We’re back at it. The Walking Dead: Destinies was yet another game released by GameMill in 2023 which quickly received tons of “worst game of the year” nominations over the past few weeks. After playing Skull Island: Rise of Kong and finding out it wasn’t that terrible, I was wondering if, once again, this was a case of critics and influencers not being used to playing really crappy stuff, then proceeding to beat on the easiest dead horse with some kind of brand relevance they could find.

Then I started playing it. Yep, The Walking Dead: Destinies is actually really really really bad.

The first thing I want to mention is… The Walking Dead? Really? In 2023? Of all franchises to create games based on, why would you want to make yet another Walking Dead game? With the exception of the most recent VR outings (which have the advantage of, well, being VR outings), why would you insist on making yet more games based on a now defunct and hype-depleted franchise? My only guess, just like with GameMill deciding to make a game based on King Kong, is that the licensing costs were cheap. I don’t see any other possible reason. Also, if that was the case, I don’t think there was any kind of desperation in order to ship the game alongside a new season or something like that, giving the dev team not enough time to make… anything, to be honest.

Of course, The Walking Dead: Destinies feels rushed beyond belief. It’s really ugly to look at, looking like a PS3 game at best. Oddly enough, it does look like a game that would have been released way back when The Walking Dead was still considered a relevant pop culture franchise. Zombies look like they are made of papier-mâché. Character models feature simplistic facial animations and low textural quality. The level design is basically comprised of a barrage of assets thrown onto a street or a forest in order to create slight barriers or obstacles. There is no cohesion to the level design, nor any semblance of challenge involved.

The combat is, as you can imagine, clunky as all hell. I will give The Walking Dead: Destinies credit for giving players a wide variety of means to deal with enemies, but all of them are unpolished. You can, for instance, beat a zombie in the head with a baseball bat, stunning it, and then finishing it off with a stab in the brain. You can also use a stronger swing, killing it in a few hits, at the cost of more stamina, or simply having to deal with the very noticeable input lag. A gun can be used as well, depending on the character you are using, but bullets are scarce.

My main strategy was to simply attract all zombies towards the nearest waist-high fence, where they wouldn’t be mentally able to jump over, and then just beat them all with ease. Better yet, I’d often just walk past them and complete a level without even bothering with the threats chasing me down. I’d just do a dodge roll every now and then, which would give me momentary invincibility, stunning a zombie guarding a narrow corridor, and then win. The Walking Dead: Destinies features the opposite of artificial intelligence, making it completely devoid of challenge and/or tension.

I will say that, despite everything I have mentioned about this trainwreck of a game, there are like one or two interesting elements that aren’t exactly redeeming factors, but make The Walking Dead: Destinies feel less disastrous than other games we’ve played in 2023. One of them is the sheer amount of characters you can play as, even if they are not very interesting to control. There is also an immense skill tree, cluttered to a near unnecessary degree.

The best aspect about The Walking Dead: Destinies, and what’s possibly the only thing about it that can be considered borderline “good”, is its sound design. The soundtrack, comprised of classic The Walking Dead tunes, is indeed quite good. The voice acting isn’t bad as well. The poor souls hired to play these characters did their best, not sounding overly amateurish. It’s not their fault that they had been given terrible scripts; they sure delivered a half-decent job, all things considered.

Yeah, this one is impossible to defend. The Walking Dead: Destinies is just truly bad. Granted, it might not be the worst game I’ve played in 2023, by a mile, but it’s a borderline charming exercise in incompetence. With poor combat mechanics, uninspired level design, and an enemy AI so (fittingly) brain-dead you can literally complete levels by simply walking by a horde of zombies, this game fails at being scary, tense, or even a great companion piece to The Walking Dead franchise.

 

Graphics: 4.0 It would have looked amazing if it was a PS3 game. It’s just about fourteen years behind the times in terms of looks. It did achieve a good framerate, but it stuttered at times, for no apparent reason.	Gameplay: 4.0 Let me start off with the positives: the character movement and camera controls are quite good. The rest of the mechanics are either too half-baked or suffer from noticeable amounts of input lag.
Sound: 7.0 The voice actors are trying their best, I can’t fault them for the script they’ve been given. The music is alright, but the sound effects and sound mixing needed some extra tinkering.	Fun Factor: 3.5 With poor combat mechanics, nonexistent level design and an overall absence of enemy AI, The Walking Dead: Destinies might not be completely broken or hilarious to experience, but it’s still far from being considered even okay at best.
Final Verdict: 4.0

The Walking Dead: Destinies is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.