Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

So, I'm noticing a pattern here. Someone doesn't like the game and it doesn't matter why, or what reasons they give their review is toasted from the jump. 2 thumbs up and 12 thumbs down for a review that actually holds vital information about the game? Get real. Seriously. Or get a life. Ok. Here's my review, which I'm sure will parrot back some of the things mentioned in other reviews, but I also KNOW FOR A FACT it will have information not spoken of in any other review so far. So try and base your judgement on how helpful it could be, and not how much you personally like the game. I too was highly disappointed when I saw how this game looked. It seemed from the jump an attempt to cash in. Even though the trailer was fake it still had gameplay, so it still counts in my eyes. I wasn't thrilled to see nothing was being done to promote this game. AMC isn't going to run an ad for the game during the show the game is based on? Seems like a rug sweeping to me. I preordered this game to get the ear keychain. I was expecting a rubber ear. What I got was a print out of a picture of an ear sandwhiched between two pieces of plexiglass. Awesome. They couldn't have cheaped out more. The ominous signs just kept coming. I got home and I started playing. Right away I noticed the graphics weren't as terrible as I was expecting. The game had a solid opening. The voice acting is fairly well done. The shadows for the flashlight were pretty great. Actually, the whole flashlight system was pretty fun. It brought me back to the feeling I got playing Doom so many years ago. But eventually flaws came trickling out, and for the sake of making this a task to read I'll list what I can now: 1.One save game file? Are you for real? For what basically amounts to the video game equivalent of a choose your own adventure story you have a lot of gall giving one save slot. 2.Every time you run out of gas or break down from what I can tell you go to the same gas station. Really? You couldn't change the cars on the road or the color of the sign? or the layout of the office building? There are four side mission levels that get used way too much and cycled through way too little. This game is like the background to an old Hannah Barbara cartoon. Same thing over and over and over on an endless loop) 3.If I can't hit a zom with a led pipe in my hand because it's too far away how can that same zom hit me with nothing? Inconsistent battle physics make for terrible gameplay. Fix that. 4.Randomly spawning zombies. Clear a courtyard or parking lot and suddenly it's full again when you turn back around. Really? I get that some of the bodies on the streets get up, but zoms seriously magically appear a foot behind me when I just cleared it. 5.Go fetch go fetch go fetch. That's literally all this game is. I hate when people complain about that in games like Red Dead and Dead Island, but there is next to no background story. Find Merle. That's the story. Now go get me batteries and food kid. 6.I'm supposed to scavenge for supplies in one of the most linear games I have played in the last 4 years? Lollipop Chainsaw offered more room to explore. Every level is a box roughly one or two blocks in size with a maze of debris guiding your journey. 7. TRASH! I get it's the apocalypse. Street sweepers take a lot of gas so nobody is driving them, but items are a range of colors. Did I say range? I meant three colors. Green energy drinks, white food packs, and red ammo. Now, guess what colors the garbage is? Red soda cans, green soda cans, white newspaper scattered about. It's almost impossible to differentiate at a distance. Items light up, but only when they are directly in your cross hairs and you're close to them. That helps. 8.Stealth that is pointless! You're told in the opening walkthrough that crouching dampens your noise levels, which it does, but who cares because the zombies don't hear you? You can crouch, walk, or run right up behind them without alerting them to your presence. The only time crouching isn't pointless is when you're hiding behind a sedan. 9. stealth that is repetitive! Alright, so picture this. You're creeping around armed with a knife. You sneak up behind a zombie and bury it deep in his skull. Soooo satisfying. Now picture this, you're armed with a hammer. You sneak up behind a zombie expecting to cave a skull in, hit the stealth kill and BAM! Oh no wait. Not bam. Bam is the sound of a hammer. But you just inexplicably pulled your knife back out and sunk it into the skull of the zom. You have multiple melee weapons you should have multiple melee stealth kills. It really wouldn't have taken much more to add. 10.There are about 4 different models for zoms. Maybe others are hiding? Maybe? 11.Herd Mode is the call of duty bonus game. Shut up. It is. 12.So, I can push a car that has an alarm but I can't step on one? Great. Thanks for the zero warning. 13.I can step on trucks with alarms? Really? Because it really seems like that should be explained. Flashing lights apparently signify both the need to not climb on something, and the need to climb on it. That's laughable. 