The Walking Dead makes the jump from comic series, to TV series, and now to video game series. Does it make a successful transition to an interactive form, or is it just a dead game walking?

Read our review to find out.

The Walking Dead, a five-part gaming “series” set in an apocalyptic zombie-riddled world and based on a comic of the same name, guides you along and through the harrowing survival story of a few rather unfortunate people. It’s quite a bold attempt at an interactive and unique storytelling style that holds your hand, yet gives you freedom in the moments, and with the people, that really matter. The style of play could be considered “Point-and-Click Survival Horror Adventure”. Granted it’s not fully any of those, but the genre mash-up does it the most justice.

Due to the story and character-driven nature of this game series (and the comic), I am choosing not to reveal certain things in my review of Episode 1. Reviews of Episodes 2-5 will dive more into character development, but for the sake of beginning an adventure fresh and new, it’s best to let you initially discover the world and characters. You’ll thank me later if and when you decide to play The Walking Dead.

Your main character is a convicted criminal who ends up, tragically, in the midst of a group of survivors that range from very young to quite old. Each person you meet comes with special and important conversations replete with moments where decisions need to be made. These decisions you make in conversation and in action will have an effect on how everyone in the game world sees you, and it’s quite refreshing and rewarding to know that something you say or do will reflect on your relationship with someone until the end of the adventure, or at least until the end of your life or theirs…

Gameplay is very point-and-click styled, with the option of simply moving about a small-ish environment, looking for visual cues that point out interactive bits or people around you. There are a few quick time events, but few and far between, and they tend to be well-placed and thought out. A few of them are even critical decisions of life and death. It’s really quite well done. Combat is also spaced out, else another zombie mow-down game would be upon us. It’s handled in a way that really makes you feel like a survivor on the run with little hope unless you stick together with those around you that value their lives and yours. Interdependency is a term you’ll become familiar with when playing The Walking Dead. It’s how a survival-horror adventure should be, and I can’t wait for the next episodes; seeing what decisions, people and events are waiting for me in this starkly-realized modern world will surely be exciting.

The graphics are presented with a comic-shaded effect that lends itself well to the bloody nightmare all around you as well as the stark contrast between light and dark areas. Lines stand out on the hand-drawn faces of the well-animated people you interact with. Brows furrow, eyes dart back and forth, and real emotion is portrayed quite well; not exactly LA Noire-quality, but effective enough for gleaning emotional cues. That’s all that matters in the end. The characters in The Walking Dead emanate emotion and life, and sometimes you’ll catch yourself looking at a person’s face and not the words at the bottom of the screen. That’s always refreshing and it lets you get lost in what’s happening in front of and around you.

Munching and groaning, shuffling and gurgling. Gunshots and axe hits, splintering and shattering. These are the noises that any zombie game aficionado will absorb and delight in right away, and the aforementioned are all present in a well-crafted soundscape meant to chill to the bone at the right moments. Voice acting is downright superb. You’ll get attached to people soon after starting to play.

The Walking Dead is a fine-tuned comic adaptation that will leave you wanting more. I promise. That being said, go ahead and jump into the first episode, discover the characters, the world, make decisions carefully and enjoy the survival horror moments and then head on back here for our review of Episode 2, where I’ll delve more into the characters and the story. Stay safe in your adventures…

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Is this game worth your time, or should it be left on the junk heap? Read our review to find out.

Rednecks, guns and beer. Helluva combination for a video game. Throw in a robot apocalypse and you get the big picture. Tugnut was just minding his own business one day when robots decided to take his truck. What good is a redneck without his truck? Lucky for him, and not so lucky for those thievin’ robots, he has an RV with a stockpile of guns and ammo. Now all he needs is some of his redneck friends to jump in and help him Shoot Many Robots. You just don’t mess with a man’s truck. How stupid can these robots be?

Buddies & Beer

Shoot Many Robots is a side scrolling, robot blasting shooter that allows for up to a 4 player co-op. The game automatically adjusts the difficulty and number of robots based on how many players are with you. This is a nice little feature that more games should use. Playing by yourself is OK, but playing with a group of friends really makes the game more fun. Having more robots to blast also makes the game a bit harder, but once you have started using the expansive upgrade system, robots will turn into pile of scrap in no time.

As you blast your way through the levels, the robots you destroy will leave nuts behind. Gather these up and you can use them as in-game currency to purchase weapons and gear you’ll unlock along your way. Customization is a big part of SMR and wearing the right gear for your situation, or group, can help you immensely.You should equip gear to fit your game style. There’s a sniper rifle and a jet pack that can make you a more tactical player. You can go the heavy route with a big gun and heavy armor with health boosts.

