YMMV / The Walking Dead: Destinies

• Bile Fascination: The game has become a favorite target of critical and consumer mockery due to its dull and frustrating gameplay and graphics that would've been outdated a decade ago.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Most players tend to agree that the game's story decisions and possible choice-determined plot points are much better than its awkward gameplay and graphics.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: A storyline that hasn't made it to the final game has Merle be stranded on the rooftop like in canon, except a girl saves him right before he cuts off his arm. Then he would grow attached to the girl's group of friends and end up becoming their protector. Many fans expressed their belief that had this storyline not been left out, it would have made the game much better.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The Sledgehammer. The moment you pick it up (and to make matters worse, several times you start with the damn thing) your melee attack is disabled, and if a zombie grabs you, you don't get grabbed properly, leading to you continually losing health without being able to push the zombie away (button mashing will just have the counter go into the negative), meaning that four zombies touching you is a guaranteed death sentence. While it can be remedied if you only pick it up by swapping it with another weapon, if you start with it, these problems won't fix themselves until the next mission.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: A major complaint about the game is that it covers too little ground, ending with Season 4 of the show. As of this writing, there are no plans to cover the remaining seasons, though some developers expressed an interest.
• Narm: The questionable quality of some of the character models makes some of the characters look downright cartoonish, resulting in almost comical facial expressions during what should be serious and dramatic scenes.
• Obvious Beta: The game's digital launch didn't seem to have done it much favors. The graphics look downgraded, not all characters look like themselves, the combat system is janky and the amount of bugs found both during gameplay and the cutscenes make for a very cheesy experience at best and a nightmare at worst. People tend to agree that while the game has a very good premise and choices mechanic, the execution could have been a lot better.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • If Hershel and Rick both survive, one of the prison cutscenes shows the former walking perfectly fine... despite having his leg amputated earlier. It's even goofier to how it is actually animated, with Hershel's right leg below the knee rendered invisible.
  • Whether you defeat Rick or Shane during the farm confrontation, they will often ragdoll and slide through the floor before the killing cutscene plays out.
• Stock Footage Failure:
  • If Shane is present during the prison assault instead of Rick, the latter still somehow appears standing near Daryl while fighting off the undead during the sniping mission. He is labeled as Shane, meaning a wrong character model had been used.
  • Regardless if Carl died at the Greene farm or not, he will still be seen fleeing the prison if the player had Rick kill Shane.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: While some minor characters being cut can be argued as trimming the fat of the plot, many others become eyebrow-raising.
  • Duane Jones is missing despite his father Morgan making a brief appearance. Duane's death in the series provides a major blow to his father's sanity and turns him into a Crazy Survivalist and Death Seeker. It would've been interesting to see what Duane would've became had he survived, perhaps turning him and his father into mirror images of Carl and Rick.
  • To a lesser extent, his father Morgan is hit with this as well. He does make an appearance, but only once in the story and is never seen afterwards. It couldh have been nice opportunity for him to become a part of Rick's group earlier than in canon and perhaps even solve the conflict at the farm/prison differently.
  • Andrea and Amy Harrison are missing, the former of which suffered a controversial Death by Adaptation which was seen as case of wasting a perfectly good character in itself compared to her Action Girl comic counterpart. Saving Amy's life could've also made for an interesting What If? scenario.
  • Dr. Jenner being cut is even worse, considering in the show proper he provides Rick with the penultimate Wham Line in which he realizes that everyone living is infected and will become walkers upon death unless their brains are destroyed.
  • Sophia still suffering her canon fate is also a missing opportunity, considering she survived the original comic.
  • Out of all the convicts, only Andrew is present and he quickly turns hostile regardless of what action the player takes. More likeable prisoners like Axel and Oscar could have spiced up the prison arc a little bit and opened up a lot of potential plots.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Due to many cuts in characters and arcs, many interesting What If? plots are unrealized, not helped by the egregious use of Railroading in the game.
  • Playing off of the Mythology Gag from the trailer where Rick reanimates and is shot in Shane's place, a very interesting concept for the game would've been adapting comic storylines as alternate timelines. Carl and Andrea in particular had drastic Character Development and took several levels in badass compared to their TV counterparts, and their deaths by adaptation are hot topics to this day.
  • Related to the above, if the player has Shane kill Rick, he basically just takes Rick's role down to his iconic beard and jacket combo. He still leads the group to the prison and the game more or less plays out with the same setpieces as the show. It would've been more interesting to see Shane lead the group somewhere not covered by the show, or somewhere that wouldn't be explored on the show until much later.
  • Depending upon the player's choices, Carl may end up dying to the gunshot wound instead of Maggie or Beth. This could have spawned a whole lot of different storylines, such as a rift being formed between Rick's group and the Greene Family or Rick and Shane turning on each other earlier, but unfortunately the outcome is exactly the same as if the player chose to save Carl, just with Hershel's daughter in his place. The game carries on as usual, and Carl is barely even mentioned during the prison arc.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The game's rather low-quality graphics make the character models look very shoddy, with the slideshow nature of the cutscenes highlighting their unnatural facial expressions.