Survival Instinct is a bloody mess

I’m not entirely sure what Activision were smoking when they decided this game was ready for launch. After the highly successful Walking Dead game from Telltale, I thought that Survival Instinct may be able to recreate something similar from an FPS perspective. Oh how very wrong I was. This game is based off the TV series of The Walking Dead starring Darryl as the main character, who is accompanied by his brother Merle (who you spend the first part of the game looking for). Fans of the show will be pleased to see that the same voice actors are used in the game.

However, from the outset you can see that the graphics are atrocious and nowhere near the standards of a modern game. And as Jim Sterling has pointed out, there are visible window cursors in the loading screen. If that isn’t a sign of Activision not giving a shit, then I don’t know what is. Although this wouldn’t have been so much of an issue if the gameplay itself made up for it.

The controls are not explained well and I didn’t realise there was an easier way to change weapons until I did it by accident. You will only swing for a melee attack if the target is aimed exactly at the zombies head, which I felt was too restrictive. If I want to pick up a hammer and swing wildly like a mad man then I should be able to do so, especially in a game where it’s supposed to give you the feeling of being in a zombie apocalypse.  

As many others with tell you, the most irritating part of this whole game is the execute sequence. Sneak up to a zombie (or run really fast it doesn’t really make a difference) and press R1 to finish them off with a quick knife kill. That doesn’t sound too bad does it ? Well it does when the game does this regardless of what weapon you are holding, so if you’re equipped with a hammer you will still executive with the knife. This makes execution kills boring and since you can probably run past the zombie anyway, there’s not much point.

The second most irritating part of the game, is a mini game which happens when a zombie grabs you. You have to steer the analogue stick towards the zombies face (while the target moves around) and press R2 to stab it. And if there are several of them standing around, you will have to do this one after another with no chance to shove or attack in between. The other zombies will politely wait around for their turn and not even bother attacking you, which is nice of them I guess.

I found the way which the zombies spawned to be really strange. If you clear out a whole room, go into another one and then walk back into the same room, they will have already spawned back. They sometimes spawn right behind you, even if your back is against a wall. It means that there is less fear when walking around searching for supplies, because you already know that they are going to pop up everywhere regardless.

If it was more unknown, then you would have more motivation to sneak around trying to be undetected. But since the zombies will just cram back into the same room anyway, you can’t be bothered with all of that. They have tried to put a survival horror element to the game, with dark rooms lit with your torch, but it all feels so contrived. If I walked past a dead zombie (as in one that’s not moving) and it suddenly grabbed my leg and tried to eat me, then that would make me shit myself.

Another feature of the game is that you will have the opportunity to gather a few survivors among your journey who will be able to scavenge for supplies for you. I was disappointed that there was no opportunity to interact with them, which meant that you end up not caring they die or not. I contemplated giving someone a shotgun, but I decided that if they died I would be more upset about losing the gun. So I sent them out to get me fuel totally defenceless, and I felt nothing.

Activision have really missed out on a great opportunity here. There were so many things that could have vastly improved this game. If they had spent more time making it pretty, if they had made more executive sequences with different weapons, no silly spawning and survivors which you would actually care about. I want to know if their family got eaten by zombies in front of them and now they feel like it was all their fault. I want to console them, tell them that there was nothing they could do – but Activision took that all away from me.