Is The Walking Dead the live action TV show that has given birth to the most amount of tie-in video games? I guess it’s worth debating. After every single genre being tackled in the past, from point-and-click adventures to low-quality VR titles and Pay Day clones, I wasn’t expecting for a pixelated beat ’em up to ever be released bearing the franchise’s logo. Furthermore, I have never expected for a beat ’em up like Streets of Survival to actually be able to mix in survival horror elements with arcade brawling and still feel natural and not that messy. At least not in its design aspect, that is.

You see this metal-cladded zombie? You can’t kill him. But he can sure kill you with absolute ease.

The name couldn’t have been more fitting. It plays like your typical Streets of Rage-inspired brawler (it was even developed by the makers of the latest Karate Kid beat ’em up), with multiple enemies onscreen, combos, pixelated character models, and so on… but it is still, without a doubt, a survival horror game at its core. Enemies aren’t easy to defeat, ammo for your ranged weaponry is incredibly scarce, your characters are somewhat fragile, there are a few puzzles to be solved in each level, and you don’t recover health as easily as in other games. You have to crouch and patch yourself up, just like in The Last of Us. If you get hit while you’re trying to heal yourself, the healing process stops, and you actually lose your medipack.

This game oozes tension in a really impressive manner. There are moments in which fighting a horde comprised of a literal dozen zombies might not actually be the smartest solution; running for your life is. Zombies are slow, but so are your attacks. If you can’t connect the collision detection correctly, you might get stuck in a non-cancellable attack animation and get absolutely mutilated by a zombie bite. I get that your limited moveset adds to the overall sensation of tension and helplessness, but I feel like The Walking Dead: Streets of Survival could have had slightly more responsive controls and framerate. I am not asking for an easy time, just a fair one.

Why does he remind me of Rush Limbaugh…

Maybe this game was developed under a tight deadline, with a tight budget. You can notice that with the fact there are just three or four lines of dialogue taken directly from the show, with every other dialogue section being just comprised walls of text. It’s also quite short, though the possibility of unlocking more characters helps a bit when it comes to replayability. My big gripe with it is its current performance, but I hope this can be remedied in the future with a patch.

That said, its presentation isn’t bad at all. Even if the characters are pixelated and juxtaposed in a polygonal landscape, it doesn’t feel silly or childish. When you’re very low in health, running for your life, you won’t care that you’re cartoonish; you’ll still be running for your damn life. Furthermore, the soundtrack is actually quite good, perhaps the single best aspect in this game as a whole. Even if powerchords are a cliché in a zombie-themed media product, it does make encounters against hordes of walkers even more adrenaline-pumping. Since you are not overpowered, the heavy metal doesn’t make the game feel more action-y.

You can occasionally get a hold of a gun, but ammo is incredibly scarce.

The Walking Dead: Streets of Survival is an interesting genre-blending experiment tarnished by an occasionally poor performance and button responsiveness. I was really impressed with how seemless the mixture between beat ’em up combat and survival horror elements felt. When you manage to get a groove of the controls, as well as the uneven difficulty curve, this becomes really enjoyable, and incredibly tense at times. With a few patches and fixes in its pacing, this might even become one of the best Walking Dead-themed games out there. Let’s wait and see.

The Walking Dead: Streets of Survival is available now on PS5, Xbox Series S/X, PC, Switch and Switch 2.

Reviewed on Switch 2.

A copy of The Walking Dead: Streets of Survival was provided by the publisher.