Barely worth a rental, nothing more.
The Walking Dead: Survival Instincts brings you into an apocalyptic world where zombies roam the land. Throughout the game you play as Daryl Dixon, one of the main characters from the television show. In Survival Instincts, the story line gives players and fans of The Walking Dead and insight look of how Daryl, and his brother Merle Dixon, met up with the main group and what they went through before that time occurred as well as show how Daryl achieved his ever-so famous crossbow.
The Graphics
Graphics quality in Survival Instincts somewhat lacks a dynamic punch, for example a walkers, otherwise known as a zombie, hair looks like it was made of glue or clay then molded onto the head. However, the diversity of each walkers face has it's own unique pattern of bite marks, scratches, shapes of the jaw, teeth and more, these all add to a good fright factor at the right moment of time e.g in a dark room, turning round and a walker attacks you out of no where. There are a great amount of bugs relating to graphics, such as broken fence pieces still floating midair, gates flashing black when opened, walkers floating when killed. All around missions have invisible walls, preventing you from going further away from the current map without any sort of police barricade, for example, taking away a bit of the realistic touch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVG_d9_lLM0
The Mechanics
The AI is very sloppy, throughout gameplay I had opened a metal fence and the walkers still attacked the fence, paying no attention to me whatsoever, I then began to kill them one by one. When one walker died another took its place, as if they were lining up to die. The scavenging mechanics allow you to gather survivors and send them out to gather supplies, but the amount of survivors depends on the size of the car you currently have. That said, there are missions that allow you to find car keys to either bigger, or smaller, cars. When sending out survivors to scavenge for supplies, there is always a chance of getting them killed by walkers, depending on what item you give them to defend themselves with as each survivor has their own skill trait such as being good at using blunt weapons. The game includes a feature where the player can choose a method of travel such as highways, streets and backroads. Depending on what method you choose, one method can either consume less fuel or another method may take a road such as backroads where it consumes a lot of fuel with a high chance of breaking down. If, by chance, your car breaks down or runs out of fuel, a side mission will take place allowing you to scavenge the nearby area for fuel or car hose. The issue with the side missions is that they're very repetitive, as there are about 3-4 different areas.
The Gameplay
It felt a bit stiff trying to kill walkers, e.g using the sledgehammer was a lot quicker than normal. One thing that gives a good addition to gameplay is sneaking around, trying to sneak past walkers and stealth killing them by sneaking up from behind and executing the stealth kill action. Like any realistic movie or game, gun fire attracts walkers to your location so be sure to only use your gun in dire situations and ammo is scarce to watch out, you don't want to run out of ammo when you desperately need it. If you ever happen to get grabbed by a walker, it activates a grappling mechanic where the player must place the circle onto the walkers head, activate the attack trigger and stab them in the head. This method breaks fighting gameplay by 50% due to the fact after killing the walker that grabbed you, if there is another walker, it will grab you almost instantly after you let go of the previous walker, this allows you to kill over 15 walkers without using any ammo, losing any health and just drains the fun and realism out of the game entirely. On the last mission, near the very end the last thing you did is mount a military vehicles machine gun and kill any incoming zombies, after which it cuts to black screen and goes to the credits, without showing you how exactly Daryl and Merle met the group like the game was purposely made for.
Final Verdict
The game seems rushed, only to gain quick money. For the price of $49.99 or £31.99 makes the game a complete rip off, due to the lack of effort of the game. I feel the only reason fans of The Walking Dead need to buy this game, is to play as Daryl Dixon and get to see Merle, even though he is barely in the game. A poor effort to a great series that could have become something incredible if more time was put into it.