Overkill’s The Walking Dead is the developer’s latest crack at their objective-based multiplayer co-op formula made famous in Payday and its sequel. Taking place in the popular The Walking Dead television universe, Overkill’s The Walking Dead pits groups of players against humans and walkers, TWD’s basic variant of zombies, alongside most other environmental hazards featured in the series.
OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead
Developer: OVERKILL SOFTWARE
Price: $59.99
Platforms: Xbox One, PS4, PC (reviewed)
MonsterVine was provided with a PC code for review
Things start off tense and bombastic in Overkill’s The Walking Dead. Upon booting up the game a detailed cinematic in which our four playable heroes attempt to reclaim a water purifier that has been stolen by the Family. Upon securing the purifier our crew is discovered and narrowly escapes after a series of close calls and clever uses of the environment and walkers.
Unfortunately, everything is downhill from here. Before any gameplay actually occurs the game throws seemingly dozens of tutorial screens explaining the convoluted mechanics of the map, its hub and upkeep systems, amongst other things. After several more introductory cutscenes and text-splashes the first mission becomes available on the map.
Each mission is structured similarly and is accessed the same way. To begin a mission you’ve got to highlight it on the map and enter matchmaking. Overkill’s The Walking Dead is a 4-Player co-op experience from start-to-finish. This is where many, but not all, of the game’s problems stem from. There’s a basic class system here where each class has unique abilities and weapon bonuses, but I found myself rarely synergizing with teammates aside from supplying basic health packs and occasionally unlocking crates. My teammates never seemed to offer reciprocal assistance. Most of the time other players are there to simply make enemy management easier or, more often than not, to mess something up. Without any bot system and with no difficulty scaling in relation to player count, it is entirely necessary (yet not required) to matchmake with other players. This is an issue not only for those that want to play alone due to toxicity or poor net connection, but for all players as less than a month after launch the servers are all but barren. In my few short play sessions with the game, I was never able to form a full lobby. Most of my time was spent matchmaking, which usually ended in the lobby timing out or starting with 2-3 players.
I was frustrated by the time I finally managed to get into the game, but I was hopeful, as I love co-op experiences and The Walking Dead. The first mission is a basic base defense mission in which hordes of walkers are sent to your camp by an enemy faction of humans called “The Family.” The map had various ammo depots, resource piles, building materials and defensive fortifications. Essentially, the mission was to bounce around the three gates of the camp as they’re torn down by walkers and repair them. This repeats several times as walkers knocked down the gates in seemingly scripted events as if wooden planks were paper. If this sounds exciting that’s because it is…for 5 minutes. However each gate that breaks unleashes dozens of walkers to take down with incredibly limited ammunition and inventory space. Each player can only hold two items at a time and each gate requires several wooden planks to repair, and each player can only hold two magazines worth of ammo for their primary and secondary weapons. All of these systems combined results in an awkward back-and-forth dance between players and enemies. In my specific instance my two allies and I would enter one of the camp’s buildings to grab resources, then circumvent the enemies by circling the entire map to avoid wasting ammunition, and then attempt to repair the gates without getting grappled in a quicktime event. Being randomly matchmade players, my allies often failed in these attempts, finding themselves helpless in the center of a horde of walkers and ultimately dying, leaving me alone to carry two wooden planks to a gate and restocking, and then repeating that. After 30 minutes of juggling resources and avoiding enemies we finally completed the mission.
Not every mission is like this, some are worse and some are marginally better, but many of the same issues persist. There are frequent quick-time-events that rip the camera from your control. Resources are almost always a pain, which makes sense in the universe but is not enjoyable in practice. Without bots, enjoyment largely depends on the allies that you’re matchmade with. In my instance I had a bit less than a 50% success rate with my teammates once I eventually found them. Most missions include a sound meter, in which any noise you or your teammates make contributes to a meter that, when filled, will eventually attract a horde of walkers. After shooting two magazines of ammo in either weapon their silencers will break, so any shots thereafter risk noise pollutions. There are sound traps everywhere that require specific teammates to disarm them. In my experience with silent players, they eventually threw caution to the wind, unloading their weapons and attracting hordes of walkers.
Many of Overkill’s The Walking Dead systems, individually, sound very appealing. Each Walker is mostly vulnerable to the head, resources are scarce so stealth and clever tactics are almost necessary, and teamwork is imperative. The concepts and mechanics sound so faithful to TWD, but when they come together it just doesn’t feel very good. Without reliable bots teammates, or the lack thereof, sully the experience.
Overkill’s The Walking Dead seems to suffer universally from technical issues. While the visuals weren’t terrible, they also weren’t particularly great, but the performance of the game may lead you to believe otherwise. On my mid-tier PC I was, on average, just shy of 30fps on High settings at 1080p. There were frequent issues with the menus, matchmaking systems and controls. Enemy NPCs seemed overly simple for the human enemies and overly intelligent for the walkers.
The Final Word
Overkill’s The Walking Dead is often faithful to series in all the worst ways. Aside from the short time spent fighting walkers and hostile humans most of my playtime was spent wrestling with the game’s systems and lack of resources. Most solutions to problems feel exploit-y and teammates are often more of a hostile experience than a friendly one. An over adherence to “realism,” mandatory matchmaking and convoluted or broken systems drag this great idea to the grave.
– MonsterVine Rating: 2 out of 5 – Poor
