You're instructed to crouch and move so that you don't rouse the walkers' attention, but this system is inherently flawed due to the zombies having an unbelievably efficient field of view, which ultimately renders crouching moot. The game’s core mechanics aren’t much better. The walkers and death animations are quite grisly, implying a more mature tone, yet everything is just a little too colourful, as if the game was influenced by its episodic counterpart, resulting in a bizarre, cheap-looking world.
Textures are dull and lifeless, and the character models appear less alive than their undead counterparts, mouths flapping awkwardly as they talk. Visually, the title looks incredibly flat. The game opens on a hunting trip Daryl’s taking with his father, and it’s not long before things go predictably wrong. The ‘plot’ revolves around the TV show’s troublesome twosome the Dixon brothers, with Daryl Dixon’s search for his sibling Merle comprising the main theme. Clearly intended to cash in on the overwhelming success of the TV show and the recent critical acclaim of Telltale Games’ excellent episodic adventure, The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct doesn’t so much as explode out of the gate, but, perhaps appropriately, shamble.