The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct

It's been a while since I've gone over a game hasn't it? All the way back in July last year. I had wanted to do 'An Hour of:' of 'Dishonored', 'Halo 4', 'Darksiders 2', but I just never did them. It was also recently that I was saying that a new zombie game had to come out soon. Well, I had lent my 'Left 4 Dead' games out, and I wasn't particularly in the mood for the 'Dead Rising' games or Tell Tales 'The Walking Dead'. 'Dead Island'  eventually came to my rescue, what with 'Riptide' coming out soon and I needed to complete it.

And then Terminal Reality and Activision's 'The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct' enters the frame. Terminal Reality, as it turns out, I have no experience with as I have never played any of their previous games. Activision though are behind the 'Spyro the Dragon' series (One of favourite franchises - though they did the reboot series), the Tony Hawk's skateboarding franchise (Which got boring after 'Underground'), 'Call of Duty' (Which you could argue is starting to get boring), and 'Guitar Hero' (Which started to get boring after 'Legends of Rock').

Survival Instinct follows the backstory of Daryl and Merle Dixon and how they made their way to Atlanta. And yes, they did get Norman Reedus and Michael Rooker (Respectively) to voice their characters, and that's really good. Most games based on films/television shows would have just gotten an impersonator. Actually I think Activision is the only company to have gotten the actual actor to voice his character in any movie/TV show adapted game. Video games are getting better though, I will admit that.

We start off taking control of 'Dixon' on a hunting trip. It's the tutorial level, you know, the one where we're told how to do the basics. So really, first impressions are rather dull. Do you remember the opening to the TV series? We get a lot from A. Rick's encounter with the girl zombie and B. the interaction between Shane and Rick. Here, I have no idea who Buck is, I have no idea who Jess is, Hell, I have no idea who I am.

And that turns out to actually be a good thing. I thought we were controlling Darryl, however, as it turns out, we were playing a false protagonist, his dad Will. We see the horror and the sadness in his face at seeing his father in such dying. Which is weird seeing as how in the episode 'Home' it seems that Darryl didn't particularly like his dad due to abuse he received in childhood. But maybe there's more to it, I don't know, we're not told. But this and the opening credits is actually quite good, and it fits into the Walking Dead theme quite well.

We then control Darryl, escaping the woodland area before heading to Sedalia. The combat, is okay...ish. It's easy to master, and that's mainly because there's only two buttons. Well, three including aim. The problem is that if there's more than one zombie, you will most likely get hit, since there's no block function. Yes, I know 'Dead Island' also didn't have a block function, but at least there you could hit the zombies with one swing, at least you could knock the zombies back with your weapon. Here, the most a blunt object can do is knock the head of one zombie slightly to the right. And it takes four hits. With the earlier weapons anyway.

Another thing we come across is stealth. This is a pretty good feature, sneaking up on your target to take them out quietly. Or at least it somewhat similar to that. The thing is you can just nonchalantly walk up behind a walker and execute them. And it's so easy I'm surprised I haven't gotten the achievement for killing fifty of them (this way) yet. That and the execution appears to use the same animation, I think only once or twice has it changed.

They've also implemented a sprint feature, which depletes as the character gets tired. The problem is he gets tired after about five seconds. Again 'Dead Island' had a stamina feature, where it was actually good. This is like the first stamina feature used in one of the WWE games where the wrestler gets exhausted after three moves. According to this game, I am fitter than Darryl since I can run longer. And I am not the fastest guy ever.

There's also a survivor feature, something along the lines of 'Dead Rising', but it's not really explored. You can pick up survivors at locations, though it isn't well executed at the first location (Implying it improves later on, whether it does I don't know). In Sedalia you can find two survivors, the problem is you can only keep one because your vehicle can't hold them all. It's good and bad. It's good because, yeah, you're not driving a clown car. You can't stuff fifty people into a two seat car. The problem is we're forced into dismissing a survivor (Even though one can just get in the back of the pick-up truck), and in a world where the dead are rising. We're basically giving whoever it is a death sentence. We even get an achievement for this. Then again it isn't the only achievement we get for failing. We get one for dying thirteen times and for five survivors dying while scavenging. Then again there's a glitch for the one which says distract fifty walkers; it unlocks after one.

I have to say, I do like how the zombies act in this game. Like taking care of one is very easy, two is easy, three gets difficult, any more and you're really screwed. Kind of like how the zombie experience should be; alone they're weak, but dangerous in large numbers. Not only that, but the zombies can hear and smell. Well, the hearing part is down no problem, the smell part is, as far as I'm aware, nonexistent. There are some other downsides, like making sure that the corridor you're in is zombie free, go into a room for five seconds to get something, come out, and a zombie is standing there waiting to grab you. The walkers just pop up from nowhere half the time. And I do literally mean nowhere. There is also a zombie hug feature where, if the zombie grapples you, it initiates a mini game where you need to stab the walker in the head. If there's another zombie then it'll also grab you the second you kill the initial zombie. Unless you kick it away. It's a good looking feature, but you can get hurt very easily in this. In fact you'd be lucky to come out of it with half your health intact.

Now, originally this was going to be 'An Hour of' posting, but partway through I had to go do something else. When I came back however, I found that I had to start the location again. Apparently there aren't any checkpoints in this, except for when you get to a new location. The game play though is fairly simple. It's, sort of open world, you can choose where to go when you want to, but you do still have to follow a certain track. This is okay, you don't get lost, but at the same time you do still need to investigate and scavenge the area, either for health items, weapons, collectibles (Which are stuffed squirrels. Kind of fitting when Darryl ate one raw in season two and normally hunts them for food), and side mission objectives.

The graphics though are good and bad. At times you can see a lot of detail, like in the woods, but at other times it looks so...bland. Heck, I wouldn't have given it much though if I hadn't have watched Total Biscuit's video prior to playing, but the best example would be when you get to Sedalia. Look to you left and you can see some good graphics and a fair bit of detail, look ahead towards the town and everything seems to slow down and appear to be...I won't say Playstation One graphics, but it's not what you'd expect the current generation of consoles to have.

When people first heard of this game, they basically said from the start that the game was going to suck. I normally tend to actually play the finished game before making a decision on whether it's good or bad. And this game, isn't finished. It's not bad, per se, but it's not great either. It's okay. The general census, and I have to agree, is that the game was rushed out. Not sure why, there wasn't anything for it to coincide with; unless it wanted to coincide with the finale of season three. The graphics can be messy, the combat and executions repetitive, the game play can be off, and yet with the ideas this game has, and focusing on one of the popular characters from the television series, it really deserved more. Really what this game needed was to be tweeked for a couple more months, then it could have been a really good game.

If you want to play a really good Walking Dead game

Get the Telltale one. Or get this one if you're a die hard fan.