The Walking Dead Social (beta)

Rock You/Eyes Wide Games, Facebook ****

For someone who is more than a little freaked out by the whole zombie thing, I’ve inadvertently ended up playing a lot of the games. The newest is this one, based on AMC’s hit TV show, and it’s similar to other social games that have sprung up on Facebook. You need energy to move and perform actions, and your friends make an appearance, helping you defend your hideout while you’re not actively playing, and appearing as zombies too. After a quick tutorial you are thrown in at the deep end, crouching behind cars to sneak up on snarling Walkers. The cartoon style of the game makes it slightly less gruesome when you take a walker’s head off with a baseball bat. But weapons wear out, so you’ll have to earn coins to buy new ones – a knife or an axe maybe. When you dispose of zombies your aim has to be precise: a target passes over them, and when it turns red you must strike. Weapons are limited; in the vein of all good apocalypse games, if you manage to get hold of a gun then ammo will be limited. Frustrating, but if unlimited ammo was available, this would be a very short game.There’s plenty of missions and a decent story to tease out here.