The Walking Dead: Destinies (Nintendo Switch) – The review

Walking Dead, here is a license which has certainly touched an entire generation and a wide audience… Originally a series of comics (available in VF from Delcourt), through a TV series and video games (not counting the various products derivatives and spin-offs of the TV series), the Walking Dead license continues to “survive” like a zombie in search of fresh brains… Is this new opus which is based this time on the successful TV series s turns out to be a “joyful” adventure for Rick and his friends? Grab your best baseball bat and let’s smash some skulls together…

Decomposed past

No one has been able to escape the Walking Dead phenomenon (except people under 18). Imagined by Robert Kirkman (to whom we also owe the excellent Invincible series) and illustrated by Tony Moore then Charlie Adlard, the series began its publication by the American publisher Image Comics in 2003. From 2005, we have was able to discover it in French from the publisher Semic… But it was from 2007 and its resumption by Delcourt (and the will of Thierry Mornet who was already at the origin of the release at Semic) that the title really ended up conquer readers. The themes covered go well beyond the usual clichés of comics, the title will appeal to readers from all backgrounds and the growing success will lead to the adaptation into a television series at AMC in October 2010 (2011 for France). In just over 20 years, the adventures of Rick Grimes and the other survivors have seen their share of adaptations and spin-off series.

But back to video games! In 2012, The Walking Dead from Telltale Games was released, a point and click which gave pride of place to the story and the development of the characters, having the particularity of offering choices to the players which will then have an impact (more or less important) on the rest of the story and the relationships between the different characters. Why are we talking about this? Well, because this new Walking Dead game takes up this idea of ​​choice to offer a different story, with the difference that this time, it's the television series that it will be possible to modify!

What awaits us

The Walking Dead: Destinies is a third-person action game. We begin the adventure in the hospital, in Rick's shoes, just to familiarize ourselves with the different abilities of our characters. So, we quickly learn how to crouch, in order to move slowly (to avoid attracting zombies, or walkers). We also discover that our character (and the others as well) is equipped with an instinct mode, allowing him to see the movement patterns of enemies, as well as potentially interesting objects to pick up or reach. Well yes, because Rick and his friends almost have the powers of Daredevil!

All joking aside, you can also roll while crouching to move a little faster, while remaining relatively silent (be careful not to overdo it, however, or you risk tiring our avatar). Survival requires, our character is also limited in what he can carry, so count on a knife (to plant the zombie heads by sneaking into their backs) and a handgun (baseball bat, crowbar, pistol , Daryl's crossbow, Michonne's katana or even a heavy machine gun or sniper rifle. You will therefore have to choose your weapon wisely (even if ammunition can be picked up easily. Added to this is the possibility of carrying an object to throw (). glass bottle to distract enemies' attention or grenade to explode enemies) or a healing item (either blow everything up or focus on healing!) The game offers a skill tree system. unlock for points that you will obtain by collecting certain objects scattered throughout the levels (old magazines, radio, etc. anything that reminds you of “the world before”). You will thus be able to increase the strike force and resistance of the device. your characters.

We will still note that certain characters (like Rick, Shane and Daryl for example) have a more extensive skill tree than Glenn (where we can just influence the speed of movement). On the other hand, you will not choose the characters that you will play before playing a mission, they are always imposed by the game, it will therefore be necessary to think carefully about making them all evolve, which should not pose a problem, because in being attentive and a little nosy, you will find more than enough points to develop your entire troop!

You will also be confronted with a small variety of zombies, ranging from the classic zombie to the screaming zombie (who gathers his friends when he sees you), the explosive zombie, the big zombie, the helmeted zombie, the zombie who pretends to 'be dead, and the zombie clone! Not to mention humans with weapons, but the AI ​​of a zombie… We’ll talk about that below.

But the big interest of the game is ultimately not the bursting of zombies with a crowbar, but the possibility of making choices leading to killing certain emblematic characters of the series… Thus, you can make Rick die (and the whole Grimes family), which we actually achieved during one of our games. In the end, it is Shane who will naturally take the role of leader, having an attitude quite similar to that of Rick… Yeah… Ditto for a passage at the beginning, which will allow you to handcuff T-dog in place of Merle. This will bring certain differences in the rest of the game, without necessarily having a major influence on the progress of the story that we know…

Welcome to the tomb

Let's talk about history anyway! As said in the introduction, the game is entirely inspired by the television series which itself already took certain welcome liberties compared to the comics. Please note that seasons 1 to 4 are covered (i.e. until the end of the Governor's arc – slight spoiler – with the tank). Allow around 5 hours to complete the game, a little more if you are crazy enough to test the other possible choices.

Fans of the series will find places and certain well-known episodes… From there to saying that they will recognize them, there is a big step… which we will not take. Let's be honest, graphically it's not a panacea, the game is just average (but at the same time quite faithful to the trailers that we were able to discover before the title's release). And you know what ? The cutscenes in slideshow format with really questionable character modeling are downright laughable! Honestly, the actors are really expensive visually speaking… Although we doubt that was the initial intention.

Another graphic detail (besides the poverty of the decorations, especially indoors), is the cloned zombie effect! Indeed, although we are sometimes confronted with hordes of zombies, we note quite sadly that they are all the same (with a few variations when we are lucky)… But it is not uncommon to see 5 zombies strictly identical clothes (same color of clothing and same head) rushing at us… And it's not our character who is drunk!

Even if we must admit that in terms of maneuverability we have experienced better and that the combat phases give the impression that our character has a blow in the nose when he hits nearby (while the enemy is right in front of us) … Luckily, the enemies are not better off and we generally manage to get rid of them (even if certain passages with the hordes are more difficult). Even if we can forgive the low-level AI of zombies, it's difficult to do the same for humans, who are not much better at this level (maybe they were bitten by walkers?). Still, their reactions are absolutely illogical and seem to come from another age (go ahead and run around in all directions, shoot and then hide before coming out to shoot…) You will have understood… AI is absent.

A feeling that will not leave us throughout our game, even more obvious during a (too) long infiltration type phase with Michonne while she roams Woodbury at night looking for her saber and she has to count on blades of grass in pixel art which completely hides her from the guards… Even if they are 5 centimeters from her… But be careful if you go beyond and you suddenly become visible to a pixel that goes beyond… it's back to square one, hard! The game is very scripted and at certain times, for example, you will no longer be able to go up to a higher point to kill zombies, because a horde has arrived. Once the area has been cleared, it is then possible to climb again. Another bug, a little more annoying, hit us at the very end of the game. We found ourselves in Lori's shoes (very much alive), even though we had let her die much earlier in our game. Rather strange, even if we're talking about a zombie story…!

A quick word to finish on the game's soundtrack, which takes up the main theme of the series as well as relatively correct sound effects with zombie groans, however we noticed some bugs in portable mode (where the voices were absent), so that when docked we could hear them quite well… we also suffered from some crackling and slowdowns (especially when there started to be a lot of stuff on the screen). Finally, you have understood in terms of sound and visual ambiance, it is preferable to watch an episode of the series on your television…