A new The Walking Dead game allowing players to change the timeline of the hit AMC show has gone viral over the weekend but for all the wrong reasons.
Released over the weekend, The Walking Dead: Destinies has been developed by Flux Games and published by GameMill Entertainment. “Change the course of AMC’s The Walking Dead history,” reads the game’s description. “Fight walkers, relive iconic moments, and change the destiny of The Walking Dead Universe as your choices separate heroes from villains, and the living from the dead. Will you make the same choices as Rick, or will you forge your own path?”
However, fans have been quick to take to social media to criticise the title and its questionable PS2-style graphics, clunky gameplay and static cutscenes. “I refuse to believe The Walking Dead: Destinies is an actual game,” wrote streamer Gmanlives alongside a 20-second clip of the gameplay.
“I’m convinced it’s an elaborate prank by the developers to see if anyone actually takes it seriously.” A follow-up tweet pointed out that “all the cinematics are just static 3D models”.
All the cinematics are just static 3D models what year is this pic.twitter.com/fJirl3zk0U
— GmanLives (@GmanLives) November 18, 2023
The reaction on Reddit wasn’t much better, with a thread titled “The new Walking Dead game should be illegal” getting over 40,000 upvotes on the Gaming subreddit. “We’ve entered a new era of gaming, Gollum-like games, what a time to be alive,” wrote one user while Forbes published an article titled “The Walking Dead Just Released A Shocking, Hilariously Bad Game”.
The Walking Dead: Destinies is available on Nintendo Switch, Playstation and Xbox consoles for between £30 and £40. Currently Destinies has a 3.5 score on Metacritic while previous GameMill game Skull Island: Rise of Kong was dubbed “the worst game of 2023” with a “mostly negative” rating on Steam.
According to a report on The Verge, developers were only give one year to create Skull Island: Rise Of Kong from scratch, with GameMill offering constantly-moving goalposts. “We did what we could,” wrote one developer.
In other news, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has confirmed details of three new maps as part of the free Season 1 update, due later this year.