The Walking Dead: The Game Review for PS3 and Xbox 360

     I should've gotten around to this game a bit sooner than I did but receiving an award for game of the year as well as numerous other awards pushed me to play it to the end. Now that I've finished every episode, I can say it impacted me in a couple different ways. So, allow me to review it and say my piece.


Is it a game?

     The Walking Dead is essentially a point-and-click adventure game revolving around a choose-your-own-adventure story. Gameplay consists of solving logic puzzles, choosing dialogue options and participating in QTE's. But when I say it revolves around the story, I mean that the story is essentially the entire game and everything else is artificially implanted to involve the player in the events that take place. And for what is there, it's extremely linear and just holding together enough to function reliably most of the time.
     Episode one really sells the experience. It has a nice variety of discovery, action, and choice, and it does it well. You feel more involved in what's going on, that these characters wouldn't be better off without you. You're needed and your participation in an event has a serious impact. And the parking lot situation was an excellent puzzle. I had to think about the order in which I did things and I had to think creatively about how to utilize my resources. Episode one was great all around. It was fun to play and participate in what it had to offer. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the last four episodes didn't hold the same magic as the first.
     The puzzles became linear and were held back by some issues the point-and-click adventure genre falls victim to every now and then, such as knowing the solution but needing to show the game how you knew. To avoid spoilers, think of finding a glass of milk and a cookie. You want to dunk the cookie into the milk but you can't do it until you talk to your boss at work and he talks about how he loves dunking cookies into cold, white, liquid substances. In some cases, it won't even let you pocket items in case they come in handy later unless you've discovered why you need those items. It's a gripe I have and one I'm not willing to let go of. It took away from the aspect of discovery and creative problem-solving. With such limitations, you don't think about how you're playing anymore. Any puzzle sequences becomes a straight-shoot to the next dialogue tree.

     Other issues I ran into were an overabundance of scripted sequences masked with what gives the impression of faulty gameplay, camera angles that don't focus on the correct target, mismarked or hard to select objects on the screen, swapped directional control when changing camera angles, unclear objectives, and some other small hiccups here and there. Things don't work smoothly all the time and I can't think of a reason for them not to.
     Everything else consists of being confined to an area and talking with everyone in your vicinity and moments where you need to quickly aim the cursor over an option and press the appropriate button command. The detection in the latter events can be inaccurate with the game not realizing you're selecting an object or a camera that moves around in an erratic fashion causing your intital cursory movement to become invalid and fail the event for you. This could've been fixed simply by allowing the left stick to control the cursor during those situations allowing you to keep your right hand on the buttons you need to press at a moment's notice. Instead of using the simple fix, they simply enlarged the area of selection to about 2/3 the size of the screen to ensure you won't miss the target.
     So when you play The Walking Dead, it's more like watching a dvd where you get to choose what scene plays out next and then watch the story unfold. Less of a game and more of a mildly interactive experience.

Well, then the story's got to be good!

     And it is good. It's about as entertaining as an episode of the show,  if only more so because you're guiding it along to slightly different outcomes in the story. You're all the more drawn in to conversations because your responses are timed and you want to choose the option that best suits you, lie or tell the truth, reason or threaten, comfort or demean. For me, what really drove the experience home was how the game drops text alerts in the upper corner of the screen when someone would remember what I did/said or how my choices were reacted to. Starting off, I felt on edge through every conversation, making sure I was staying in character and gaining the trust of my surviving peers. Staying trustworthy held even more weight since I was caring for a little girl named Clementine I'd met in the first episode. I felt confident in protecting her and didn't want Clem to be taken away from me because I wasn't deemed such a stand-up guy by my colleagues. Unfortunately, there are some bumps in the dialogue tree.

     I imagine it's a hard job to think of all the ways one would want to react to a situation and sometimes an option could've been overlooked or it isn't as viable as another. And sometimes there's no room for choice because the story has to go down a specific path at certain junctions. When these things happen, it can hurt immersion. You've been doing your damnedest to keep a relationship steady and, all of a sudden, you're forced to make a decision that the other person doesn't agree with. You would've liked to reason or say what you said in a different way but you can't. Those moments are few and far inbetween but it hurt the experience for me and served to remind me that there isn't much I'm actually in control of in this game. Ultimately, I'm meant to sit here and watch this story play out.
     Despite my negativity, it is a well-written story with dark twists and horrifying turns and real, tangible characters. It's paced well and does its best to keep the player's emotions invested in well-being of the game's survivors, especially when it concerns the witty and adorable Clementine. While I wasn't interested in what this game could offer through gameplay, I was invested in the story. Even when I wanted to stop playing, I was powerless to do so until I reached the conclusion. And the conclusion's a good one, one worth the price of admission and the amount of time needed to reach it.

So should everyone be playing it?

     Yeah, I think it's a good interactive experience, even if it does feel like it's dragging at times. All the bad stuff I mentioned still doesn't do much to get in the way of your enjoyment of the story. It's a good time, one I'd recommend to others. Not sure it's entirely worth going out of your way to play though. If it's on sale, go ahead and give it a buy. If you can get your hands on the physical copy, I'd recommend you...

Rent It.

The Walking Dead: The Game was developed and published by Telltale Games for the Xbox360, PS3, and PC. Completed the entirety of Season 1, episodes 1-5. Review is based on the Xbox360 version.