The Walking Dead (X-Box 360)
Riv , 2013/01/04 21:52

Publisher:	Telltale Games
Genre:	Adventure ("Point & Click")
Players:	1 Player
Rating	Mature
The Good:	This game single-handedly revived the dead “point and click” genre through the use of a compelling story and character development.
The Bad:	While the game is billed as being shaped by your decisions many of your decisions don’t actually impact the events of the game so much as the way other characters speak to you.
The Ugly:	Larry is an ugly human being both inside and out. What a fucking cunt. Go fuck yourself, Larry.

There’s a certain aura of suspense each chapter which will make you not want the game to end and say “just a little more” at 5 a.m. If anything it turns you into a zombie...

Unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere you’ve heard of The Walking Dead, a popular comic book series turned television series that has taken the over-saturated, over-exposed zombie genre and managed to make it interesting and compelling again. It would seem that TWD intends to do the same to the “point and click” adventure games of old as Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead on X-Box Live Arcade and the Playstation Network has not only “reanimated” a dying genre but managed to score numerous awards from actual videogame publications and programs, scoring several “Game of the Year” awards right out from the likes of Halo 4 and Borderlands 2. So how did a game from a very small company with a very small budget manage to garner such praise? Was it The Walking Dead license’s strength or was it something else entirely?

For just 75 cents a day (the price of a candy bar), YOU could have kept this child from starving to death and reanimating.

The first thing I noticed when playing TWD is that graphically the game manages to capture the imagery of the graphic novels perfectly. It’s like watching a comic book come to life in full-color (the graphic novels are in black and white). Your day starts off as Lee Everett, a University of Georgia professor going to jail for the murder of a senator who was having an affair with his wife. Lee is en route to prison when suddenly he finds himself freed after a car accident tosses him into a zombie-infested forest. Upon finding civilization again (or what remains of it) he befriends a little girl named Clementine who is waiting for her parents whom were on vacation in Savannah, GA to come find her. Lee decides to protect Clementine in a world where the dead vastly outnumber the living and protect her from The Walking Dead.

Lee Everett is MAH NIGGA.

If you’re familiar with point-and-click games of the infancy of computer gaming – games such as Maniac Mansion, Space Quest and the like, you might be familiar with the way this title plays out. You are usually in a set area and can interact and examine the environment. Usually items that can be inspected stand out upon you hovering the cursor over them. However if you want to be hardcore you can turn the “mouse-over” off so that you are challenged much more. You can also do this with the mental notes that appear when interacting with characters. You will have to pick up items and figure out their use to handle whatever situations you might be facing. Of course there is the chance you might find yourself in a zombie attack in which the controls go to the style of “quick-timer event” games first made popular by SEGA’S Shenmue series.

Herpes: It's about suppressing it.

Interacting with characters in this game is equally as important to solving problems and situations. You’ll find that this is the focal point of the game, and probably one of the things that made it an award-winning title because it places importance on something no other game has in a long time: emotional connection. Sure we have seen games such as Bethesda’s Skyrim and Fallout titles dabble in “branching” storylines but never with so much emotional connection to the characters involved. For example in Bethesda’s titles, I’m pretty much a complete dickhead. Not so much in TWD where the game makes you actually question your moral judgment should a zombie apocalypse ever occur.

In other words every response you make to a character can either have a positive or negative influence on how that character interacts with you – characters may catch you in lies and remember that you lied to them. Arguments will happen and characters will remember that you didn’t side with them and this can in some cases change the face of the game entirely. There is also a timer to your responses forcing you to think fast. You can’t weigh the options. You have to react otherwise the game will react FOR YOU.

In a crisis a character whom likes you may rush to your aid whereas in a pinch a character who doesn’t may attempt to leave you to die. On top of this you’re responsible for Clementine and your actions and words shape how she responds to you, how she views this post-apocalyptic world, and what her actions will be as well. Many choices are a moral gray area where there is no right and wrong and you’ll find yourself replaying this game several times just to see the other possible outcomes. My only gripe is some things are pre-ordained no matter what you do; some characters will ALWAYS die no matter what your responses are or how much you want to save them. I guess the game has to follow a general outline but damn it there are some things I REALLY wish were preventable based on choices and actions I made.

The other survivors you encounter won’t make it easy on you. Some will always be useless, or always be assholes to you and you’ll either find yourself trying to sway them to do a little better or losing your patience and telling them how you really feel and you’ll find yourself breathing a sigh of relief if they manage to “have an accident” that you didn’t help them survive. While this makes you feel personally fulfilled it may have an effect on the way other characters see you – are you trustworthy? Are you a team player? Are you someone who has no qualms about murdering the living? All of this factors into your relationships with other survivors in TWD and makes things complex. PSYCHOLOGY MATTERS in this game.

Some of the choices you might make include how to handle a member of your group who has been bitten by walkers, the best way to clear out a room, whether or not to steal from others to keep yourself alive, and whether or not you can trust people who ask too many questions. Interestingly enough at the end of each chapter the game will show you what percentage of other players playing the game chose like you did so you can feel like either more (or less) of an asshole depending on what you’ve done.

FREE HEALTHCARE LEADS TO ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.

Upon initial release TWD only had one episode out of five with new episodes coming out every month or so. This led to the game also having the same effect as a television series. At the end of each chapter you find yourself hungry for more and wondering what will happen next. In fact Telltale treated it much like you would a television series as you see a preview at the end of each chapter which states: “NEXT TIME ON THE WALKING DEAD…” with snippets of what your choices may or may not have caused. There’s a certain aura of suspense each chapter which will make you not want the game to end and say “just a little more” at 5 a.m. If anything it turns you into a zombie attached to your videogame console until you’ve completed it.

After some of the decisions you make in this game, you'll need a hug, too.

TWD has definitely earned its praise and with reduced prices (as of this article’s post-date), it’s one game that at $10 (total price for all five episodes) is a must-grab title for any fan of the series and show. The best part is that a Season 2 is on the way. Will it continue the same storyline? Will your actions from the first game carry-over to the next? Regardless, Telltale Games is onto something incredible here, and you have to respect a game that on such a small budget accomplished so much. Hopefully this is an indicator of a promising future to a new series.

-- Riv - jasonrivera@jasonrivera.com