Review for Overkill's The Walking Dead. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 06/11/2018 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 01/02/2019 The version for Xbox One came out on 01/02/2019
The Walking Dead brand is certainly not one of the luckiest examples of video game-TV series pairing; also the last bastion represented by the Telltale series has suffered its collapse with the bankruptcy of the software house. Overkill's The Walking Dead, therefore, he carries on his not so powerful shoulders an exaggerated burden, that is the mission to relaunch the aforementioned binomial in the eyes of the fans and maybe even show that the zombies still have something to say. Unfortunately, in the current state of affairs, the mission does not seem to have been fulfilled and today we explain why.
First, the title developed by the guys from OverKill is in line with the concept with what was proposed in Payday (but already before with Valve's Left 4 Dead), based on cooperation in a purely online FPS with a character progression. The missions should be at the center of the scene, entertaining the players by force and narrative, enticing them with a solid and at least exciting gameplay (Left 4 Dead teaches them). Here, Let's start by saying that the campaign, set in Washington, allows you to visit a devastated US capital, but it does so with weak, not very charismatic and too banal missions, with mechanics that find interesting ideas too rarely to give consistency to the adventure. Not even the four characters, differentiated and characterized well, are able to give the necessary push to lift the title from some quicksand that will hardly pass over time. The characters influence the gameplay: in fact, they will have unique and peculiar characteristics (such as damage bonuses based on the type of weapon equipped) that should in the original idea stratify the gameplay making a well-matched and strategically planned team, more effective than a chaotic and disheartened. Unfortunately, however, the scarcity of ammunition and the total flatness of the missions mean that all the beautiful premises set in the original idea disappear once you enter the game.
Even the aspects related to the growth of the character and the development of the camp are not satisfactory. Mind you, the idea of having a character that grows, enhances and unlocks new features that can be used in-game, for Overkill's The Walking Dead was the optimal and most appropriate choice; on balance, however, once again betrays his intentions in practice, presenting useless skills, often superfluous or irrelevant in order to improve progression in the missions. In short, the absence of a full-bodied background, of a preponderant narrative that tells the desolation of a humanity at the end of its existence as we know it; and addicting gameplay that incentivizes the player to progress to prove that mangling zombies in multiple ways is the only way to salvation is truly disheartening, precisely because the potential for a great title was all there. Even from the online gaming ecosystem side, the level is low, or at least questionable. The matchmaking times are tedious, the stability is ridiculous to say the least and the problems due to the connection are reflected in-game with exaggerated input lag, continuous teleportations and many other problems that have forced us to restart the game several times.
On the graphic side, however, Overkill's The Walking Dead is certainly not the top of the range, but for being an always online title, it certainly has some interesting ideas, especially in the reproduction of Washington and in the characterization of the main characters.
However, what we would like to emphasize again is that although the title provides a substantial post-launch support with the addition of new characters and content, the current structure of the game with repetitive missions is not enough to make the offer very lame. mid-city exploration missions with horde-style missions) and narratively shallow missions. Last but not least is the balance: ok that we are in the game set in a zombie apocalypse, ok that the game wants to offer a strong survival component, but if you empty a magazine on a beloved undead, the latter must go down, do not resist impassive and attack you as if nothing had happened. The player's damage is extremely low even after unlocking different skills, and the level of the zombies always seems to be a notch above, offering that component of excessive frustration that in a game like this must remain a slight thread not to be bypassed..
Overkill's The Walking Dead is a work in power, a great missed title that fails to put into practice more than good ideas. A title in which that taste of wasted opportunity prevails that distinguishes the of The Walking Dead brand with some videogame genres. Too bad, we come to say, precisely because with a bit of more narrative and that attention to detail that a title like this must have, we would certainly have talked about a different game, a winning experience, an experience worthy of the name The Walking Dead .
► Overkill's The Walking Dead is a Survival-type game developed by Overkill Software and published by 505 Games for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 06/11/2018 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 01/02/2019 The version for Xbox One came out on 01/02/2019
