The Walk – Review
Plenty of researchers have written dozens of books about gamification, a modern-day trend that introduces elements from video games as well as achievements and rewards to otherwise everyday tasks.
Fitness in particular has become somewhat of a success story when it comes to gamification, yet the really interesting ventures can be counted on one hand. So far one of the best attempts at getting people to work out in a fun way, has been Zombies, run!, a quaint little iOS app that delivers a decent apocalyptic story, great voice-acting and some strategy elements have you managing a small town in between runs.
Developer Six to Start has now released their second attempt, dubbed The Walk, which, unlike their previous game, keeps the pace a bit lower.
No zombies this time around, instead The Walk delivers a science fiction thriller where terrorist groups threaten a somewhat peaceful society.
There are about 800 minutes of audio to unlock, just by walking around. It works like this: each chapter has its own top down map and route. Along the way several points are marked, as are the amount of time required to reach them. Walk long enough in real life and you’ll unlock each way-point, together with its assigned part of the story.
Other than just charging ahead, you can scroll through the map, occasionally clicking on points of interest or changing routes in order to spot hidden audio logs.
As with Zombies, run!, the voice-acting is top notch and hearing all the different British accents, only provokes your imagination.
The story itself is decent, offering enough suspense to keep you hooked and a bunch of achievements, challenging you to complete a chapter in one day, or without stopping for more than three hours, will provoke completionists.
We do have a few gripes though.
You see, Zombies, run! Was brilliant, partly because it was so easy to get going. You selected a playlist filled wiith your favourite songs and started running. Every few songs another part of the story would automatically start playing.
There’s no easy of use when it comes to The Walk. In-game playlists are absent and every single part of the story needs to be selected manually in order to play.
This alienates most of the target audience. People who like to go for a stroll and want to keep themselves entertained, are forced to get out their smartphone, open up the app and click whatever part of the story they unlocked. This has to be done every few minutes. User friendly, this is not.
It’s a shame, because The Walk’s plot rivals more conventional audiobooks. As it stands, there are a few missing features, that could have elevated this game to the same heights as the studio’s previous game.
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