The Walking Dead It is now a franchise that seems to survive exactly as its wanderers: dragging forward, perhaps with a few pieces less, but apparently unable to die permanently. We are far from the cultural phenomenon represented by the first seasons of the AMC series and the comic book by Robert Kirkman has long ended, but between spin-offs, returns and new projects the universe of Rick Grimes continues imperterrito to occupy its corner of pop culture. Curiously, however, the relationship between The Walking Dead and the video game has never been particularly lucky.
We had the wonderful adventures of Telltale, Saints & Sinners has shown how well this universe can actually work virtual and then... Well. Then we also had Destinies.
Better move on.
The Walking Dead: Streets of Survival try to stick right into this space by proposing a lateral scrolling action game set during the Total War against the Saviors, with Rick, Daryl and Michonne initially playable and Negan unlockable once completed the campaign. On paper it was difficult not to see potential. Take one of the most known conflicts in the series, put four of his most iconic characters and turn everything into an arcade beater made of hordes of wanderers, improvised weapons and Lucille who violently encounters skull boxes seemed a recipe sufficiently simple to not be able to go too foolish.
And instead...
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Not exactly final fight with zombies
The first surprise is that defining Streets of Survival a simple beat 'em up would actually be quite reductive. His 11 levels are structured as small missions where, in addition to slaughtering what we have ahead, you have to complete main and secondary goals, recover magnetic cards, place explosives, help other survivors or solve some simple puzzles. Occasionally, even a minimum of backtracking is required and some scenarios try to break monotony by introducing tracking sequences or environmental elements to interact with.
Do not expect Resident Evil suddenly strung into Streets of Rage, be clear, but at least the game tries to give its missions a slightly more articulated structure than the classic “walk to the right and beats anything breathing”. The problem is that then you have to beat anything you breathe. And that's where the trouble starts.
The moveset is extremely limited: no jump, no parade and a rolled hatching that basically represents our only true defensive option. The basic attacks concatenate repeatedly pressing the same key, to which a useful heavy kick is added to keep the group away and a single special ability subject to cooldown. It works. But it works in the most literal and less exciting sense possible.
After a few fights we have practically seen a lot of what the system has to offer. The fact of not being able to hit enemies on the ground contributes further to breaking the rhythm: we throw down someone, we stop, we wait politely that decides to rise up and then we resume to beat him.
Very civil.
Firearms are generally much more effective than body-to-body, especially in crowded situations, ending up further relegating what should represent the heart of the combat system. On the rare occasions when we only face small groups of wanderers, Streets of Survival also manages to be discreetly pleasant in its simplicity.
Then human beings come...
The problem, as always, is people
I always had a very personal problem with the television evolution of The Walking Dead. The series, at least as far as I am concerned, has gradually begun to lose part of its charm when the zombie threat has passed in the second floor, leaving more and more space to the yet another group of hostile human beings, to the new psychopathic leader and to the new war between community. I fully understand the concept behind this choice: The Walking Dead does not really talk about the dead, but about the living and what are willing to become to survive. But, personally, I would have liked to continue to see mostly broken zombies and, occasionally, a fight between survivors.
Streets of Survival manages to almost perfectly replicate the same problem, only this time is not a narrative issue. Fights against human beings are simply the worst and greatest part of the game, especially because artificial intelligence tends to be exaggeratedly aggressive and, above all, not correct. Armed enemies can strike us from considerable distances, often even from outside screen, while we are trying to manage what happens in the visible portion of the arena. Here emerges one of the most important problems of the entire combat system: Streets of Survival does not really manage the classic “corsie” of the beat ‘em up. This means that a armed enemy placed in the top of the scenario can safely hit us while we are down, regardless of what visually seems to be our position compared to him. The whole thing is aggravated by the fact that these attacks They inflict a lot of damage and they will repeatedly throw us to the ground, leaving us vulnerable to other opponents present. Once we're on the ground, it happens frequently that the aggressiveness of AI and the management of animations drag us into a succession of hits from which to really regain control of the character becomes more complicated than it should. The result does not return as much a feeling of difficulty as of pure frustration.
The wanderers, while also relying on a rather narrow moveset, are paradoxically much more pleasant to face because they allow the fighting system to breathe and the player to better control the space. Against humans, instead, the simplicity of the player's moveset comes directly into conflict with the aggressiveness and incorrectness of AI.
Just like in the TV show, I mean, at some point I just wanted the zombies back.
