The Walking Dead Game

I'll say it right off the bat. Zombies in pop culture is getting stale. Actually, no, it's past that. It's getting tired and old. The horse passed away a while back, came back as zombie horse, died again and now they're giving it a pretty thorough beating. If I hear one more person say "OH MAN I HOPE A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE REALLY HAPPENS DUDE I CAN TOTALLY SURVIVE I'M GONNA DO THIS AND THIS AND THIS AND BE THE ULTIMATE BADASS BLAH BLAH BLAH" I'm going to go crazy. Everyone thinks they'd survive a zombie apocalypse, and realistically it wouldn't be an apocalypse if everyone survived it so shut up and accept the fact that you'll be part of the 99.9% of the population that dies  shortly after the event begins (which it won't). It just pisses me off that zombies are a sure-fire way to make money, and that fact is being exploited in every corner of the entertainment industry that is capable of capitalizing on it. The games are getting repetitive, the movies are derivative, and it's just getting boring, to be honest. It's not that I hate zombies, the original Night of the Living Dead film still scares the hell out of me. I thoroughly enjoyed games like Dead Rising 2, Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare, and Dead Nation. There's just a point where they need to either cool it or stop, and that point has passed.

So why do I love The Walking Dead game so much then? 

Some people think Telltale Games is clinging to a sinking ship. I mean, creating point-and-click games on PC and consoles in the technologically developed gaming climate of today? It's definitely old school, a genre that is pretty much dead in commercial gaming. There's more of an emphasis on high action setpieces, realistic graphics and fast paced gameplay these days, and The Walking Dead isn't particularly huge on any of those things. If you're not familiar with the gameplay style, I'll elaborate a bit. Basically you walk around, examine your environment, solve puzzles and most importantly, engage in dialogue with the other characters. You play a convicted murderer named Lee who gets caught up in the middle of a zombie outbreak and encounters an innocent little girl named Clementine who he protects along his journey, with the ultimate goal of bringing her to her parents. These are the two main characters, and the rest are fairly interchangeable. Why? Because Telltale sees fit to kill several characters off in every episode and bring in new ones. Normally in horror movies I'm fairly good at predicting who is going to die and who will live. But in The Walking Dead, not so much. In the last episode alone I can think of 4 moments where my jaw literally dropped and I was saying "Dude. no way, like seriously?". The best part of this game is by far the story, and the level of unpredictability that is there. Lee and Clementine and their various companions are on an incredible journey and by the end of each episode you really feel like you've made some progress, whether you've fixed up a broken train, escaped from a farm inhabited by horrible cannibalistic rednecks, or decided who to save when the building you're in is being overrun. The Walking Dead thrives on immersion, dragging the player with it on its insane, unpredictable journey. And I gotta say, it's been amazing so far. I also like the way they decided to release it, as an episodic continuing game. This is season 1, hopefully  implying that there will be more seasons to come, and there are 5 episodes that go for $4.99 each. I bought the season pass when episode 1 was released for $20, so if you bought early you even save money. Every episode takes 3-4 hours to complete which is a pretty nice value for 5 bucks, especially considering the quality of the content. Every single episode has improved upon the last, and best of all, the episodes are extremely replayable.

Free choice is something that a lot of games advertise, but not many actually do right. It's one thing to give the player a bunch of black and white choices and then give them 1 or 2 endings depending on what they pick like Infamous or Bioshock, and something else entirely to let the person playing make hundreds of small choices throughout the game in the form of dialogue and scripted actions. Every episode of The Walking Dead contains a lot of conversation, and every single thing you say to anyone impacts the story, the way they think about you and how they're going to treat you in future episodes. I have one guy in my group right now that doesn't trust me and won't help me anymore because I didn't take his side in a particular argument like 3 episodes ago. The characters in The Walking Dead remember everything you do and say, even the order you complete objectives in will affect your interactions. Most of these choices aren't just choosing sides either, a lot of them have multiple options and you have to think very carefully about the possible repercussions of what you might do. I remember in one episode I had 4 pieces of food and I had to decide who in the group to give them to. It was a really hard decision, and I could have approached it multiple ways. Even the characters in your game are determined by your choices. I can think of several people that have died along my journey that I could have saved by making a different choice, and several people in the group now that are only there because I chose to keep them alive. The sheer amount of choice in this game makes it well worth the price, after I finish episode 5 I plan to replay the entire thing again making different choices in every episode. But even after 2 full playthroughs there will be a lot I still have to experience to say I have seen everything. 

The graphics in The Walking Dead are not amazing (on the PS3 version I've been playing at least), but they stay true to the franchise's graphic novel roots. The zombies look great, and the character expressions are very well done, which is good because how a person feels about you is usually indicated by their expression when you're talking to them. The scenery changes a lot throughout the story, which is more than I can say for the TV show. The characters in this game have goals greater than just staying alive, and while some of them are inevitably unlikable, you put up with them anyway because sometimes you get to tell them off or even decide whether they live or die later on. The Walking Dead is really what you make it, and if you go with your personal morals when making decisions you can become incredibly emotionally invested in it. I feel really involved in the lives of the characters in the game, and if Clementine dies in episode 5 I'm going to cry like a baby.

Play it.