The Walking Dead: Streets of Survival Review

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPZz6hJBOSU

Fast Facts

Pixelated All Out War

The Walking Dead is a franchise that shows no sign of decomposing, with spin off series to mobile games there’s no shortage of media that doesn’t feature Rick Grimes or Daryl Dixon. The Walking Dead: Streets of Survival is the newest licensed video game that is shuffling onto consoles and PC.

The game adapts the ‘All Out War’ story arc of the TV series, seeing Rick and his crew face off against the big bad Negan with large scale battles and rivileires clashing with familiar faces and locations that fans will instantly recognise. The story itself is mainly told via small cutscenes that are text dialogue in each location, it’s minimal but gives sufficient context as you progress.

Choose Your Survivor

Streets of Survival is a 2D Side-scrolling beat em up experience featuring three of the series iconic characters with signature abilities coupled with their unique weapon to use against enemies. Rick Grimes with his Magnum, Daryl Dixon and his crossbow and Michonne and her Katana. Upon your first completion you’ll then unlock Negan and his barbed wire covered baseball bat Lucille and tackle each mission as one of the series most iconic villains. Given each characters unique move set, whenever playing as another person you can tell the difference, each of their respective styles is clear when playing through the game.

Search, Scavenge and Survive

Throughout each mission you’ll have the opportunity to explore your surroundings, rifling in containers will not only uncover medkits and weapons it’ll also uncover lore items. Some of which are connected to characters in the series. They’re chances to pick up progression points in each mission that you can use to improve each characters skillset, with upgrades to make surviving herds of walkers easier.

You’ll be up against walkers as well as the saviours throughout the game, utilising melee combos and ranged weaponry to take them out and reach the end of each mission. Combat itself it quite limited, missing jump attacks and other beat em up staples. It’s serviceable, but would have been better with some extra moves. It would have also been nice to see some more visual or audio cues to inputs, things like the screen shaking or louder sound effects to really show off some of the combat a bit more.

We found the checkpoint system to be quite forgiving, so succumbing to walkers or other enemies doesn’t lose too much progress. Boss battles are spread out nicely with fan favourites appearing to challenge the player, when facing against Negan and Simon these are done as multi-phase boss battles that keep you on your toes.

Walking Through Familiar Territory

Whilst this game isn’t a true retelling of the AMC series, missions do take you to locations that you may have seen watching the TV show. Alexandria, The Hilltop and Sanctuary all given a pixel art makeover. Fans of show will no doubt appreciate revisiting them in a fresh new way. Streets of Survival will also take you locales such as, sewers and streets filled with burnt out cars. Missions may not take too long to get through but they do feature small sized set pieces that freshen up the pace of the game a bit rather than just a simple beat em up.

The incentive for replayability is quite high, from using Negan revisiting the missions as well as unlocking all skills and abilities it is going to take a few run throughs. Which isn’t going to be that difficult given the shorter run time this game has. You can increase the difficulty if you wish to challenge yourself further, or switch to easy mode for more relaxed experience.

We are slightly disappointed in the lack of co-op, a feature often seen in this genre of game. Whether it was due to budget constraints or otherwise remains to be seen. Solo play works by all means, it’s just an additional feature we think would work. Especially given the cooperative nature of the genre and source materiel.

Bonus Content With a Bite

It’s also worth noting that in our review copy of the game came with the Arcade Apocalypse Pack, this included a few extra additions to the base game including; 2 weapon skins, 1 character skin, The Walker Pit (Endless Survival Combat Mode), HELL ON EARTH difficulty mode (which takes out the checkpoints) and the game’s digital soundtrack. Most of these additions are simply cosmetic extras but The Walker Pit is the stand out content here. This is the place to test your survival skills, an endless barrage of walkers and enemies in a tight space. It’s fun, especially with the upgrades you’ve unlocked playing the missions.

If you purchase the Deluxe edition you get all of this included, otherwise it will cost £11.99 purchasing it separately. We would prefer this sort of content to be already be included in the base game, locking out game modes behind a paywall isn’t the greatest feature about any video game. Maybe there’s future content planned for all players, and if you think its worth the extra money then there’s enjoyment to be had with the Arcade Apocalypse Pack.

Final thoughts

Streets of Survival is a fun use of The Walking Dead IP, a much better use of the license than some past games. It’s a serviceable side scrolling romp that is perfect for newbies, but may lack depth that veterans of the genre are used to. The lack of co-op is disheartening, it would have been perfect for this game. Despite some shortcomings we did enjoy the time spent back in the grim world of The Walking Dead, old and new fans should still find quite a bit of enjoyment in this game.

3 out of 5

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