Total war, partial duration
Streets of Survival freely retraces the events of the Total War and takes us through some of the most recognizable environments of that period, from Alexandria to Hilltop to the Shrine of Salvators. The story does not really attempt to replace what is seen in the AMC series, preferring a much more compact reinterpretation of the conflict and inserting characters, threats and familiar situations within its arcade structure.
The problem is that word.
Compact.
Very compact.
Full campaign takes just two or three hours, distributed on eleven levels that can hardly surprise by variety or depth. Once the queue titles are reached, the New Game+ and Negan as a playable character, allowing us to retrace the whole adventure with any of the four protagonists. On the card is definitely a good addition, but the real problem is to understand how much you want to stay in front of the same campaign after you have already seen almost everything that the combat system has to offer. In addition to history we find only The Fossa di Walker, a survival mode based on endless waves of enemies that, at least in my case, failed to convince me.
However, the most incomprehensible lack remains that of a cooperative mode. There is no local coop and there is no online coop, a difficult choice to understand in a side scrolling action game built around characters like Rick, Daryl, Michonne and Negan. Dealing with the campaign along with another player would probably have mitigated much of the repetitiveness of the combat system and given at least one concrete reason to return to the levels after the titles.
Streets of Survival, on the other hand, essentially asks us to play the same two or three hours in solitary, perhaps with a different character, relying on a combat system that had already begun to show the rope well before the conclusion. It is not exactly the ideal recipe to ensure longevity in a title that, already of it, offers very little content.
Lucille is not enough
One of the most immediate strengths remains the license. Moving through recognizable places, using characters like Rick, Daryl and Michonne and directly facing the Saviors has an obvious charm for those who followed the series. Iconic weapons help and some moments actually manage to capture that particular brutality from The Walking Dead, especially when the game stops throwing us at armed enemies outside the field and just lets us tear apart a mass of wanderers.
The problem is that the license ends too often to do the job that should do the gameplay.
Different characters fail to really compensate for a shallow combat system, as well as seeing Alexandria or the Sanctuary does not automatically make it interesting to cross yet another level when interaction with those places remains extremely limited. Streets of Survival always seems close to understanding which game could have been.
A deeper 'em up beat?
A cooperative action?
A kind of dungeon brawler with missions, secondary goals and character development?
There are fragments of all these ideas, but no one is developed enough to really become the center of experience.
Only Steam Deck, thank you
This time you will not find the usual paragraph dedicated to our desktop configuration with RTX 5080 and Ryzen 7 9800X3D, for a reason as simple as absurd: The Walking Dead: Streets of Survival I played it entirely on Steam Deck. I started the game there, convinced I could then proceed quietly up PC Once back to the desk. We're in 2026. Steam Cloud exists from a lifetime and synchronize a rescue between PC and Deck should now be one of those things so discounted that it doesn't even deserve a prior check.
But not.
Streets of Survival does not support cloud saving. In 2026. I only noticed when I started the game on PC and I found out that, to continue from there, I should have started the whole campaign from scratch. Considering that I was already ahead of adventure and that the title was not exactly begging me to voluntarily replay its first levels, I made the only sensible choice: I resumed my hand Steam Deck and I continued there. Fortunately, on the laptop Valve the game behaves altogether well and its structure at relatively short levels also lends itself a lot to a portable use. This makes cloud save even more incomprehensible: PC and Steam Deck are now two faces of the same ecosystem Steam and to prevent moving freely from one another means creating a problem that, simply, in 2026 should no longer exist.
In conclusion
The Walking Dead: Streets of Survival is not a disaster, and this is probably the most frustrating thing. There are some interesting ideas in the structure of the missions, the use of the license is sufficiently respectful and facing hordes of wanderers with some of the most known characters in the series can be fun, at least in small doses. The problem is that those doses must be really small. The combat system shows virtually all of its cards within a short time, the fights against human enemies turn too often the difficulty into simple frustration and the campaign ends just when you might hope that the game will really expand your chances. At that point there are a New Game+, four playable characters and a survival mode that does little to hide how limited the overall offer is.
It also continues to be difficult to ignore the total absence of coop, which in a title of this kind seems almost a design self-lesion. This adds even the lack of cloud savers, particularly annoying for those who alternate PC and Steam Deck and, more generally, indicative of a product that would need some extra attention even in the most basic features. For a few hours it can entertain, especially if you still have a weakness for Rick, Daryl, Michonne and company, but behind the familiar facade of the Total War remains an action game too simple, too short and too poor of content to really leave the mark. And once again, I finished a product of The Walking Dead with the same identical feeling:
I would have preferred many more zombies and definitely less human beings.
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