The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct has made waves, but not really the good kind so much as the vaguely-awkward kind. Since the success of Telltale Interactive’s take on the zombie comic-turned-television-series, people already are liable to have very high expectations for the upcoming Activision release.
Those expectations may be cause for a great deal of disappointment.
False Starts
Activision showed off some gameplay footage of what they have since called an in-development build of the game to IGN, and shortly after a fan compiled much of that gameplay footage together into a trailer that most people (including myself) didn’t realize wasn’t an official trailer until the gaming giant made an announcement saying so the next day.
While the gameplay we saw in that trailer wasn’t especially bad, it also didn’t seem to be particularly interesting or intriguing in any real way, with the only sign of the character playing being in any danger being when he was rather stupidly running from one pack of zombies straight into another pack. It also had a few graphical issues that I’m willing to give Activision the benefit of the doubt on fixing in the final product.
Now we’ve got something new to be excited about. A trailer! An official trailer for the game is out! Except it… is only 19 seconds long… and that entire time is showing two of the actors from the television series plugging their characters in the game… Not a single second of actual gameplay footage from the first actual trailer of The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, but they manage to show all three console covers for the game and tell you to pre-order it at Gamestop?
The only gameplay footage officially released? A series of screenshots, none of which show an actual player HUD or interface anywhere on them.
Bad omens
Releasing a trailer for their take on The Walking Dead so quickly after the problems caused by the unofficial trailer was a good idea, but that was an opportunity to give us all something to actually look forward to. The game is now announced to be releasing at the end of March of this year, just under nine months after Survival Instinct was initially announced to begin with, and with less than three months until release we still don’t have any actual up-to-date gameplay footage.
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct may end up being a very good game, but the lack of information and warning signs that Activision’s handling of their marketing of it has me doubting very strongly that it will be much more than a big-name cash-grab. I hope I’m wrong.
