The Walking Dead Road to Survival Review — Fun zombie-hunting, but zombies are not real zombies

1) Game Experience: Medium

2) Game Value: High

3) Quiche’s Recommendation: A shotgun is more effective against a zombie than a cue stick.

All I know about The Walking Dead comics is that Rick loses his hand. He gets jacked up by the Governor more than he does in the TV series. That alone tells me the comics is much more intense than the show, and much more realistic. When the zombie apocalypse happens, and it’s a definite “when” not “if”, then lots of limbs will go missing. No doubt about that. No one lives unscathed. No one.

In the new mobile F2P, The Walking Dead Road to Survival, most of your characters will be unscathed. Sometimes they’ll die, but they’ll come back – not as undead, but un-undead – that is, they’ll come back to life. They might get messed up by a zombie, but there’s no infection here, they’ll take damage like in any RPG, and then they’ll come back fully healed and ready to deal next round.

The game is based on the comics, not the show, but it’s as unrealistic of a zombie experience as they come. It’s got missing-hand Rick, but that’s it. The walkers could well be orcs or aliens. There’s no infection here. No creepy factor. They move and cause damage just like any bad dude in any RPG.

Don’t get me wrong, The Walking Dead Road to Survival is a fun F2P. You have your favorite characters, especially Glenn. There are different classes and a wide variety of weapons and tools. You also have your standard F2P city-building: collect resources to build and upgrade buildings. Don’t want to wait? Pay real money.

But it’s fun without real money. Zombies are still fun to kill. You also have to battle other people, which is the tougher challenge just like in the comics and TV show.

You also need some strategy since each character has different traits that match up differently with the bad guys’ traits. There’s a rock-paper-scissors effect. For example, Tough (blue) characters are strong against Alert (red) ones but weak against Fast (blue) characters.

Traits also determine the types of weapons a character can carry – for example, Fast Glenn can’t use a gun so he has to whack people with a wrench. Garrett has to use a cue stick even though there’s a shotgun available in your inventory. What the heck!!! Not realistic, but it does make the gameplay more interesting.

Each character also has different Adrenaline Rushes, which is basically a special attack once a meter fills up. Again, standard RPG stuff.

In addition to the main story campaign, which includes some choose-your-adventure, there are side missions and multiplayer raids and faction battles.

Overall, it’s a fun F2P to go back to few times a day, but not worth spending your disposable income on. After all, there are dozens of more realistic zombie games are out there that will better prepare you for the inevitable apocalypse.