The (Bad) Walking Dead EP 1: Punch Her Butt

By Shamus Posted Wednesday May 6, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 60 comments


Link (YouTube)

Here is the video Rutskarn mentioned, that features GATORADE NUT PUNCH. It’s funnier than us, so you should probably watch it last.

EDIT: So I originally posted this video with no text, with the video marked as private, and then went away for a couple of hours to play GTA Online with Rutskarn and Josh. Okay, I screwed up. In my defense, I’m still about 1000% less terrible at my job than whoever did the GTA V multiplayer.

So this is the first of three installments for Walking Dead: Survival Instinct. And if all goes well, we’re going to do a few more zombie games in the following weeks.

 


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60 thoughts on “The (Bad) Walking Dead EP 1: Punch Her Butt

  1. lucky7 says:

    It says the video is private. Is that just me?

    1. Hydralysk says:

      No I get the exact same message.

    2. Kai von Eggenburg says:

      It has changed, you can watch it now.

  2. Paul Spooner says:

    “Please sign in to view this video.”
    Mature content?

  3. Chefsbrian says:

    Yea, the video is private. Hopefully once I’m done with Gatorade nut punches, it’ll be live.

  4. lucky7 says:

    I was a zombie just like you, until I took a Gatorade punch to the nuts!

  5. Some_Jackass says:

    It’s private…so I have no choice but to watch the Gatorade nut punch video 1st…
    [AFTERWARDS!]
    …You’re right. I should have watched it last. No way you can follow that. Expectations are too high now.

    1. nawyria says:

      To be fair, the Gatorade video is more of a highlight real whereas Spoiler Warning is going to give us the behind-the-scenes. Still that video is incredible.

  6. Tony Kebell says:

    Shamu, you privated the video bruh.

  7. Phantos says:

    “The (BAD) Walking Dead game”

    That’s like saying: “The Hitman game where he’s bald.” Or the Super Mario game where “he can jump”.

    They’re all like that.

    1. AileTheAlien says:

      Umm…no? This game is full of bad AI, audio glitches, crap mechanics, and a shallow plot. The Telltale WD game had a distinct, colorful art style, fleshed-out characters, mechanics that worked well for the game, and no broken AI.

      If you haven’t played it yet, it’s only $30 USD on Steam, along with the second season. If you don’t want to pay for it without getting a feel for how good it is first, you can watch a nice let’s-play/commentary of it here. Spoilers, obviously.

      1. Humanoid says:

        Being better than this doesn’t automatically mean it’s any good. I watched the Spoiler Warning series and didn’t come out of it thinking it was a good game. Sure, Survival Instinct is worse by at least an order of magnitude, and the Telltale game at least achieved what it set out to accomplish, but that’s a pretty low bar to set.

        That said, I acknowledge that I’m in the minority, and I suppose it’s fair to call something ‘good’ by some semi-objective metric like critical reception, and I can accept that. For me personally, the Telltale games are clever sleights of hand that on first glance give an illusion of the game being much more than it actually is, and that’s a pretty decent feat in itself.

        On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that there’s been a Mario game without jumping.

        1. AileTheAlien says:

          Does it count if you play Luigi instead? This is the game I’m thinking of. I mean, technically, Luigi usually jumps higher than Mario, usually.

          As for TT:TWD – I get where you’re coming from with the shallowness of the game. It mechanically is weak, the choices in the game don’t actually do anything that affect your gameplay, and the illusion is broken if you ever play it a second time. However, I’d argue that providing a good emotion connection to the characters, and having a plot that’s very strong, are more than enough to classify as “good” for me.

          Don’t get me wrong, though – I also like games with lots of mechanical depth and replay value. The trick is that I say “great” when a game succeeds in most areas. “Amazing” would be succeeding in all major metrics.

          1. Phantos says:

            I’m going to have to echo Humanoid’s response. I despise the Telltale TWD games. Not because it’s mechanically-shallow, either. I’ve played and enjoyed a lot of stuff some people would have a harder time classifying as video games.

            And yeah, maybe they’re not technically as unplayable as “Survival Instinct”, but I don’t feel like that game wanted to be awful. And I don’t think not being a rushed, licensed tie-in game is a reliable metric for quality.

            It’s like… I’m pretty sure those letters Jack the Ripper wrote taunting the police smell better than, say, a sculpture made of bird poop. One of those things is EVIL, and the other is just bad art.

            Hell, I’m willing to argue that TWD: Season 2 has an uglier world-view than Hitman: Absolution. They’re both equally as contrived, but only one of those games involves you taking out very bad people, and leaving the world a better place than when you started.

            H:A has a world of ugly people who need to be taken down. TWD has a world of good people and encourages you to destroy them, because “they’ll just hold you back”.

