The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct Review

Shoot it in the head.

→ March 21, 2013 While games such as Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City stand as shining examples of how you can take a known franchise and lovingly make it into an awesome game, more often than not, licensed titles end up disappointing fans. That’s what The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct does; it gives licensed games a bad name.
It’s a damn shame, too. On paper, this concept is what I, as a fan of the AMC TV show, would love to see in a game. Acting as a prequel to the show, Survival Instinct tells the story of motorcycle-riding redneck Daryl Dixon from the moment the outbreak shambles into his life. Sweetening the pot, TV Daryl himself – actor Norman Reedus – shares his likeness and voice with his in-game counterpart, and his performance is actually spot-on. The same can be said for Michael Rooker, who reprises his role as Daryl’s (annoying) brother.
But that’s pretty much where The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct stops getting things right – or at least doing anything noteworthy. From here on out, it’s boilerplate first-person shooter mechanics paired with dated visuals and cool ideas that never develop into cool experiences.
You’ll get shotguns, pistols, and naturally that famed crossbow, but Survival Instinct doesn’t want you to run and gun. You’re supposed to sneak up on walkers and stealth-kill them with

your knife, throw bottles to distract the horde while you slip by, and stick to cover. The only problem is it does a bad job of giving us any reason to play by those rules. I played the first few missions this way, but eventually the flawed game design shone through. Rather than sneak past walkers on my way to an objective, I found I could ignore them and just sprint there. Sure, I’d have to deal with the last few walkers that saw me, but the first group would lose interest and give up the chase. Then, I'd climb on a car, woodpile, or other waist-high obstacle, wait for the second group swarm me, and simply stab them in the head one by one while shaking my head in disbelief at their inability to simply reach out and snatch me.
Another great idea that falls apart in practice is Survival Instinct’s take on resource management. There’s no real story here beyond just moving from place to place in hope of the eventual rescue we all know won't come, but you do get to choose where you’re going and how you get there. That may sound like it could be a cool form of exploration, but let me spoil that for you: every level is pretty much as angular and bland as the last. Knowing this, as I wish I had up front, nips that curiosity in the bud pretty quick. It's one of those "choices" that simply doesn't matter.
How you’re getting there boils down to one of three methods (ranging from back roads to highways) and each comes with unique pros and cons. Back roads give you more opportunities to scavenge, but they burn a lot of gas; highways burn little fuel, but they’re more prone to lead to a breakdown. Again, this sounds awesome – there's the danger of having to scour levels for gas cans while walkers wait around every corner if you're reckless – but The Walking Dead mucks it up.
If you break down on the open road, you’re dropped into one of a handful of tiny levels with a magic compass that points you straight to the car part you need. If you run out of gas, it’s back to one of the handful of pitstop levels to sprint around collecting the randomly placed gas cans. It swiftly goes from a solid concept to feeling like developer Terminal Reality included it just to pad the total game time, which only took me five and a half hours.
When you run into other survivors in your travels, you’ll get optional missions to complete and occasionally a new group member. Before you head out to the mission at hand, you can equip the members of the group with weapons and items you’ve procured and send them out to farm fuel, ammo and so on.
Know where this is going? It’s a fun idea – one Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker nailed – but it doesn’t work here. The survivors have no personality, no soul. I don’t care about them, so who cares if they die? If I run out of fuel, the game starts me in the aforementioned pit stops. These characters don’t matter – and it would appear the game agrees as the people don’t even get a line of dialogue if you kick them out of the group and basically sentence them to death by zombie. This is just a boring inventory system, and it could’ve been so much more.