And now for something completely different! Okay, just kinda different. You guys have probably seen the ads for that Walking Dead mobile game, "No Man's Land", I decided to try it out and review it.
First, some quick technical info:
Played on: LG G4
Current Version: 1.30.0.41
Time Spent with the Game: Approximately 15 hours.
Available for: iOS and Android
Requires internet connection to play
What the Game Is
The game's ads don't make it abundantly clear, but the game is a "free to play" single player combination of turn-based combat and city builder game. There is a single player campaign with optional side missions to get materials and equipment, these materials can then be used at the base section of the game to upgrade characters, equipment and buildings.
How Does it Relate to the Show?
Aside from being set in the same world as the Walking Dead, quite frankly, it doesn't. The game starts with you controlling a group of three survivors captured in Terminus, when Terminus gets blown up by Carol, they manage to escape the train car they are in. In some initial cutscenes Darryl (aka Norman Reedus) shows up as a guide through the first chapter of the game, which is basically a tutorial, but doesn't show up again past that. You'll revisit some locations, such as Terminus and the prison, from the show, but mostly it's a separate storyline. As far as being emotionally similar to the show, the game definitely isn't like that, the characters you control are a lot like equipment in an RPG, they have a maximum and minimum level and stats detailing how powerful they are, once they are no longer powerful enough you'll "retire" them and never see them again. There is a storyline, but only the NPCs matter to that storyline while you observe in god-like fashion.
Gameplay
The actual game portion of the game is fairly simple, but engaging. The meat of the game is going on missions, turn-based scenarios to advance the story or get new resources and equipment. On every mission, you get to bring three survivors from your group, each of the survivors have different classes that determine what they can do, scouts use knives to quietly stab zombies in the head, while hunters use rifles that can shoot down zombies in a line. Every character has 2 "action points" that let them do something, attacking an enemy or interacting with an object ends their turn. Each mission has an objective, usually the objective is to simply open three boxes to get supplies, but most of the storyline missions have more interesting objectives or special obstacles to getting the supplies. The most interesting aspect of the missions relates to the use of guns. Just like in the show, shooting a gun alerts nearby zombies to your presence, attracting them, but even more interesting is the reinforcement counter. Every few turns, more zombies will show up, usually from the direction you entered the map in; using guns results in more and tougher zombies showing up, this can turn certain missions into a complete failure. Fortunately, if you screw up, your characters usually won't die, they'll simply be injured for a certain amount of time, the only exception being optional "deadly" missions for better gear. At the end of each mission you get to open 3 boxes, which will either contain resources or equipment. The gameplay isn't revolutionary or terribly complex, but it is fun if you like turn-based games.
Base building is where you'll generally spend the least amount of time, but it's important nonetheless. There are three basic resources, experience, supplies and gas and then two special ones, phones and gold. Gas is spent when you go on missions, it's essentially a stamina bar. Experience is what you use to upgrade your survivors and their equipment, phones let you recruit more survivors by "calling out" for them, while gold is the special "real money" resource. Supplies are needed to upgrade buildings, which lets you upgrade your characters and equipment more, store more gas to go on missions or get your wounded survivors healed faster on top of letting you get more supplies automatically. The base is built in a way similar to base builder games you may have played previously, every level of upgrade beyond the initial one takes more and more supplies and time to complete. The game does a good job of making things pretty easy to navigate around in the camp, the frequent things you might want to look at all have a button along the left side of the screen for easy access and the game lets you reorganize where your buildings are at will with the exception of mission car and the campfire (which is where you advance the main storyline).
What About the Free to Play Aspects?
Fortunately, No Man's Land isn't too much of a money grab, unless you're impatient. As long as you're keeping your mission car up to date, you'll usually have enough gas for at least 30 minutes of missions (once you add in needing to do stuff back at the camp). Gold, the pay to play resource, can be acquired in other ways, as mission rewards or by completing optional challenges and quests; and the only action that requires gold is opening up an additional slot for survivors. Gold can be used for just about everything if you want to though, it can cover a shortfall in resources or it can instantly complete an upgrade, so if you want to pay you can advance things extremely quickly. The game also presents you with another, non paying option to get extra resources, at the end of missions instead of paying 25 gold to open extra boxes, you can watch a 30 second ad (or just set the phone down and do something else for 30 seconds), you can also go to the "cinema" and watch ads to get extra resources outside of missions. Aside from the ad that pops up every time you login, I never felt like the game was being pushy about getting money from me.
The game does require an internet connection to play, primarily to prevent cheating, but unlike some always online games (looking at you, Diablo 3!) No Man's Land also uses that internet connection to do some good. Since you're always connected, every action is on the server, so if you have to stop in the middle of a mission, you can reconnect later and get right back into it, saving you time and frustration. If I'm not mistaken, the game also does some of the rendering on the server, it looks pretty good for a mobile game and it uses some ragdoll physics. This does mean that the game can't be played offline, which can be frustrating if you don't have the greatest mobile connection.
Summary
If you like turn-based strategy games and you don't tend to play mobile strategy games for hours, No Man's Land is a fun little mobile game. If you're looking for something you can play for hours on end you'll be disappointed. If you're looking for a video game based in the Walking Dead world with the same sort of emotional impact of the show, well you're probably better off playing Telltale Games' The Walking Dead game series.
) - so why the hell haven't they cut Carl's ridiculous hair yet???
