The Walking Dead game which you can play on Xbox Live (Arcade), the PC, Playstation 3 (PSN), Mac OS X and iOS is based on the comic book by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard. The game was written by Sean Vanaman, while being directed by Vanaman and Jake Rodkin. From the comic book came a Television series which has won 6 awards so far and been nominated for a Golden Globe. With the TV series doing phenomenal on AMC dealing with the inner conflicts and issues that go on with people during a zombie outbreak, it is not hard to believe that something else good can come from the franchise. This is exactly what TellTale Games have done as they have taken the emotional roller-coaster surrounding a thriller and made a game out of it that adds a whole other level to what we are used to from the comic book as well as the TV Series.
TellTale Games is known for making games that are separated into episodes with Back to the Future which was a phenomenal game, that I had the privilege of reviewing. They then released Jurassic Park which was all quick time events when it came to gameplay, as in each TellTale Game they try something new as far as how they approach the game mechanics. In The Walking Dead, we have yet another unique way of gamplay mechanics while at times you can free roam, investigating things and other times you are in a stationary position while you are given choices to move to another stationary position which the game puts you in. Lastly we have the new feature that has never been seen in any of the game developers titles that I have play which is free movement along with free cursor movement which takes places during many of the action sequences when you must make decisions as well as attack quickly before you die.
Decisions; that is probably the biggest part of the game. Many conversations you have with people, you will have only a certain amount of time to pick a response. Once you pick that response you may either learn something new about a person or they may learn something new about you. When NPC’s learn something about you due to a response you have made… they will remember that and it will have an effect on the game later on down the road. Conversations and the decisions made during them are one thing, but you will be taken on an emotional ride when you must quickly decide in the blink of an eye who you will help, or who you will help ‘first’ when things get hairy. This can literally mean the difference of never seeing a character again in the game to some serious negative relations with characters as well as positive ones.
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The game starts off brilliantly with you yourself not knowing exactly why you are in the position you are in, until only later on learning your own background story. The Walking Dead also does not start off like other zombie games or films where zombies have already taken over everything and it is a literal horde type of game. It is also a thinker, where you will have to take hints and solve puzzles to progress or open up character plots. This game takes a serious not from the TV show as well as the comic books and deep beneath the thrill of killing or getting away from zombies are tough moral decisions as well as intense underlying stories within the story the play with your emotions. There are already fans talking amongst forums, creating their own ideas of what is to come, or who is hiding something from the crew and more. In all fairness that seems like the type of game it will turn out to be, where we will see twists and turns in the plot.
With this just being the first episode out of five, we have much more to experience. Each episode costs $5 or 400 Microsoft Points which I will say something on that. I do feel that the price should be cheaper, however with all 5 episodes adding up to $25, I would not feel that you would be wasting your money or not getting your back for your buck. So while it might have been cheaper, too much of a lower price tag and it would have literally been a steal as after only playing Episode 1, I have been blown away. It really shows how Telltale Games haves grown as developers and I truly think that Telltale has found their nitch in the industry with The Walking Dead.