            H:A takes place in an evil world you clean up gradually. TWD takes place in a world that is potentially good, but demands that you make it worse. Or pretends to give you the choice not to, but then overrides your decision anyway. Or punishes you if you protest with a Game Over screen.

            Gets my blood boiling just thinking about it.

          2. Alex says:

            “As for TT:TWD ““ I get where you're coming from with the shallowness of the game. It mechanically is weak, the choices in the game don't actually do anything that affect your gameplay, and the illusion is broken if you ever play it a second time. However, I'd argue that providing a good emotion connection to the characters, and having a plot that's very strong, are more than enough to classify as “good”Âť for me.”

            I would classify it as “not good” because that false choice interferes with the emotional connection. By letting you save one of two people, and then having the psycho nobody likes murder whichever one you save Telltale ensured that I will never, ever, buy one of their games.

        2. Syal says:

          The Mario game without jumping was called Dr. Mario.

          1. Phantos says:

            I probably should have specified “Main” Mario games, like… the platformers. Not the side-game stuff where they do get creative with it.

            I mean, there’s no jumping in Mario Golf either…

        3. Peter H. Coffin says:

          I came out of the SW series thinking it was a good game, but not a game for me. I wouldn’t like playing it, and wouldn’t feel the fun. That’s not the same as it being a bad game.

  8. Phantos says:

    I absolutely loved The Walking Dead tv show… until the most recent season, which had one unbelievably good episode, and the rest was stupid, oddly racist hogwash.

    So I had the initial urge to defend the show when the SW cast started pooping on it, and then I remembered: “Season Five.”

    1. lucky7 says:

      I felt the same for the comics, but then I remembered the Governor, and stayed silent as well.

  9. Toasty Virus says:

    I guess the High Break down/ Highway thing is to do with if you’re going faster you’re more likely to break down, or something?

    1. Octapode says:

      Maybe highways accelerate Magical Apocalypse Decay Syndrome. It’s the same way 90% of the fuel in the world legs it as soon as zombies come knocking.

  10. Jack Kucan says:

    Dead Island, then Dead Rising? When are ya’ll gonna play Dead to Rights?

    1. Ilseroth says:

      I think Shamus is just trying to knock into that list of “Games with Dead in the Name” that he put together… so they are also going to do Dead Space and Left 4 Dead.

      1. Syal says:

        I’ll be disappointed if they don’t play at least one Typing of the Dead game.

    2. Humanoid says:

      They should at least finish up with Walking Dead first, with the elusive other, other Walking Dead game: Walking Dead Pinball.

  11. The Rocketeer says:

    With all the talk of your GTA Online travails, you and whomever on the crew can participate should get together and stream a heist. Or chaotic nonsense. Really, you can’t have the one without the other.

  12. Spammy says:

    Heh, the Gatorade Nut Punch uses the same time-slowdown sound effect as Killing Floor. I appreciate the reference.

    Also, while the game is rushed and lazy and all of that jazz… it seems like there can be a lot of zombies on screen at once. That’s kind of impressive, right?

    1. AileTheAlien says:

      A lot of zombies that don’t behave properly even for the low standard set for zombies? :S

  13. AileTheAlien says:

    At about 20:00 you guys point out that the boxes are compensating for the lack of a climb ability or a higher jump. Also, Shamus exclaiming about how stupid it is that you can’t climb a simple fence.

    Have there been many 1st-person games where you could do a lot of non-ladder climbing? I think System Shock 2 (drink) had an option to heft yourself onto boxes slightly to high to jump onto, but still lower than a real human could get onto with a chin-up. 3rd-person platformers (2D or 3D) have had some degree of “climbing” where you could usually grab onto ledges after a jump, and maybe a vine-wall which is a 2D version of the 1D ladders found in our 1st-person games.

    1. Humanoid says:

      Dishonored probably is the new benchmark for ability to climb random things, even without Blink.

      1. AileTheAlien says:

        And also Dying Light (from comment below), plus Mirror’s Edge. I’ve actually seen gameplay footage for DL and played ME, so I suppose I should have remembered those. Good to see more games are using systems like this. :)

    2. Spammy says:

      Eldritch also allowed you to hoist yourself up block-and-a-half sized obstacles I think.

    3. Disc says:

      In Thief 1 & 2 you could scale any wall (or otherwise flat surface) roughly at your eye level by holding the jump key. It worked as long as the distance from your point of origin to the ledge wasn’t too high.

      There’s even a trick you could pull to reach an otherwise unreachable area by jumping against the wall and then pressing space again at the right moment to trigger the “pull up”. I don’t know if it was really intended or not, but it always provided for some thrilling stunts and the occasional improvised entrance or alternative route.

