Editorials
How Overkill’s “The Walking Dead” Fails Its Source Material
It almost seems like a match made in heaven; the extremely successful developers of Payday mixed with the media juggernaut that is The Walking Dead. Since its release one has to wonder how we must settle for the eventual final product; Overkill’s adaptation falls flat in the context of The Walking Dead adaptations and fails to highlight what makes its source material so beloved. In comparison, Telltale nailed the atmosphere and drama of the comics, the tone was set from the first episode and only get darker and more disturbing as the series progressed. The characterization is flat and an emphasis is placed solely on mindless killing rather than applying any nuance to morality in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Having played Overkill’s The Walking Dead I am left wondering why did this need The Walking Dead brand as Overkill draw very little from its source material.
What separates The Walking Dead (both the TV show and comic book series) from other zombie apocalypses is the characters’ justification of immoral behavior. This bleak view of humanity and the choices that must be made to preserve some semblance of civilization is captivating. Overkill’s The Walking Dead offers none of this; the plot is lackluster, characters lack any depth and there is no tension or dread to any of the action. The game’s combat has little to no worthwhile context; there’s very little reason to drive the in-game violence making progressing through the game a chore. The player will go through the game gratuitously killing both the living and the dead but given no motivation to do so other than “this is how to advance the game”.
Hands-On With Overkill’s The Walking Dead
The Family is the opposing faction of survivors who challenge the player’s own group for survival. In what could have been an excellent platform to humanize the living enemy against the backdrop of mindless, inhuman zombies, Overkill make no effort to humanize the Family or provide any rationale for their systematic killing at the hands of the player(s). Ultimately it feels like the developers wanted to create a bombastic Left 4 Dead-like game but because of The Walking Dead IP had to make a meandering in-between mess. The zombies are about easy to empathize with as the humans, the AI programming takes up where the writing left off by having the Family never seek cover and wander into the player’s crosshairs. Unlike the comics, it doesn’t feel like there’s any great value or importance to life.
The does not do a good job of replicating the feeling of anxiousness that permeates Kirkman’s comics. The AI should compliment the frantic and tense atmosphere of the story. AI feels dated in Overkill’s The Walking Dead; the zombies mostly saunter at you one by one making the gameplay more tedious to get through rather than engaging. The human AI is incredibly unreasonable; they know where you are at all times if they even slightly detect you. More importantly, in a game that focuses so much on stealth and a scarcity of resources, the AI needs to drive the suspense by being smart and punishing. AI in 2018 needs to be better than this and be held to a higher standard than this. One of the best parts of Payday is the waves of police that pursue you and your three accomplices.
As you complete various objectives around the city you happily mow down the police force. The AI for the police force must have cannon fodder written into it somewhere. The game throws hordes of zombie-like S.W.A.T that choose to sprint full speed into your assault rifle. And you know what? That’s fun! It is pretty much a video game adaptation of the shootouts from Heat and Reservoir Dogs. This AI is in no way complementary to the way zombies and humans react in the TV show nor the comic books. By comparison, The Last of Us is half a decade old and still looks and plays better than Overkill’s The Walking Dead.
The extremely tense atmosphere and the fragility of life found in Kirkman’s comics as well as the AMC series is left by the wayside. Stealth is flimsy and inconsistent meaning that you will end up going out guns blazing the vast majority of the time. The rare instances where you are stealthy has the player pretty much ambling through the level swinging their melee item constantly like a gardener beating back their bushes. The inconstancy of stealth just makes the players’ attempts to be immersed seem futile.
It’s hard to feel dread when the player’s actions just feel so monotonous and routine. It is a shame because any attempt for the player to be stealthy lacks that trepidation that makes reading the comics so enjoyable. The Family seems to have no qualms with attracting zombies and will shoot in your general direction despite drawing the hordes. The whole point of the dichotomy of the living vs the dead is that the survivors are supposed to be deadly adversaries WITH intelligence. This is nowhere to be seen in Overkill’s The Walking Dead leading it to be yet another disappointing adaptation of Kirkman’s world.
The player finds survivors that you can send out for mini missions a la Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain but unlike the latter, there is no attempt to create a relationship with these operatives aside from their profile pictures. In essence, Overkill’s The Walking Dead has many good ideas but they are just poorly implemented or fall flat on their face. There is a good game somewhere in the incongruent mess but it is a let down to fans of the The Walking Dead for its sheer disregard for its source material.
This is where the Telltale series absolutely knocked it out of the park. The whole notion of making an adaptation of complex morality into an FPS can be pulled off, but like with most fans, the gore and violence is hardly the major draw to the beloved series to me. Lack of characterization, intelligent AI and direction makes its connection to The Walking Dead tenuous at best and connected to the series ultimately by name only.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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