I've read 2 issues of The Walking Dead
Comic book (one excellent, one meh), and seen one episode of the TV
show (which was so so). I had heard nothing but praise for the game
though, so I picked it up. It's an adventure game, but it only bears
a passing resemblance to the adventure games I have tried in my life,
like Myst and... that's about it.
It's hard for me to review a game like this as I am very cautious about spoiler's and literally everything that happens in the game is story driven and therefore apt to be spoiled. So this might seem like a poorly written review, and for that I apologize (of course there is also poor writing involved too). I just do it because I love you and I don't want to spoil you. Smiley face. I also recommend not reading the trophies before playing the game, as some of their names are spoilers. Also, I'd recommend turning trophy notifications off while you play this game, as you get them all automatically and they are therefore pointless interruptions (although I love trophies in general!).
The game is a story driven adventure
that is all about how you act and speak in certain situations.
Scenarios culminate in mucky moral dilemmas where you are forced to
make a choice with drastic consequences. The game tracks what you say
and do between episodes (the game was originally released as five
separate episodes that came out 1 at a time).
You control Lee Everett, a man who
suddenly winds up in the middle of a zombie apocalypse that's just
starting to happen. He finds himself taking care of an 8 year old
girl, Clementine, whose parents were out of town when bad things
started happening. They meet randomly and end up sticking together,
trying to survive. I'm just giving you the very basics here. The
story is top notch, I don't want you to know almost any of it when
you go in. You'll learn a lot more than what I'm telling you here in
just the first few minutes of the game, but I'm keeping it super
spoiler free!
Each of the five episodes takes, by my
estimate, 2-3 hours to play. You're going to meet a lot of characters
and be put in a whole lot of different situations. In many
situations, you walk Lee around a set environment with the left
analog stick while the right controls a cursor that works like a
mouse. The cursor has four spaces around it, which correspond to the
layout of cross, circle, triangle, and square. When you put the
cursor on an object or person you can interact with, your available
methods of interaction pop up as pictograms in these four slots, and
pressing the corresponding button does that action. It might be a
hand to pick something up, a word bubble to initiate a conversation,
a hammer icon to bash a zombie's skull in, or a gun icon to shoot.
Objects and people you can interact with have a white dot on them that appears
when your cursor gets near them. This system works well for the times
when you are left alone to walk around and do stuff freely, or when
you are under the gun to try and do stuff during an intense
situation. Sometimes you are deliberately searching for items or a way to do something with the items you have and sometimes you are acting on the spur of the moment, but this control scheme handles either pretty well. This is certainly a slower-paced experience than you might
expect for a zombie game, but it works great.
Combat in the game is handled in a few
different ways. Sometimes you may just click on a zombie to attack
it. Other times you may need to actually aim a weapon and fire.
Sometimes you have to mash cross and then press a button
corresponding to an on-screen prompt to finish it off. Sometimes you
need to click on a zombie as it is thrashing around and holding you
to kick it off. These situations are some of the few moments where
you can actually die and get a game over. Most of them work pretty
well; some are frustrating because clicking on a moving zombie is a
little awkard.
Often you are in interactive cutscenes
where the group you are with is interacting and doing stuff. In these
situations you control what Lee says. You are given four options most
of the time (well, three and the option to stay silent by pressing
square). A timer bar appears at the bottom of the screen to count
down how long you have to answer before you automatically say nothing
and the scene goes on. Just hearing about this may sound boring or
pointless, but choosing what to say is one of the most engaging parts
of the game. What do you say to people you meet for the first time
when you don't know if you can trust them? What do you say to people
you know you can't trust, or who hate you, or who you are trying to
keep secrets from? Or when you are asked to take sides? What you say and do defines how the game goes on,
and trying to pick between the three options in intense situations
with only a few seconds to make your decision is nerve wracking. The
stakes are always life and death and your choices seal the fates of yourself and the people around
you, so chooses wisely.. Just like real life,
you'll wonder if you did the right thing or what would happen if you
had done things differently.
It can't be overemphasized how good
the story is. What happens in the game will be defined by the choices
made by each individual player. If you don't like it at first, give
it a little time. The investment will be well worth it. The
characters and story are in the top echelons of game story-telling.
Only a small handful of games, like the Metal Gear Solid series, have
great writing like this (and just so you know, the game is nothing
like MGS in writing style. I'm just saying they both have great
writing). And the fact that all the conversations are interactive and
change based on what you say and do makes it even more amazing. At
the end of each chapter, a summary shows you what percentage of
players made the same choices that you did. This is a fascinating end
to each chapter. If you know someone else who has played the game,
talk to them about your choices. I had several interesting talks with
another player about how he played the game and what differences
there were in our stories. I didn't have a desire to re-play the game and make different choices. I felt very strongly that I made my choices and I wanted to stick with them, and that playing around would cheapen the experience. But discussing your choices and what happened with other players is really fun. I'm being super vague about the details
because even talking about themes and ideas presented in the game can
be a spoiler in a game like this (they were for me!). Going in cold
is your best bet. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
The graphics are designed to look like
a hand-drawn comic book. The game is in color, in case you were
wondering (the comic is in black and white). This style works pretty
well. It's definitely not the best looking game, but it works. There
are a few ugly character models, namely Larry and Omid. I think they
look like they were ripped out of a PSOne game.
The sound effects are appropriate and
when there is music it's good.
Unfortunately this game has a laundry
list of technical problems. Animations stutter. Lips get out of sync.
Music gets stuck and loops. The game froze on me once (at a particularly epic moment). Character
models sometimes pop into existence or move around when they
shouldn't. Background items move around (I mean, like, trees and
stuff are moving around in the background. The whole
tree). Sometimes in the middle of intense moments you will click to
do something and the game will freeze for about 2-5 seconds before
doing what you said. This happens a handful of times right in the
middle of intense action sequences. Worst of all, in my opinion, is
the auto-saving. I had to re-play some segments after quitting to the
main menu a few times, which is a total mood killer. One time, while
re-playing a part I had already played, I noticed the game auto-save
several times, so I don't get why it hadn't saved that part before
for me. The absolute worst was an important conversation I had early
in the game. Later in the game the characters acted as if this
conversation never happened. My theory is that I had this
conversation and then had to quit. The game wasn't saved. When I
re-loaded I didn't re-do the conversation because I was in the same
spot and it seemed like it was saved. So the auto-saving isn't
consistent and the game doesn't save when you quit (to be fair, it
does tell you this. But why doesn't it just save?). This conversation
was very important to me, and when it came up later in the game that
I didn't have it, I was mad.
But the long list of flaws can't drag down the experience; The
Walking Dead is one the best games I've ever played. The story is affecting and superb, and you really feel like you are
crafting it, living it though your character's thoughts, words, and
deeds. It will make you feel many emotions and debate with yourself
what you would do in a similar situation. If it ran perfectly, I'd
definitely give it a perfect score. Maybe even if we could eliminate
half of the flaws I mentioned above. Together, that long list of
problems do hurt the experience, but just barely. Everything else is
just too good for the flaws to bring you down too much. It's a great
game, Tier 2.
