For all of my skeptical optimism and refusal to fall into the hype surrounding Dead Island, I never thought the game would be so poorly received by critics. The game actually managed to get numerous features right including a fantastic melee combat system, good drop-in/drop-out cooperative play and nice leveling systems for the game’s characters and their weapons. It wasn’t so much that Dead Island failed to produce a great game so much as it failed to produce a great zombie game. One of the main problems with the zombie genre is that creating an army of undead opponents typically means creating a whole bunch of brain-dead buffoons who offer no real challenge and eventually manage to drag any game down into the deadly pit of repetitiveness it will never be able to claw its way out of. This presents game designers with the option of either creating boss-like monsters that create interesting combat scenarios or toning down the abilities of survivors to more closely match the abilities of their enemies. For as great as Dead Island was when playing initially, it soon became so repetitive you’d almost run through the last few missions just to get the game over with and see the ending.
Dead Island isn’t the only recent zombie title that failed to meet the initial anticipation of gamers. Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City fared far worse with critics scoring an atrocious 52 with average reviews for PlayStation 3 on Metacritic, but many fans have turned away from the classic franchise as a whole long before this release. The primary reason for this loss of faith is the lack of horror in the new games. Obviously, zombies originated in horror films such as Night of the Living Dead, but it seems more and more that developers would shy away from horror elements to present a title that will appeal to a wider audience. One of the best parts of the classic Resident Evil titles was being scared of what lay ahead and how you would manage the situation. Cooperative play often takes the blame for the lack of frights, but it seems more likely that the myriad supply of weapons and healing items combined with massive, illuminated areas that allow players to easily run past their much slower opponents could be a greater contributing factor. Ask anyone who has extensively played Resident Evil 5‘s Mercenary Mode or the DLC Lost in Nightmares, and you’ll soon realize the game can actually be scary when you’re up against an abundance of enemies that could easily overwhelm you at any time or when you’re walking through the tight corridors of a dreary mansion only to have a powerful enemy pop up in front of you. It’s these sort of things that need to be included in great zombie games, and Activision and Terminal Reality‘s upcoming The Walking Dead needs to take notes if is wants to fare better than these other recent titles.
A new The Walking Dead video game was recently announced and is scheduled to release next year for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. Not to be confused with Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, this new title is a first-person action title that will follow AMC’s The Walking Dead brothers Daryl and Merle Dixon on their journey to Atlanta, Georgia during the opening days of the zombie outbreak. It has already been announced that players will play as Daryl in the game, but no multiplayer features have been officially announced as of yet. Playing as Daryl and having your buddy jump in as Merle would be a blast, so cooperative play should definitely be a feature of the new game. Many would argue against cooperative play, but Terminal Reality could ensure the game remains frightening by stressing the need for item management during a zombie apocalypse where supplies would truly be hard to come by.
Although the bulk of the game will probably transpire in the open Georgia countryside and small rural towns, the game still needs to present many claustrophobic moments where players can feel surrounded, outnumbered and totally screwed. Activision has already stated that the game will rely heavily on stealth mechanics and sneaking past zombies to avoid detection while not allowing the player to ever feel truly safe, so hopefully they will stay true to their word and present a game that produces many terrifying scenarios throughout the game’s main quest.
The one final way the new The Walking Dead can be a success is if the game leans on a powerful and dramatic narrative such as you’d see in the AMC television show and in the comic books. Two brothers with troubling pasts one of who eventually turns dark-side while the other teams up with the good guys in the television series could definitely present real opportunities for character development, conflict, drama and a dialogue heavy narrative full of surprises, and it will be interesting to see how the duo reacts upon meeting fellow survivors in the game. You do remember how Merle got along with T-Dog, Rick and the rest of the group during the first season of the show right?
Only time will tell if the new title can live up to the hype it’s sure to cause or even to the Telltale masterpieces that will precede it, but if done right, The Walking Dead could easily overtake other zombie games on the gaming market to become the new king of survival horror. The Walking Dead is one of the most successful and recognizable brands in recent history, and with a tremendous fan base itching for a game that will test their survival instincts, it seems easy to believe you could be looking at the 2013 game of the year.