14.Inventory. How do you know when you have too many weapons or are getting close to your food limit? Simple. You don't until you can't. So you put some things in your bag and start off on a mission. Then you find a big ol juicy shotgun that would be perfect for decorating the walls of the police station with gray matter. But you can't pick it up. Because you have too much stuff already. Sweet. If you want it throw something away because even if you go back to your vehicle you can't store anything once the level starts. 15.No difficulty level settings? What game in the past 10 years hasn't had difficulty level settings? For those of you who like to beat a game on Normal and then come back for a slightly bigger challenge on hard forget it. 16.There is no going back. My first time through this game I got to the third stop down the road and had no food left. Remember when I said zoms respawn? This was where it became asinine. There was no food to be found no matter how far into the level I made it, but there were always more zoms bringing me down. So I figured, hey, go to the last post and stock up on juice and food. Except...you can't go back to the last level. So I had to restart the game. Not a big deal since the game is about 3 hours long, but still. You can't replay levels at all? Bunk. 17.The game is all of three hours long. To put it in perspective, Colonial Marines is a bigger file size than this title. Sure it has replayability, especially if you love the characters, but that's not really good enough to warrant the 50 bucks this game cost me. 18.It's a stealth game WHY CAN'T I PEEK AROUND CORNERS??? (edit: A commenter was gracious enough to point out that LB makes you peek aroound corners. I'm not removing this as a negative however, because that's something that should ahve been explained in the game, not something you accidently figure out on your own.) 19.One of the most heavily advertised aspects of this game is the fact that you find out the origin story of Darryl's Crossbow. You don't. I really wish I had to say spoiler alert right now, but I don't. It turns out you had the crossbow prior to the game and Merle was just holding it for you. Gripping. That's not an origin story. That's a poor excuse for writing. And once you get it, don't miss. Because even if you hit the wall directly behind the zom you were aiming at your bolt is gone. Poof. There are bolts sticking out of walls and on the ground that you pick up along the way, but for some reason once you touch it they no longer stick around unless it's in a corpse. (sidenote, after downloading an update for this game yesterday I noticed the bolts now only disappear if you completely miss. They will now get stuck in walls behind enemies, slightly better, but still not good enough) 20.At no point in any of the times I've played this game did I ever feel like I was playing as Daryl Dixon. Ok. For right now that's what I find wrong with this game. I'll add to it as I see fit. But honestly, if you didn't find any of that information helpful or informative there is something wrong with you. Now, what I LIKE about this game is a much smaller list, but here it is... 1.Decision making. Not just where to go, but how to get there. So even though this game is one box to the next the trip in between almost feels like a game in of itself. 2.Decision making. Who gets what gun? Who comes with on the trip who stays behind? What do they scavenge for, or do they not scavenge at all? It adds a sense of urgency every other zom game is lacking. 3. A wide and very forgiving cross hair section means you will definitely hit a zombie in the shoulder and see his head vanish. Why is this good? Because the aiming system is not all that great. 4. Distraction tactics. It's cooler than it should be to toss a bottle and watch a wave of zoms turn and scuttle off in it's direction as you sneak behind them. Cool and satisfying. 5.After you beat the game depending on what you achieve while playing certain options will be unlocked for the next time you play. Things like silenced weapons, unlimited ammo, starting with the crossbow and m16, etc. etc. These things can make the game slightly more fun to play. Unfortunately they only come after you beat the game and probably never want to play it again... and you can only use one at a time. (Unlimited ammo and starting the game with the crossbow combined would have maybe made this game worth another play through) So there. As a huge fan of the books before the show, and the show after the books, and the other game I have to say if they spent all this year working on this game it would be ten times better. As a comparison I played The Road To Fiddler's Green literally dozens of times and as recently as last month. I like that game more because it didn't try to stuff a bunch of crud in, it just took what it had and did the best it could to make it as good as it could. And, after an hour, my helpful rating is already proof you people are tanking reviews. Take issue with my review? Feel free to leave a comment.