Comic writer Robert Kirkman has seen his darling comic series, The Walking Dead, flourish from from the printed pages into a hit television show. The series continues it’s drive to take over the entertainment world with The Walking Dead Video Game made by Telltale Games.
With an art style similar to Telltale’s previous hit, Back To The Future, Walking Dead has a storyline that follows more closely to the comic series rather than the television show. Instead of following Rick Grimes, the game introduces us to Lee Everett (although it is important to note you do meet some well known characters from the comics). We meet Lee cuffed in the back of a squad car being driven down a highway by a chatty cop. Although this scene in the car is meant to offer some exposition into the story you can take some control over Lee’s movements. The game is similar to a point-and-click, were you move a cursor around the screen till a prompt comes up giving you a set of options on how to proceed either through physical reaction or in the form of a verbal response. When you are involved in an action sequence, you sometimes have a limited amount of time to make a selection. For example, after talking to the cop in the car Lee yells for him to watch out before he ends up hitting someone on the freeway, which causes the car to spin out and crash into a ditch. When you recover and think your driving companion is dead, he comes back to life and starts to crawl towards you looking to take a nibble out of you. At this point you have to look around to find something to defend yourself from your bitey friend. Although the action is not directly interactive the game does a fantastic job of creating extremely tense moments by giving your mere seconds to find a way to save yourself, much like real life.
The strongest feature of the game follows the same formula that the comics and television show does, which is to put great emphasis on the interactions and relationships you have with the living. All of your responses to the people you meet can have drastic consequences later on, you can either make friends or bitter enemies with the choices you make. For example, once Lee was safe on a farm there was a situation where the farmer’s son and the son of another survivor were being attacked by walkers. I had only a few seconds to choose who I could save and I choose to save the survivor’s young son. Unfortunately the farmer’s son was killed as I couldn’t save them both and the farmer ended up telling me to leave his farm, but the survivor was grateful for my deed and offered to give me ride in his truck. As I continued to become friendly with this guy and his family he becomes a valuable ally later in the game at very crucial moments. There are a lot of these important moral choices you have to make that really gives depth to the main character and it makes you emotionally invested in the story.
If there was one issue I had with the game is that some of the “puzzle” elements of the game can be a little vague and not as intuitive when trying to figure out what to do next. For example, I was trapped in a drug store with other survivors and one of them needed some heart medication that was locked away. It could be just me but it took me a long time to figure out where the keys were and how to get them. I spoke to every person I could, picked up every object available and for a long time the correct sequence of how to go about getting the keys evaded me. I had the option to have “hints” displayed as I moved the cursor around the screen, I can only imagine how much longer it would have taken me to figure it out if I had the hints turned off! Another thing that I found interesting was that I felt that although I could make choices in the game it seemed like those choices might not make too big of a difference, as if the game is still fairly linear. I have yet to play through the game again and try to make different decisions but I’m assuming that there wouldn’t be too big of a difference in what characters are alive and dead at the end of the episode. As for a final comment I have a request, as a big fan of the comics I wish there was a “Black & White” mode for the game which would be a nod to how the original comics were presented.
Despite some issues that I had with the gameplay, which could or could not be attributed to my level of derp-iness, I really enjoyed The Walking Dead and would recommend others to play the game. I am really looking forward to playing the next episodes as they come out since the game ends on a big cliffhanger. If you are looking for a really emotionally engaging game and a different kind of survival horror game then give The Walking Dead a spin.
