Game review: The Walking Dead - an adventure game from Telltale Games

When I first heard about an adventure game based on zombie apocalypse, I rolled my eyes. Yet another zombie shooter and yet this time, we get to do it by pointing and clicking. I imagined a scenario where the player had to solve a puzzle wherein they "use" cleaver "on"zombie head. This idea is all the more pant-on-head-retarded given that zombie horror is all about tense, immediate danger with little time to think about it; how could you possibly have tense zombie horror when you have to walk around a small area with unlimited amounts of time clicking from one item to the next in an attempt to figure out what to do?

Well I was completely wrong. The walking dead is amongst one of the finest stories I've ever played. the game actually completely burst my expectations with some of the darkest pieces of humour, well scripted dialogue and extremely moving the characters and relationships. It is clear to me now where the adventure genre needs to go – towards storytelling and characterisation.

Plot

The walking dead tells the story of Lee – a middle-class black guy on his way to jail after having been convicted of a crime (funny that: P). The cop driving Lee towards prison accidentally runs over a person and when they both come to they find it was the person – it was a zombie. Cue police officer faced being chewed in. Lee manages to escape and comes across a little girl named Clementine whose parents have met a fate unknown, though it is pretty clear that they would have been eaten in the initial outbreak. Lee and Clem leave the suburbs and try to find others who can help them survive – they find a number of interesting individuals and families along the way, some helpful, some annoying. Players get a great deal of perceived choice in how to deal with any given situation – I say perceived because the plot still goes along certain paths no matter what choices you make. For example, a zombie attacks you and you get the choice of hitting them with a bottle or shooting them with a gun – while the outcome either way will be a dead zombie and you will (in this case at least) get off completely unharmed, the nature of your choice in packs up on the characters around you – notably Clementine.

The walking dead also has a new take on the zombie apocalypse. Traditionally what causes on zombification if the bite from a zombie – you get bitten, you die, you turn into one of them. In WD, the zombie bite is fatal, but all individuals are infected with the zombie virus to begin with. All types of death (excluding those which crush the head) lead to becoming a zombie. This means that death is not just the end of life – it creates a real danger to those around them.

A new type of choice

The use of choice in this game is an unusual one – after playing a dozen games where your choices have an impact on the ending (Mass Effect, Fallout, Alpha Protocol etc.) ultimately your choices don't affect the outcome, just the characters and their emotions. And herein is the true genius of choice in gaming – a method of storytelling in which the players choices impacts only the personality and relationships of the characters. No matter what you do in Mass effect, Shepherd will be regarded as one of the greatest heroes of all time. People will worship him or her regardless of whether they were paragon or renegade. In walking dead, Lee's choices impact extremely highly on Clementine and will leave the others either stricken or sympathetic towards him, and these relationships are all the more believable for it. Many people don't like games where they main character speaks – people enjoy characters like Gordon Freeman because they can fit him on like a  HEV suit - he is whoever they want him to be. This is also much of the rationale behind the awful character Bella in Twilight - a faceless nobody whom everyone likes unconditionally despite the fact that they do nothing. I find a fully voiced an emotive character far more compelling as it allows you to explore what they are feeling and their motivations, something that I find is sorely lacking in faceless-hero games. leaders of flawed person; he doesn't always met the right choice and things don't always work out. He tries to protect Clementine and her innocence, despite the fact that it it is next to impossible post-apocalypse. Half life is a post-apocalyptic world more or less and yet we ultimately know nothing about our hero other than what the other characters seem to think about him – for all we know Gordon Freeman could be a psychotic murderer with a penchant for watching skulls explode who just happens to have a Ph.D.

Gameplay
Quite a lot of the game is focused on solving very simple puzzles such as clicking on a pipe wrench and using it on nuts and bolts. There are a number of quite frenetic sequences where Lee has to quickly pick a weapon and use it on the right part of the zombie and I do have to admit that this is the only weak part of the game. It would be fairer to say that the walking dead is more like an interactive story in which you get to choose the persona of your hero, rather than a survival horror adventure. Most of the gameplay is in fact in dialogue choices, with a few QuickTime events thrown in the amp up the tension level (though all of these are effective in doing so). This is not a game to play if you're looking for a challenge; the solutions to all the problems are fairly obvious and the total amount of actual gameplay over the five episodes is probably about 20 minutes ( not counting dialogue).

Overall, this is one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played. It does something so differently to other games – it's a top tier game which explores all of the grotesqueries of human nature when civilised society breaks down. The characters are all interesting - at more than one point I was seriously annoyed at a character for something cowardly or stupid or just frustrating that they did, and this is a mark of excellent literature – something that makes you feel. Jokingly I've asked people before what their zombie plan was and how they would survive in the zombie apocalypse, not thinking for an instant how I would actually react if the walls of society came crumbling down. Would I resort to dog eat dog? Would I become hardened against the problems of the world? Would I be up to sacrifice a loved one or allow someone to die so that I or others might live?
Ultimately I would probably be one of the first ones eaten due to my scepticism and cynicism. Not that I don't have the skills to survive but I would probably be unlucky enough to be crushed in a stampede filled with bogans.

I would highly recommend this game to all adults – the violence is high impact and extremely gruesome at times. The horror element of this game is also off the charts - the sinister farm from the second episode is a particularly high octane nightmare fuel. Still, this is why we ride rollercoasters - for the thrill and to feel something truly terrifying.