When you're constantly on the room from hordes of flesh-hungry zombies and the desperate remnants of humanity you don't have time to lug around an entire game console just to recreate the experience. That's the only way I can make sense of "Deluxe Plug It In & Play TV Games" based on AMC's The Walking Dead.
While Telltale is busy delivering a more comic book-friendly series of episodic The Walking Dead games, AMC has somehow been convinced by JAKKS Pacific that what fans of the television show really want are a series of simple self-contained games that come packed inside a standalone controller with a pair of A/V jacks dangling from it. You know, the sort of games you buy kids when you want to see them cry at Christmas. "But I wanted an Xbox!"
The Walking Dead Deluxe TV Games are geared towards an older crowd of course, with a controller shaped like a pump action shotgun and multiple levels of what the official announcement calls "Zombie adventures" aiming for a T for Teen rating.
Maybe this is a great idea. Maybe these "Zombie adventures" will actually capture the spirit of man's bitter struggle against himself in the face of extinction. They can fit that in a plastic shotgun, right?
Look for The Walking Dead Deluxe TV Games to hit store shelves this fall. Which shelves? That's for Walmart to figure out.