Summary [10 out of 10]

 

The Walking Dead: The Game is a point-and-click adventure game from Telltale Games. It draws more so from the comics as source material than the television show. This should not dissuade you as this story is more engaging and better executed than the show thus far and perhaps maybe the comics, in my humble opinion. It might just be the method of delivery. The point-and-click adventure game has been conspicuously absent since the mid-90s, at least in a decent capacity. Telltale has brought it back in a big way here.

The story driven aspects of this game are amazing and this is not a 2012 title to be missed, especially with Season 2 confirmed.

 

What Is It Like?

Full Throttle, circa 1995, anyone remember this? Feels good to slip back into that mid-90s flannel and Levis and a comfy point-and-click adventure game?

Heavy Rain (PS3) might be one of the closest analogues for a modern game for comparison.

The Great

Game Play: The gameplay in this extremely minimal, most of the time you are going to be glued to the screen watching the action, and determining the best course of how to steer said action. The Walking Dead: The Game really punishes you if any attempt at multitasking is made (like I did). You need to pay attention! Characters you interact with note your responses and reactions to situations with their judgmental digital, sometimes blank stares.

The Story: I cannot stress this enough, by following a formula similar to the comics combined with episodic, compartmentalized storytelling, like the television show, they have better freedom of giving you a great stopping point but making it extremely hard to not dig right into the next chapter. They adapted an interesting aspect of the TV show, the ‘Previously on Walking Dead’ refresh, but incorporate the choices you’ve made into that recap; an excellent way to make you reflect on the past before diving headstrong into the future.

The Good

Graphics: This is not a cutting edge graphics game. It was a good call to keep it simple in this department, everything in the world looks dark and desolate like a zombie apocalypse should. The story is the driving engine of this game so this doesn’t need to be super realistic.

Pacing: You really need to take your time in this game and consider your moves and actions, this game is great at letting you get a bit complacent until a nice jolt of a sudden and dramatic raising of the stakes in a tremendous way comes along. It could be an onslaught of the living dead or humans showcasing their worst qualities at the end of the world.

 

The Bad

Glitches: The middle chapters seemed to have a few random glitches. Examples of such: having to repeat a conversation to trigger an event, lip-sync getting off and collision detection. Nothing all that major and by the end all the bugs had been ironed out.

 

The Randomly Awesome

The theory floating around that one of the characters shares a connection with a comic character. It seems that the connection is being distanced but I really dug the theory, more about it here (spoilers).

 

Conclusion [10 out of 10]

This game has a rock solid foundation in great storytelling, with a great source to pull from. It is amazing to see, what I considered, a dead gameplay type come back in a huge way and make such an emotional impact. If you are a fan of the comics, the show or even the zombie apocalypse genre (a bit worn it may be) in general you owe it to yourself to check this out. Just one time I wanted the main character to utter, “Riggs I’m too old for this.” to his young companion.