The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct dropped about two minutes of footage the other day and, well, it’s about what you’d expect from the guys who made Ghostbusters: The Game.
Leaving aside the Serious Sam-esque sledgehammer and slower swarming, we find ourselves asking a few questions about this game.
The most relevant being… what does this have that the literally dozens of other zombie shooters on the market don’t? Aside from a popular license and the ability to play as Daryl and Merle? Honestly, even the license is confusing: Telltale Games’ hit adventure game is based on the comics, but this game is based on the TV show. We’re sure a movie based on the video games is in development.
Ribbing aside, Terminal Reality, the development team, are not incompetent: They’ve done everything from flight sims to action games to racing games to ports of SNK games. They’ve been around the block a few times.
OK, so they are to blame for Kinect Star Wars, but they can make an action video game. They made the BloodRayne series, and that only died thanks to Uwe Boll. They’ve also done survival horror before, having developed cult classic Nocturne, so really, if any developer is qualified for this, it’s them.
The footage, although brief, does have a nice Far Cry 3 feel to it, with the stealth and the ability to sneak past your foes if necessary. Being able to creep up on and stab a bunch of zombies in their rotting gray matter never really gets old. It also must be said that this is obviously pre-alpha footage set in one level of the game, so we can’t draw too many conclusions.
Still, come on, guys. We can stab zombies in most perspectives and genres any day of the week. Give us something new, as tricky as that might be.