The Walking Dead Streets of Survival review: hits hard, but doesn't go far

Double Dragon, Final Fight and Streets of Rage may have had their heyday last century, but the genre still turns out the odd gem. To carve out a spot in the sun, Streets of Survival bets everything on The Walking Dead licence, and on its television branch in particular. That's far from a bad idea, but as we'll see, the adventure simply doesn't have enough substance to become essential.

Season 8 of The Walking Dead clearly isn't the best, but it does have its highlights. Streets of Survival picks them out shrewdly, covering the back half of the season. The adventure therefore kicks off after the fall of Alexandria and the death of a certain main character, and wraps up with Rick's cutting victory over Negan. Since we're dealing with a beat 'em up, the story beats largely take a back seat to the gameplay, but it's still pleasant to find yourself on familiar ground. The Hilltop, Jadis's junkyard and the Saviors' Sanctuary are all present and correct. As for the heroes you can play as, they're Rick, Daryl and Michonne, armed with a magnum, a crossbow and a katana respectively, as you'd expect. Note that a fourth playable character unlocks once the main campaign is done.

The menu only half keeps the mystery going, since it shows the silhouette of a man carrying what looks an awful lot like a baseball bat over his shoulder. The narrative coherence of the New Game Plus mode inevitably takes a knock, but it's for a good cause. It would have been frustrating not to be able to dish out a few swings of a barbed-wire bat in a game like this. Whichever hero or anti-hero you're controlling, the rather lovely pixel art never distorts their appearance. The characters' faces — or more precisely those of the show's actors — always remain recognisable, even for bit players like Jadis and Simon. The scenery, meanwhile, is rendered in easy-on-the-eye low-poly 3D, subtly pixelated so it never clashes with the 2D characters. The whole thing is lifted by some convincing lighting effects. The audio side is less cheering, though, as the handful of lines of dialogue displayed on screen aren't voiced at all.

Half a season, half a game

Built around a light attack, a heavy attack, a ranged attack, an adrenaline gauge and a dodge roll, the gameplay sticks to the basics. Some will hold that simplicity against it, but it does keep the game accessible to everyone, with no head-scratching and no rage quits. And there are still a few combos to learn for anyone looking to optimise their run. While the ability to crouch doesn't serve much purpose, certain sections do let you release walkers and set them loose on the Saviors. That sort of skulduggery is generally optional, but it would be a shame to pass it up. Each hero also has a skill tree with around ten entries, some of them multi-tiered. Very promising on paper, the system encourages you to hunt for items hidden in the scenery, as some are needed to unlock the more advanced nodes. Sadly, the campaign doesn't really give you time to power up. It's done in three hours, and nowhere near allows you to unlock a meaningful number of talents.

That's therefore reserved for the "New Game Plus" mode, which does at least let you replay every level with the character of your choice (whereas the main campaign sometimes forces a particular hero on you). We'd have far preferred the game to justify its talent trees by lasting twice as long — by covering the whole of season 8, for instance. Then there's the Walker Pit, an endless survival arena that could have extended the game's lifespan. The problem: this endless mode is very basic and, above all, it's only accessible by buying the Arcade Apocalypse Pack DLC for £15... when the base game costs £20. That's clearly taking the mickey, and it does the title's goodwill a lot of damage.

YouTube content, hidden until you have authorised it.
If you allow this content to be displayed, Google will drop cookies on your device and receive your IP address.

Show this contentChange my choice