Telltale Games, probably best known for their episodic adventure game, Tales of Monkey Island, now bring you The Walking Dead – a 5-episode adventure game based on Robert Kirkman’s comic book series.
Telltale may have also been responsible for Jurassic Park: The Game, also known more colloquially as Jurassic Park: The Abomination; Jurassic Park: The Dreadful; and Jurassic Park: The What Were You Thinking?!
Telling a tale
Told from the perspective of Lee Everett, a university professor on his way to prison after being convicted of murdering a senator who was sleeping with his wife, things soon take a turn for the worse as the undead rise and make things difficult for the residents of Atlanta.
It isn’t long before Lee stumbles across an empty house belonging to the family of a brave young girl named Clementine, whose parents left her in the care of a babysitter before the undead apocalypse went rampant. A very undead babysitter who’s doomed to be brained.
Lee’s relationship with Clementine marks the beginning of a very deep, paternal bond and plays a pivotal role in the narrative as they make their way to safety. Difficult questions and situations are masterly woven around Clementine and Lee’s family, which work to masterfully manipulate the emotions of players.
The Walking Dead
Choose your own adventure
Anyone who has played Fahrenheit, Quantic Dream’s epic adventure game, will be familiar with much of the narrative-heavy, choice-based mechanics and surprisingly forgiving quick-time events that The Walking Dead has implemented.
Quick-time events are fairly simple to understand and come in two forms: push a button repeatedly until it changes to another, which isn’t negatively impacted by incorrect button presses, and clicking on a hotspot in time. These quick-time events are very forgiving and are not at all as frustrating as quick-time events often have the potential to be.
Its implementation adds wonderfully to the anxiety and suspense of the atmosphere and is very well-suited to the experience.
Players are given the option to pick their own user interface – minimal or standard. Minimal doesn’t show hotspots or hints and goes very much the old-school pixel-hunt route. Standard, of course, reveals hotspots, hints and gives feedback when you make important decisions.
Dialogue is very dependent on the player. Players can choose how to respond to questions, whether to be truthful or deceitful and pry information from other characters in the standard quizzical way, which can also influence the way other characters perceive you.
The Walking Dead is very choice-heavy, and this is one of its biggest selling points. Life and death choices are a mainstay. Your attitude and the decisions of who you help could either assist or impede your adventure.
The Walking Dead
Sights and sounds
The art direction of The Walking Dead takes on the appearance of a graphic novel—a smart move bound to appeal to fans of Robert Kirkman’s works. Zombies are gruesomely detailed, the world feels believable and uninfected characters pull off an engaging array of expressions.
Careful consideration has been placed on sound effects, voice acting and ambience. It manages to be believable, tangible and what you would expect more from a triple-A release than in an often underrated genre.
The only criticisms that PC gamers might have would be that there are is no option to customise keyboard settings. While possible to use a gamepad, this game is by no means a “console port” and keyboard and mouse controls work beautifully.
While The Walking Dead includes a set of achievements, they are essentially just a marker for every milestone players reach more than they are truly achievements.
The beginning of the end
At the end of an episode, players are able to see what percentage of other players made the same choices as they did. This is done through an online, but otherwise unimportant, connection.
Players can expect the first episode to take approximately two hours to complete and at $25 for the entire set which should give about 10-hours of playtime, you can’t really go wrong. If you love zombies; an engaging narrative; making choices that influence the outcome of events; getting emotionally attached to characters; and braining zombies, then this game has your name on it.
