull.
The zombie AI is wonky at best.
The combat is repetitive.
So are the levels.
The graphics are dated.
Score: 4 out of 10.
The good news? The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, isn't as bad as Aliens: Colonial Marines. The bad news? It just isn't very good, and is an exercise in total mediocrity. It's not surprising, since the game was churned out in a relatively short period of time, possibly to ride on the coattails of the TV show's popularity. It's also got nothing at all to do with Telltale's The Walking Dead adventure game series, which is superior in every way. The game casts you as Daryl Dixon, one of the show's main characters, who is searching for his brother. Sadly you don't get to play as his brother Merle, since I'd love to see the Daily Mail freak about the game run around as that openly racist redneck. The two aforementioned characters do lend their voices to the game, but generally sound like they really don't want to be there.
Survival Instinct actually takes place before the events of the TV series, just as the outbreak has begun. As soon as you load up the game you'll be struck by just how poor the graphics look, resembling an early X-Box 360 launch title. The first level serves as an intro to the whole affair, with you encountering a bunch of zombies on a hunting trip. There's sort of a little twist there, which I won't spoil, but you'll pretty soon be familiar with the game's format, which involves roaming around, hitting zombies with a blunt object, backing off a bit, and repeating. Yes, you can use guns but typically they attract more zombies so it's not a good idea to use them unless you're really stuck. It's also a pretty linear level, but it's just the intro, right? It must get better, surely? Er, no.
And that's possibly the game's biggest problem. Most survival games - which this pretends to be - give you a lot of freedom. The Walking Dead's levels are pretty linear. The game itself is essentially a road-trip, which is one of the title's few semi-innovative features, and gives you the opportunity to choose whether you avoid main roads or whatever when you drive to your next destination. You may have to stop to pick up fuel or repair your car. The thing is, once you reach a stop, which can include a diner, a motel or a few other locations, you have relatively little freedom to explore. You'll find yourself running into artificial walls - a truck deliberately placed in your way to block you, or worse case scenario, invisible walls. This is annoying at the best of times, but when you're being chased by zombies it can be incredible infuriating to take hits just because there's an invisible wall stopping you getting over a tiny pile of debris.
But fighting zombies is fun, right? Dead Rising and Dead Island proved that, didn't they? Yes they did. But the zombies in Survival Instinct are so completely wonky and inconsistent as to be a source of frustration and occasionally humour rather than being genuinely scary. For a start, some of the zombie encounters are totally scripted, meaning that you can happily smash away at the zombie corpses on the ground only to have them spring to life when you're on the way back from your objective. Sometimes the game actively teleports zombie hordes in. Granted, Left 4 Dead did this - another superior game - but in this game, the zombies actually teleport in front of you on occasions. And the ones that wander around are a bit laughable too. Being stealthy is supposed to be the order of the day, but I was able to stand about five feet away, hitting my hammer against a door-frame without any of them noticing me. When they finally did notice me, I was able to avoid them by crouching and sitting under a truck whereupon they instantly turned around and walked off.
When you do get into a fight with the living dead, combat is a fairly mundane affair. You can perform quick kills if you get behind a zombie, but Daryl always uses his knife for some reason. If you fight them face on, you just swing away at them with whatever weapon you have, which takes four hits or so. If a zombie gets really close, you go into a sort of quick time/aiming style mini event where you quickly move the cursor to stab them in the face. But what if you get a bunch together, right? Zombies are really scary in numbers, aren't they? In theory, but in Survival Instinct, you just do the same mini game, several times in a row. Yes, really. Even if you're mobbed by ten zombies, the mini-game auto-plays for each zombie in turn until they're all dead. It is possible to fail and get killed but it's quite hard and it stops the game being suspenseful at all.
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct does have its occasional good moments. One time I found myself on the top of a car, with the dead all around me. However, the impact of this moment was diminished by the fact that I realised they didn't do anything other than pawing lamely at the air in my direction, and that I could hit them with my weapon, one by one, till they died, putting myself in no danger whatsoever. The fact you can recruit other survivors - and give them off-screen tasks to do - does sound interesting, but you never learn anything much about them so if they do die, again, usually off-screen, their deaths have no real impact.. And the storyline itself is pretty poor, as are the locations, which often seem a bit samey. This is the complete opposite of Telltale's The Walking Dead series of games, which were absolutely superb with a great storyline and characters who you actually cared about.
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct feels like it should be a budget title, but it unfortunately isn't. It's a full price release with very little to offer zombie fans, stealth fans or anyone who just likes the series. If you want a good Walking Dead game, try Telltale's The Walking Dead. Or if it's just zombies you want, then Dead Island and Dead Rising 1/2 are excellent. This is just a cheap cash that is maybe worth renting for a day or so but which is so utterly mediocre as to make purchasing it a waste of money.
Pros:
It's got zombies in it.
Cons:
It's pretty dull.
The zombie AI is wonky at best.
The combat is repetitive.
So are the levels.
The graphics are dated.
Score: 4 out of 10.