    4. You can mantle (supposedly) in the first System Shock, too.

  14. V8_Ninja says:

    On the topic of Dying Light; It got bad reviews, but I would argue that it’s actually a pretty fun game, at least mechanically. While the game’s parkour isn’t on the same level as Mirror’s Edge, the game still gives you full control of what you want to do and lets you traverse a ton of urban areas in whatever way you want, whenever you want. The game also has a surprisingly satisfying combat system where weapons (seem to) properly interact with the enemies. There’s some other mechanics and such (most notably crafting, because every modern game has crafting), but the smooth parkour and the satisfying combat just make it a joy to run around the world doing whatever you want. Granted, the game doesn’t deserve any special awards, but it’s what I think of when I think of AAA games, which is polished gameplay and enough content to satisfy most anybody.

    EDIT: On the topic of the parkour, I should also add that it’s really responsive. It’s not like the awful system in the original Assassin’s Creed, where every parkour-related action takes a few seconds to finish. The response time of the game is on-par with Mirror’s Edge, to the point where, in some cases, it’s faster to leap from ledge to ledge instead of letting the game’s auto-climbing handle the task. It’s a bit dumb, but it just feels right, and that’s something I wish every game developer prioritized.

  15. Re: “Firing the Showrunner.”

    They fired Frank Darabont, director of The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist. Why? So they could take what they were spending on him along with the money they’d cut from TWD’s budget and give it to Mad Men, a show with lower ratings.

    Fans of genre TV like to say things like “Why is Star Trek Voyager allowed to go on but Farscape got canceled?” as if all nerd-TV draws from the same budget and is produced by the same network. This is the only time in genre TV I can think of where you can point to a case where one show was actually being given resources at the expense of a more popular one.

    1. IanJ says:

      Not a fan of Mad Men, but this isn’t actually what happened. Mad Men’s budget went up because of a combination of contractual obligation and critical acclaim, just like Breaking Bad. The Walking Dead’s budget got slashed and Frank Darabont got fired because they were constantly over spending and missing deadlines.

      The real villain in the “what went wrong with The Walking Dead” story is AMC’s executives, who commissioned dud after dud after dud. The three shows I named so far most people know at least by reputation, but the dozen or so dead pilots in between them cost the network considerably more than they could afford. Then there are half dozen one-and-out shows some people remember fondly (I quite liked the intelligence analyst one) but all performed even worse in the ratings than either Mad Men or early Breaking Bad.

      And the awards thing really does matter, weirdly enough. Mostly for inside baseball nonsense, but the cost/benefit thingy does tip the scales even if it’s just to slash promotional costs in half, which is a really big deal to a cable network. Even as the highest-rated show on basic cable, The Walking Dead is just too expensive per episode for the audience it can deliver. Especially since that audience demonstrated it will continue to show up regardless of how much AMC spends on it.

      1. guy says:

        So TWD was consistently going over-budget, so they… cut its budget and required more episodes? Instead of making like most networks and saying that the show had a budget and would not get more money if they used it all?

        1. IanJ says:

          AMC lost money on the initial run of the first season. Quite a bit of money. Ratings determine ad revenue, but the ratings for a new show are anticipated based on Neilson handwaving and marketing jazz-handwaving. So even if Darabont had been able to deliver the initial season on time and on budget (which was an absurd task given the scale of the job), AMC would still have lost money on the broadcast.

          With a few more episodes in that first season, AMC would have had time to renegotiate with sponsors for better rates. But the money for more first season episodes all got used up finishing the initial run of six. The initial schedule was for seven episodes, and there was money available for as many as thirteen (depending on who is telling the story/passing the buck). They used up a solid chunk of that extra money getting the first series done at all.

          So they cut the second season budget to a number that meant they would turn a profit on every single episode, assuming similar ratings to the first season. Then the showrunner position was given to whichever senior producer looked at the budget he was given per episode and said “Yeah, I guess I could pull that off…”

          It may not be fair, but it is logical. For Hollywood accounting/TV broadcasting levels of dream logic anyway.

          Edited for the episode number thing and to make myself less weirdly belligerent. Don’t know how I keep managing to do that.

  16. This makes me wonder if getting the Dead Island franchise on sale is worth it. I know the core game stinks, but I saw this “Director’s Cut” mod for it that made several ‘best mods ever’ lists.

    Has anyone here played it?

    1. Disc says:

      I didn’t play the mod, but on gameplay alone, I’d say the main game alone is worth picking up for a co-op venture at the very least. They patched out the worst problems. Though if you’d rather that guns were at least on par with melee, then judging by the description, that mod might be what you’re looking for, assuming “headshot from a pistol or rifle can take out a zombie” means instakill. Even a guaranteed knockdown would make them a lot more powerful than they currently are. Guns have their uses in vanilla (mostly against hostile humans), but they’re not really there to replace melee.