Whatever your style, if you’re playing with friends, try to create a team that is well balanced. Costume customization is both humorous and tactical. You might think dressing up as a princess wouldn’t help you out, but you would be wrong. Each costume piece adds to your overall stats in one way or another, so dress to fit your style of play.

The weapons in the game range from your initial machine pistol, to an RPG and to the way too powerful flame thrower. Fully upgraded, the flame thrower is all you really need. Shotguns are effective for close range, but don’t expect to reach out and touch a robot with one. The weapons you start out with are a little on the weak side, and tends to make the initial combat more monotonous then fun. Until upgraded, it will take more than a few bullets to take out some of the robots. Once you have unlocked more of the weapons, and have had chance to upgrade them, the game really starts to take the fun to a new level. If you don’t mind a slow going at first, the wait is worth it.

The graphics for the game aren’t bad. It has a certain art style that fits the genre well. There aren’t that many designs as far as robots go, but there’s enough to give you a variety to blast. Each type of robot has its own style of play that range from pesky little critters that fly overhead and annoy you with rockets to pesky little critters that will bull rush you. There are also some big bad boys for boss battles. There’s enough variety to make the game challenging and fun.

Taking on the Six-pack

Shoot Many Robots isn’t heavy on story, and the title pretty much sums up the game. Here’s a gun, go shoot some robots. What it lacks in substance, it makes up for in customization and pure game play.

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The sequel to The Darkness  took 5 years to get here. That is quite a long time in this age of annual releases. Does The Darkness II live up to it’s predecessor’s image, or is it best left in the dark?

Read our review to find out.

The Darkness II takes place two years after the events of The Darkness. Jackie Estacado, the current holder of the mystic Power of the Darkness, sits as the Don of the Franchetti crime family. Using the Darkness, he not only took revenge on the killers of his girlfriend Jenny Romano, but he was also able to take over the Franchetti crime family.

His loss of Jenny weighs heavy on his mind, and the thoughts of her are slowly pushing him to the breaking point. Jackie’s occultist friend Johnny Powell has helped him contain the Darkness, but its power can only be kept down so long. An ambush in a restaurant pushes Jackie over the edge, and while a full scale mob war ensues, Jackie decides it’s time to let the Darkness take over. Only it can eliminate the goons trying to kill him and his entire family. When Jenny appears to him, he’s thrown into total mental confusion, and we realize that the story goes deeper than we expected.

The Darkness has awoken

The writers for The Darkness II didn’t just throw in some half baked plot and storyline to support the gameplay. The game has an intriguing and well written story, with character development that is comparable to the likes of Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan. The twists and turns will make you wonder which is the real world, and which is the world created by The Darkness to try and fool our hero.

Gameplay for The Darkness II is rather unique for a shooter. While Jackie is very handy with firearms, its the powers of the Darkness that takes center stage. Jackie has two extra appendages to go with his two gun wielding hands, and these extra serpent arms have teeth. These tentacles can slash, grab, tear and rip your enemies to pieces. All the while, you’ll be able to keep shooting with your regular hands. Multi-tasking has never been so much fun.

Should I shoot, or take his head off?

As you progress through the story, killing, maiming, dismembering, whichever you choose, you’ll earn essence. The more violent you are, the more essence you’ll earn. This essence is the currency to which you’ll use to purchase upgrades for your tentacles and firearms. Tentacle upgrades give you special executions which can help you regenerate health or ammo. You can also purchase special attacks which will stun the bad guys and allow you to grab them with your left tentacle and then execute them. Slapping them around with your right tentacle will also stun them for you.

Along your journey, you’ll be accompanied by the Darkling. This little guy is very useful, as he will not only show you the correct path, but he can help in combat as well. It’s not easy for a bad guy to shoot you if he has some wierd creature wrapped around his face. This little guy can also go places that Jackie can’t, and if Jackie is trapped in some medieval device, what better way to get free than by some crazy little critter.

You got a little something on your head there....

You health meter is displayed on the lower left of the screen. Executions can give you a health boost, but the easiest way to get your health back up is by ripping out hearts from downed enemies and ingesting them. The term “Eat your heart out” takes on a whole new meaning. These tentacles can reach out farther than Jackie’s hands, and that extra reach can come in handy when there’s a light nearby.

