The Walking Dead (2012)

Telltale Games are well known for creating great story based games in which the objective is not to murder every soul in sight, collect some hidden treasure or set the fastest time, no, its all about telling a story and letting you decide how that story will end.

With The Walking Dead, Telltale does it again. An amazing game in which I literally cried at the end. When a game can do that to my rotten black heart, that means something.

Because the focus here is based one hundred percent on the story, I will not say anything about it. This is something you need to experience for yourself.

Let me just say that it is themed around the famous comic and TV series: The Walking Dead. That part was obvious, but it also completely original. It has some characters and locations from the comics, but is otherwise completely new and fresh.

You collect different items that you can/must later use to progress. The game is on rail and apart from some mini games and puzzles, it plays itself forward, after the right choice or response has been given. It gives the feeling of an old school point and click game.

The game can end early when making the wrong decision, in which you need to start over. The whole ending and which characters still live and which dies is entirely up to you. Based on your conversation with characters and your actions, it will dramatically impact the outcome. For this reason, you can play the game over again multiple times, and get many different endings.

The Walking Dead from Telltales looks beautiful and makes good use of the cell shading graphics. The sounds and music are nice and fits the game well.

The biggest strong point of this game is the connection that you establish with the characters and especially, the main character. You get really attached to them. You cannot stop playing because you want to know what is going to happen next.

I found the game a little short, but this can be the fact that it is just so damn good that you keep playing for hours on end.

This was my first experience with a Telltale game and it was a beautiful experience. Like I said, I cried like a baby at the end of the game and they were tears of sadness but also joy. The joy of finally playing a good game in the year 2013, the year that I completed this game fully.

Definitely recommend this experience to anyone.

I played it when it first came out and remember thinking it was brilliant! It still has its moments but now you can see how taped together and barely holding on it is and how clunky so many parts of it are.

Still, decent. I never did play any of the other stories or seasons after this one. I never even played 400 days! I still have not and am not sure if I even care to.

If there is one thing Telltale does well, it is pull on your heartstrings. Always have to pause for a moment in Episode 3 to sob my eyes out. If you are a fan of the comic book or the tv show, you know the drill.

As an aside, it is amazing how you can both love and loathe a character so deeply. Or for me, multiple characters. I never know if I want to hug certain characters or slap them. That's the beauty of it, though.

Time to start up Episode 4.

Finished Episode 2 and it serves to remind us that even during a zombie apocalypse there will still be other dangers and other issues to worry about. It proves that first impressions aren't what they seem, that the innocent may not always be so innocent, that relationships can change on a dime, and that trust comes with costs. So, y'know, real life.

Despite having played through this game multiple times over the years, I still come across things I didn't notice before and responses I haven't heard. I'm also starting to wonder if my gameplay this time around is being shaped by my knowledge of the future games in the series. Things just feel different this time. Will be interesting to see how this plays out going forward into Episode 3.

No matter how many times I play this game, the emotional impacts always feel fresh and tug on the heartstrings. Like settling in with a favorite book, even though you know how it all ends, you still have your favorite moments that continue to thrill you and warm the heart.

Just completed Episode 1 on the PS4 and seeing Lee meet Clem for the first time was so bittersweet. One of the best partnerships in modern video game history. Each game-changing decision weighed as heavily on me as the first time I played and I can always tell how much I've "grown" in the years since the game was first released based on how some of my choices change over time.

All that being said, onward to Episode 2!

As a fan of the comics, I was hoping that The Walking Dead would retain the tense atmosphere of "Anyone can die!" type. However, Telltale not only managed to keep it, they also managed to add an emotional side to the story. That emotional side is Clementine, a little girl that you have to protect from this new world. As Lee Everett, a former professor and a convicted killer, you must make choices while trying to maintain Clementine's child innocence and your own humanity. And that's where the game shines. Every decision you make will not only affect you, but also her, leading to some choices becoming harder due to either her presence or the change of the way she views you.

The game also benefits from using the point and click genre, which makes it accessible to all tipes of gamers, while also leading into a bigger focus on the it's plot. The use of dialogue trees leads to many alternate choices of dialogue, making you feel like you are building you own Lee, and that he is different than all of the others. Then we have the choices. The Walking Dead plays heavily on the "your choices impact the game" and the problem here is that this both truth and lie at the same time. On one side, due to the game being divided in episodes (I'll go into detail about that later), when you play one, your experience will be different than the rest. However, if you look into the whole game, you start to see that most of these choices don't really change anything, with the few that change being normally "killed off" by Telltale with no input of the player. It also doesn't help that no matter what you do, you will end up at the same final location as every other player. While I think that it makes for a better focused story, it still manages to hurt the vibe of "you make your own path" that the game tries so hard to give.

And now let's discuss the episodic structure of the game. I really enjoy it, but it also means that some episodes are stronger than others, even if together they make an almost flawless experience. So now I will quickly look into each episode separately, mentioning both it's strong points and it's flaws.

Episode 1 does a great job introducing the world and characters of the Walking Dead. It also perfectly shows the transformation of the world we know into one ruled by the dead. However, it has a minor but still annoying problem: once you reach the final location of the episode, it feels like the game drags itself to feel longer, and there's no need for that.

Episode 2 is the best in my opinion honestly. It tells the story, it's not to short and not to long and it's choices change the rest of the game.

Episode 3 is close to being as good as Episode 2, but I feel like it goes on for a bit to much and the final choice of the episode is weak and doesn't do anything for the episode or the game.

While I think everyone agrees that Episode 4 is the worst, that doesn't mean it isn't great. In a matter of fact, I think it's really good. However, so is the rest of the episodes, making it seem like this one sucks, which is not the case. Despite going on for far to long, the fact that new introduced characters take a back seat to older ones and that introduces other characters that end up not being important to either Episode 5 or the history, due to focusing on older characters it tells a more focused story with a surprising climax and a final plot twist that will sure wow players.

Episode 5 is the shortest, but I think that's great because it feats the title of "No Time Left". Clementine and Lee relationship comes to focus, every character has their fate decided, it brings up your actions from previous episodes and both the final scene of the entire sesson and it's final choice will surely make players cry (unless they don't have a heart of course). I sure did, marking the first time a videogame ever made me cry. It's even sadder because it fits the story but you still don't want it to happen, and despite the fact that you can't change how it plays out, it's great that you can change how it ends.

Overall, this is one of those games every gamer needs to play at least once. Lee and Clementine's journey is completely worth playing and is one of the best stories in videogame history. Despite my choices not changing where I end up, I don't care because if that meant ruining the ending we got, I could care less about my choices. And in the end they do matter. Looking into the game as a whole, your entire experience will be different than everyone else. While the game has it fair share of framerate issues and bugs, I ignore them because the plot completely makes up for this annoyances. I'm happy I experienced this game and I think I'd there's anyone out there not knowing if it's worth it, I will say this: this game is story about the living, with the dead serving as the imminent threat that shows how everyone really is. I happily give The Walking Dead a 5/5 stars.