Mulching zombies in an endless hunt for petrol just didn’t cut it even Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman distanced himself from a game that, many believed, was the closest yet to what might happen if a PS3 could get food poisoning. A first-person stealth shooter developed by Terminal Reality, with the player controlling Daryl Dixon on his way to Atlanta in the opening days of the outbreak, it initially had the look of a decently tense tie-in with its periods of creeping through dark buildings by flashlight, but was quickly let down by skin-deep gameplay, bland graphics and weak storyline. Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (2013)Īnyone that felt Season 1 didn’t quite live up to the TV show soon changed their tune after Survival Instinct. As it developed, it put the player into some brutal moral situations – an arm-sawing scene was particularly harsh – making the game an immersive and powerful experience for fans of arthouse animation who are also partial to heavily-signposted puzzles. Hobbled by lengthy cut-scenes, endless conversation choices and simplistic logic challenges involving clicking on circles a lot as you hunt for batteries for a radio and such like, Series 1 focussed more on human drama than button-mulching action sequences – when Everett takes an abandoned child called Clementine under his wing to try to help her find her parents the story began to foresee The Last Of Us. As someone prone to getting his foot trapped in every floorboard and metal staircase he comes within six feet of, he’s really up against it as he struggles through the suburbs and farmsteads of Georgia avoiding slow-moving meat-munchers called ‘walkers’.
Ker-ching, right? A point-and-click affair with an endearingly semi-realistic cartoon aesthetic, it followed university lecturer and convicted murderer Lee Everett as a car crash sets him free, a handcuffed man in a world of walkers. With the TV series a huge international hit, Telltale Games took the no-brainer decision to base the first Walking Dead game on, er, the original comic book series instead, using none of the TV show characters and few even from the comics.
But how does it stack up against the previous Walking Dead games? Here’s the run-down… Season 1 (2012)
#THE WALKING DEAD PC GAME UPDATE#
But the next best is to play one of the numerous Walking Dead video games, currently undergoing an update with The Walking Dead: Michonne, in which the mysterious katana-wielding bit player takes centre stage for three new episodes. If you thought the best way to feel like you’re living in The Walking Dead was to go to a junior doctors’ protest march, well, you’re probably right.