Throughout all of the levels, the most dangerous thing Jackie has to look out for is light. The Darkness is easily defeated if it is subjected to light. Guys with flashlights can ruin your day, and grenades take on a whole new look when they are just exploding flashlights. The bad guys aren’t using your standard Mag-lite here, though. They seem to have some sort of super light that is more powerful than anything Battlefield 3 has to offer. Cars have headlights that can be troublesome as well. If you see a light, it’s always a good idea to take it out. Not all lights are created equal, so there are times when you’ll have to find its power source.

Jackie’s tentacles can also be used for protection and for throwing things at the bad guys. Car doors are great for shields, and that’s a move you’ll need to learn early on. Holding a shield with the left tentacle and shooting bad guys with your hands is very effective. Any object that is interactive with the tentacles will have a small dot of light on it. Things like chairs can smash some heads, and poles are great for making guys stick around. Fan blades are effective at slicing up your enemies. All of these can be thrown and have a fairly long range.

For completionists out there, there are collectible called relics. These relics each have their own back story and are related to the Darkness in some way. If you missed any along your journey, you’ll be able to find them later through New Game + and chapter select, so don’t sweat it too much on your first play through.

The graphics for the game do leave a little to be desired. The developer clearly was going for the graphic novel look and feel, but in this age of lifelike graphics, they left the game a little too unpolished. While the game is clearly not unplayable, it can be hard on the eyes at times.

Just a little off the top....

Multi-player for the game consists of Vendettas, with about an hour of overall added game play. This can be played online with others, or offline by yourself. Playing by yourself makes it a little harder since there won’t be anyone to revive you, but if you are up for a challenge, it’s still fun. In Vendettas, you’ll play as one of four characters. Each character has their own special styles and weapons, and you’ll probably find yourself playing all the way through as each one. Playing with others is really the intended method here, and is encouraged.

The original game, The Darkness, introduced gamers to a new style of shooter that added in an aspect never seen before. The Darkness II expands on that aspect and brings us a very unique shooter, with multi-tasking fun. The levels are dark and well designed, while the music adds to the overall dark feeling of the game.

If the developer had polished up the graphics more, this game might have made a run at Game of the Year come December. Even with that, it still might.

The Darkness returns, and we’re glad it did.

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The zombie smashing Dead Island released last year to great reviews across the net. The latest DLC gives us a look into what makes the villain of the game tick. Is he truly a villain, or is someone else infecting him with their ideas? Is this DLC worth playing, or should you just run the other way?

Read on to find your answers in our review.

The main storyline of Dead Island paints Ryder White as the bad guy who is only looking out for himself and his wife. He seems nothing more than a villain to our four playable characters. The Ryder White DLC  shows us who he really is, and gives us his back story and why he’s on the island of Banoi.

The story is the best part of this DLC. The opening sequence shows us that he is a soldier who is asked to do whatever is needed for the greater good. If this means civilians must die, then so be it. If this means eradicating an entire island of all living creatures, he’s prepared to follow through with his orders. Only when he’s shown an image of his wife, and asked to kill her as well, does he pause before answering.

Through the original campaign of Dead Island, Ryder is an easy villain to dislike. This DLC takes our original impressions of the man and turns them upside down. His back story shows us that he is only a pawn in a much larger game, and that he’s not the villain we thought he was.

Gameplay for Ryder White is identical to the Dead Island campaign, with a few changes. Zombie smashing is still there, but all of the great RPG elements are almost completely removed. Ryder starts out as Level 15 and doesn’t change and he has no upgradeable skill tree. His fury mode is already unlocked so you get a super stomp right from the beginning.

Where the original campaign focused on melee weapons for zombie killing, this DLC focuses more on guns. Ryder is a soldier so that does make sense. There are blueprints lying around for more effective melee weapons, but they aren’t carried over to the original campaign, and guns work better. Medi-kits and ammo can be found in decent quantities, and at first you may think this will be a cake-walk. You would be wrong.

In the original campaign, dying will have you respawning somewhere near where you died, with the zombie kills also carrying over. This DLC uses a check point system where you’ll have to kill the same zombies again if they killed you. Ammo and items in your possession aren’t refreshed, so if you’re low on ammo and die, you may have a problem. Items lying around are refreshed though, and that’s a good thing. You may find yourself dying on purpose just to grab a few extra rounds for your rifle or an extra medi-kit or three. Zombies seem to spawn out of places that you have already cleared, and having zombies spawn behind you like that is not fun.

Will Ryder Take the Life of his Wife?

Techland also decided not to allow co-op. This DLC is single-player only, and that adds to Ryder’s isolation. Ryder has to go it alone, with no help from anyone. You may actually find yourself feeling bad for him. He is abandoned, on his own, and has to face never ending zombie hordes.

