I think this may be the first game I've ever experienced that is literally unplayable. It's a broken, buggy, mess of a game that would constantly glitch, crash, and load infinitely. I knew it was going to be bad, but I've been playing a lot of bad games recently and I have a weird love affair with bad games but holy shit this was the worst thing ever. This is the first game I haven't been able to finish in years from it being so bad. The last time was a few summers ago when I had to quit on Hellboy Science of Evil. Congratulations walking dead survival instinct. I've found a new game to put in my top 5 worst of all time.

Look, I've played this way too much and getting all the achievements was a bitch due to the optional survivors who show up randomly and require so much restarting the game that I was furious by the last one... but I kinda enjoy this janky shit?? Survival Instinct endeavors to make slow zombies who require headshots to kill scary, and it does so until you figure out how awful the AI, resource management, and, you know, everything else in the game is. Maybe if the game was given another year or two to refine its core gameplay and remove the survival road crap, the game could be something better. What is here today is awful and still endearing to me despite this. Except that horde mode one gets for pre-ordering the game. That mode is the definition of worthless.

this is a really odd game, everything about it's mechanics are well thought out and with nuance, it's a stealth based game with inventory management where you must depend on making as little noise as possible, guns are basically dinner bells who are useful only when you decided to exit a level, zombies can actually kill you fast once they overwhelm you, you must keep in mind of your resources and what to do around levels to have the best profit possible and consider future possibilities while also having optional side objectives to consider

the issue stems than this game is half baked, actually, not even half baked, it's raw, it's so raw, i wouldn't even dare to call it finished, it feels like an alpha who just barely got enough QA to make sure there's no collision issues

the combat is easily exploitable and you can just stun lock single zombies until they die, you can also use a shove to also stun lock them and stop their attack animations, even if you get grab, there's another easy mechanic where all you need to do is move a circle into the right spot to free yourself from the grab

all of these issues stem from the fact than they forgot to add a stamina meter to your attacks, but only add it when you decide to sprint

the story also had great potential since the Dixon Brothers are the best addition the series had, but they don't do anything with it either outside making callbacks to the show, Merle being there for just 25% of the game while Daryl just do chores for other characters or just drives around, while all the other survivors can be sum up as "Wikia Article"

the exploration will lose it's charm once you realized almost all the maps are more simpler than you were initially led to, sometimes even as small as a single street or section on certain levels

y'know how with DMC2 is an infamous game for being develop in less than 5 months?

this is what would have happend if the director wouldn't have even a bit of talent that Itsuno had, because i can tell this game didn't even had a year in development and it only came out this soon to catch on the popularity of Telltale's version of The Walking Dead

i feel for Terminal Reality, they didn't deserved to get screwed