      Riptide is mostly the same but refined and with a little bit more choice on the weapons. The characters still specialize on a specific weapons, but there’s also weapon skills separate from the leveling system that you automatically raise by using the corresponding weapon. As you gain levels on them you get bonuses to damage, durability and so on. They also beefed up the guns by a significant factor. High-tier shotguns and sniper rifles in particular can dish out some pretty serious damage. They’re also often very preferable to melee in certain situations towards the endgame.

      Edit: The part about “spam-kick” is the only thing a bit off. It may have been the case in 2011, but as of now, kicks drain your stamina, so you can’t really spam it anymore. Controlling the fight (for zombies anyway) is more of a dance where you shuffle between swinging at the zombies, keeping them at bay and avoiding getting cornered and/or surrounded.

  17. Ivellius says:

    Is anyone else not all that bothered by most of the zombie AI in that linked video? (The hopping the barriers thing yes but not the other stuff.) Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something charming about seeing them act so stupidly. I mean… they are zombies. They should be really dumb.

    Also, it’s pretty source-appropriate that zombies would just randomly spawn from nowhere in a Walking Dead.

    1. Humanoid says:

      Well if they were “properly” dumb, they’d follow the convention of making a beeline towards your location, even if the exact spot you were was out of their reach. As opposed to the “improperly” dumb way they magically know that they can’t get to you, and therefore opt to do nothing. Which I suppose makes them the most prescient dumb things ever.

      1. AileTheAlien says:

        I think it’s this prescience which makes it look the worst. I mean, they’re somehow smart enough to know a barrier is in their way, know the only path around would take them too far from their target, but supposed to be “dumb” zombies?

        The other big problem is when the zombies actually turn away from the player when the player gets in range. It’s completely the opposite of what a dumb zombie would do, which should be trying to eat your brains. Plus, they display no other intelligent-looking behaviors which could make them look like some kind of “smart” monster.

        Compare this to the special infected in Left 4 Dead. Those monsters actively tried to avoid you, take cover, etc, which made them look smarter. They also don’t look as smart as humans, like say the marines in Half Life. Those guys swarmed you in flanking positions, with clever audio clips which made them sound like they were talking to each other on radios, coordinating the attack on you.

        1. Syal says:

          And the big problem of “I’m completely safe while standing on this below-head-height object”. The top of a car (or a table) should not be zombie-proof.

      2. Ivellius says:

        Isn’t them moving toward the player’s location unsuccessfully exactly what happened with the car and the zombies at the end held up by the half-wall?

        1. Humanoid says:

          The scenes like where you can stand on a car or table and the zombies just sort of wave their arms at you are regrettable but probably the least bad outcome assuming the AI is incapable of climbing or of environmental destruction. Better at least than the cases where, knowing they can’t hit you, they just stand where they are, not acknowledging your existence at all.

          I actually think that it’s not a bad approach at all for zombies to fail to notice there is a valid path to you, if that path involves moving a significant distance away and there is clear line of sight to their present position.

          1. Syal says:

            The best case scenario is to not let the player get on top of the car if the zombies can’t follow them.

            Agreed about zombies not needing good pathfinding; that fence-hopping nonsense was entirely because the zombies were following the open route instead of following pure line-of-sight and clawing at the jumpable barrier the whole time. (Well, actually it was caused by designing the level that way; this is the reason zombie apocalypse stories never involve going inside banks or airports.)

  18. Tony Kebell says:

    Dead Island? I would LOVE to see you do Dead Island co-op.

  19. Gruhunchously says:

    And so the story of Dixon Sr. comes to an end with a fatal encounter with his greatest bane- a knee high log (also zombies).

    Seriously though, couldn’t the developers at least have made a realistic barrier to cut off your escape? A picket fence, a chain link fence, a rusty wooden door or…eh, nevermind.

  20. Flailmorpho says:

    JUST PUNCH THE MIRROR, YOUR HAND WILL DEFINITELY NOT BE BLOODY AFTERWARDS

  21. Daemian Lucifer says:

    In my defense, I'm still about 1000% less terrible at my job than whoever did the GTA V multiplayer.

    And yet they got 180 of your dollars.How much did you charge us for this video?You need better marketing Shamoose.

  22. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Guys,if you were to cover just one recent(say last 5 years)zombie video game every week,youd have an entire season.Because this is how many of them there are.And thats a short list.

  23. Steve C says:

    If I had been playing, shooting the deer twice would have been 2 strikes against this game. Getting caught on a log and unable to jump over it would have been strike 3. I would have put it down in disgust and never picked it up again.

    1. Lachlan the Mad says:

      Was the deer transparent to bullets? I’m sure Josh pegged it twice and it didn’t even flinch.

      1. Steve C says:

        While I’m sure Josh pegs animals all the time, I’m fairly confident it was Campster who was playing this time.

  24. Axcalibar says:

    Nice choice of opening music… it just so happens I played “Zombies ate my Neighbors” on virtual console just two days ago.

  25. Aerik says:

    Sports Drink? I *love* Sports Drink!

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