There are no new levels introduced. Areas will look familiar to Dead Island vets. From the slums to the sewers, everything is re-used from the main Dead Island campaign. The zombies are all re-used as well, with more of the fast moving infected zombies coming at you. The high number of fast movers adds to the difficulty for this DLC. The story itself should only take a couple hours to play through, but add in the death and respawning, and that could easily double.

Dead Island: Ryder White does a great job of letting us look behind the man that stood in the way of our four good guys in the main Dead Island campaign. It not only shows us he’s human, but also shows that he was never the man in charge and he was only a small pawn in a much larger story. That much larger story will probably be the basis for Dead Island‘s sequel.

If you’re a fan of Dead Island, then you’ll want to get to know Ryder White.

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Nathan Jurevicius’ award winning graphic novel is now alive on the PlayStation Network. Is the video game worthy of its award winning title, or did it just scare us off?

Read our review to find out.

On the outside, Scarygirl is a great looking game with quite a bit of promise. The story follows a little girl who would look right at home in a Tim Burton movie. The story opens with Scarygirl washing up on a strange peninsula and is now being raised by an intelligent giant octopus. A tree house becomes her home and she starts a search for the man that haunts her dreams. Along her journey she is trained by a masterful rabbit, Bunninguru, that teaches her the ways of combat in this strange world.

The art style and story are the best part of this game, by far. Both stay true to the Scarygirl world. Scarygirl herself is a Burtonesque looking little girl, with goth features and an eye patch.

She's kinda cute

The world she travels through is in 2D sidescrolling fashion, with an occasional 3d feel. You can see the graphic novel style in the level design and through the story telling scenes. The graphics are very well done, with elements that look like they were removed straight from Nathan Jurevicius’ novels. The game is very easy on the eyes and is pleasant to look at. There are seven unique worlds, with three levels per world.

Swinging through the Worlds

Scarygirl gameplay is side scrolling action with platforming and battling. Our little girl has some great moves thanks to her special hook hand. Her battle moves start out basic, with either light or heavy attacks, and become a little more effective once upgraded. You can stun an enemy and then grab them, you can then either pound them into the ground, or use them as a projectile weapon. Taking out the bad guys, with the exception of bosses, is a pretty straightforward affair that can get a little repetitive at times.

At the end of each world you’ll have to face off against a boss. The bosses can be tricky. They have no health meter, and there’s no way of knowing how close you are to beating them. Once you figure out the proper way to defeat them, there’s really no way of knowing how close to death they are.You’ll just have to keep going until they are finished.

Taking on a Boss

The controls for the game are simple, but the interactions with the environment while platforming can be a little frustrating at times. Scarygirl has the ability to grab onto things and swing from point to point, but these points don’t always work as planned. If you miss by just a fraction of an inch, you’ll fall. Not a big deal if there’s solid ground under you, but if there’s nothing but air, fire, or steel spikes, Scarygirl becomes Deadgirl. Checkpoints become your best friend, but when the checkpoints seem miles apart, death does not become her.

Look out below

Scarygirl’s upgrades are a cool feature that adds to the replayability to the game. There’s a feather that, when purchased, gives her the ability to fly farther than she could early on. There are spots early in the game that you could see, but not reach. These areas hold health upgrades in the form of collectible hearts as well as gems. After completing each level you earn a score based on the number of gems collected (each level has a set number of gems), how many lives lost, and how many dark weeds pulled. Your score is then posted to an online leaderboard and you can see how you stack up against others around the world.

For completionists, gathering all of the collectible gems, dark weeds, and hearts adds at least a couple extra hours of game play as you’ll have to back track through the previous levels. Gems are used to purchase upgrades, as well as other collectible vinyls that can be viewed in Scarygirl’s treehouse from the main menu.

Sensei Bunninguru

Most downloadable side-scrolling games now have local co-op thrown in, and Scarygirl is no different. You can have a friend grab a controller and jump in and out at any time. They will play as your trusty mentor Bunninguru, but won’t earn any achievements or be able to upgrade their moves. This is a cool feature if you have a friend drop by, but the camera always focuses on Scarygirl so if you the rabbit gets left behind, he’ll be instantly transported to her side.

Scarygirl is a fun little game, with 6 or so hours of game play (add a couple if you’re a completionist). The art style and graphics are a perfect match to Nathan Jurevicius’ novels and the levels are nicely created and designed. Gameplay can be frustrating though, and fighting can get a little repetitive. Health meters for bosses would be a welcome addition.

Scarygirl is nicely priced at $9.99 on the PlaySation Network and is 1200 MSP on Xbox Live Arcade.

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