Who would've thought 2023 would be the year crappy licensed games made a comeback. What is it with the Walking Dead ones based on the show being so much worse than the efforts set in the world of its source material anyways? Think about it, the comic book has gotten stuff like the Telltale adventures and Saints & Sinners, while its AMC offspring is responsible for spawning dreck such as Survival Instinct, the underwhelming Onslaught, and now this. A shame because the ideas behind them have usually been pretty good. I mean, a prequel road-trip FPS with an emphasis on stealth and scavenging for supplies starring fan-favorite Daryl Dixon? That should have been an easy "yes please!" back in 2013. Destinies might arguably have the best concept of any of them to date, which only makes it all the more disheartening to say that from nearly every other standpoint it may easily be the worst of the bunch.

The ability to alter the events of the television series to explore various "what if?" scenarios every viewer has likely had bouncing around in their head at some point or another is a heck of a hook. As a huge sucker for player-driven choice-and-consequence in my gaming narratives it was more than an enticing enough prospect for me to ignore the incredibly negative reception this has received and try it out for myself. While it is cool to see things like Shane callously abandon someone who's life Rick saved should you pick him as your leader instead, unfortunately due to the complete lack of any exploration into how your decisions affect the individual members of your group or their overall dynamic this is about the caliber of bad fan fiction being performed by hilariously inept impersonators. You can literally have one of the franchise's two biggest villains join your team and nobody will say a word about it. Not to mention there are some shocking character omissions. Among the biggest questions I've always had is what would have happened if Andrea had died instead of her sister Amy, yet neither of them are present here. Also, no Tyreese and Sasha? The ball is dropped so hard with the storytelling thanks to these deficiencies that you almost can't help but feel a little sorry for the handful of original cast members who returned to reprise their roles.

Now, the package's big, core selling point coming off as so half-baked is certainly a letdown, but what really drags it into truly loathsome territory is the actual moment-to-moment gameplay. The devs tried to give you some freedom on this front by granting you the option to either approach situations stealthily or aggressively as you see fit. They even put a genuinely good and clever unique spin on the title's RPG-esque skill tree where the perks you have access to are determined by who is in your band of survivors. Meaning that if someone dies as result of what outcome you select at critical story junctions before you invested in them, then the boosts and abilities they brought to the table are locked off from you entirely from that point on during that playthrough. The praise sadly stops there however, since flaws including (but nowhere near limited to) the boring tiny and linear level design, braindead AI, and super jank, awkward combat suck any fun there otherwise could have been out of the experience completely.

For starters, unless you're playing on easy, which lowers the challenge so much the whole campaign becomes a ridiculously broken joke, there's no logical reason to ever go into situations guns a'blazing and melee weapons swinging because the only way the undead can harm you is by grabbing. Zombies latching and holding onto the player is not an uncommon mechanic, but it's usually used fairly sparingly. In this particular instance though you can expect your attacks and forward progression to be regularly halted roughly every two seconds as you're forced to tediously button mash yourself free from hordes of decaying flesh if you don't stick exclusively to sneaking. A process that quickly drains your health, usually putting you into an annoying "broken state" of either panic or rage that culminates in a crippling detrimental status effect that requires the use of special execution moves to get rid of. Human enemies spice up the action a bit by providing foes who will shoot back at you, but they are somehow even denser than their reanimated counterparts. At least items are littered around in abundance so it's never hard. Doesn't keep the action from being aggravating and tragically the sole diversion to break up the monotony is the occasional dull block-pushing puzzle. Oh yeah, I haven't even talked about the litany of technical problems yet, which consist of terrible graphics, achievements that inexplicably won't unlock on certain difficulties, bugs, glitches, the majority of cutscenes lacking animation, and exiting loading screens to find yourself swarmed by walkers or that half the cinematic has already started playing.

If you share a mind similar to mine, you're probably left wondering how a title that had the potential to be and seriously should have been a massive hit turned out to be something more akin to a dumpster fire. The answer is quite simply GameMill. Look, I know the internet loves to blame the publisher every time a game doesn't turn out great, e.g. EA getting blamed for Bioware’s laziness and own internal mismanagement, but I think the evidence is pretty blatantly on my side in this case. They are the company responsible for putting out the infamous Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing after all, and Destinies itself was their third(!!!) critically panned disaster tied to a high-profile property that year alone. If this was made under the same brutal time and budgetary constraints as Skull Island: Rise of Kong, something I’d wager was more than likely, then I believe developer Flux deserves a pass for these results. The small Brazilian studio did the best they possibly could have given the circumstances. A shame, because seeing such an excellent vision for a TWD game go to waste this way kind of hurts. I would love for the premise to be revisited someday with its full range of wonderful possibilities capitalized on, and for other great shows to receive the same treatment. The mere thought causes the imagination to run wild. Until that ever happens, I guess I'll just have to deal with the pain of knowing this first attempt was utterly squandered.

4/10