'Walking Dead: The Game' Review - A Dark Zombie Tale
Boil the experience down: the Walking Dead: The Game is a series of games about broken people in a broken world where decisions are made in sudden bursts of anger, fear, and frustration. This is revealing stuff. We're not good people, the game says, because when we make choices we do so expecting something in return more often than not.
The most engaging moments in the series revolve around choice. You consider if a person is worthwhile to your group or if he or she needs to know something. The repercussions, in some instances, of your choices appear instantly. Others don't, making you wonder if you'll ever have to deal with any consequences -- a delightful feeling to experience.
In the series, you play as a convict named Lee. In the opening of the first episode, Lee finds himself hurt and surrounded by ghouls after an accident. Unsure of what's going on, Lee takes off in search of someone, anything. Soon, he meets a young girl that he decides to put under his wing.
In the early going, Lee is more of a vehicle than a defined character. In these episodes, your decisions as Lee, whether you choose to reveal his past, buddy up with certain characters, or take control of situations, lets you express yourself in this world. As the series progresses, Lee starts becoming an actual character defined by a rudimentary moral code and his distaste for his past. As the series progresses, Lee begins to soften as he and Clementine grow closer, which is a neat touch.
There are "puzzles," but most of the time, instead of having to put together whacky item combinations, the game asks you questions. Do you want to guard what you did? If so, how will you respond to someone who might know without you telling them? Will you let them die? Will you lie?
The much more traditional puzzle scenarios have you searching for an object and setting up a dramatic chain of events in order to find what you're looking for. In the first episode, there's an entire chain of zombie killings you'll have to take part in by interacting with the environment and setting up each kill. In the third episode, you'll be tasked with figuring out how to start a train and assembling the tools necessary to do so.
It's important to note that these touch versions feel great. Slide your fingers to move Lee, tap to pick a dialogue option, and swipe when asked during action. Technically, the series to this point runs fine on new iPad -- we've seen no audio bugs or the usual Telltale game issues like stuttering, tearing, or plain not working as intended. Also, it doesn't appear as though these ports do anything new. These are the same game(s) you may have played months ago.
With that said...
Episode 1 - A New Day
A lot this episode has you figuring out who people are and deciding what you want to say or reveal in order to control the spin on horrible situations. For example, early on, you have to kill Clementine's zombified babysitter right in front of Clementine. Once you're done pummeling the babsitter's head into pieces, you're forced to explain what just went down and why to Clementine. Illusion or not, the dialogue tree for this is expansive, allowing you to coddle the girl, tell her the truth, or obscure what happened. This isn't exactly video game-y, but it's engaging.
Writing is another area where this excels, and that helps cover up this episode's gaping hole: there's not a lot to physically do. The dialogue in particular is sharp, while the overall plot of the episode provides tons of drama, tension, and insane action. The choices you'll make are, for the most part, rather grey, which is always a nice touch in a game with a world so screwed.
One particular constituent part we enjoyed, whether inadvertent or purposeful, is that we got to define how people perceive Lee. We kept his secret from people by deciding not to talk about it when prompted or lying when directly asked about it. When a character suddenly said they knew what we did, we actually made a conscious decision to get rid of them. You don't get to do this in many games, so it made a positive impact.
It'll be interesting to see how our choices impact the larger story. That's our one, true gripe of Episode 1. You see glimpses of how things pan out, but you never really get a sense of how many things are going to change. For a game that constantly reminds you that people care about what you say and has you choosing who lives and who dies, it needs to deliver. We'll have to wait to see if it can.
Episode 2 - Starved for Help
Starved for Help is all about how far Lee is willing to go, not only to protect himself, but also his group. It's also about the people you're with, how they want to function in and interpret their screwed reality. You'll make hard choices with collateral emotional damage that can never be undone. If you play it out like us, you'll shatter people.
For all the violence, bone, and viscera being thrown around in this episode, it's weird to peg the script as the reason we kept moving along. Starved for Help is small in scope and scale and just teases actual movement to come, but it works well within its creative confines, fleshing out characters, creating tense situations, and delivering a scenario that is as bizarre and terrible as anything else in The Walking Dead proper.
And once again, we toyed with the idea of protecting Lee's past, opting to let a person die who knew his secret. It'll be interesting to see if this ever pans out, if, at some point, there will be no-one left who knows what Lee has done.
If there's something we'd knock in this episode, it'd be the lack of video game-y stuff. The dialogue wheel's options still feel as engaging as ever, but there's a notable lack of adventure game action in this episode; the puzzle sequences are easily solvable and there's points in this episode where you really don't have any agency at all.
That said, Starved For Help is still incredible. The pacing is brilliant, the scenario is seriously warped and entertaining, and its attention to developing relationships will keep you making interesting decisions and thinking about the small, immediate consequences of your actions.
Episode 3 - Long Road Home
For instance, the fact that Lee is a murderer in the law's eyes is confronted, whether the majority of people who knew about his past are dead or not. Also, the bond between Lilly and Lee is hopelessly disconnected in Starved For Help. How she reacts to Lee and her world after the events of that episode are fully explored in Long Road Home in a satisfying, intense, and wicked ways.
This episode takes place in much more realistic confines. After discovering a traitor is sneaking pills, an event forces the crew to leave the motel. A solid chunk of Long Road Home takes place on a working locomotive after yet another devastating event. The goal being to reach Savannah, Georgia.
It's hard to nail a theme for Long Road Home other than "moving on," but the one thing this episode in hits, er, home, is how all decision making is now being informed by this new, terrible reality. In brilliant flashes, rash decisions are made and the consequences are immediate, and for the most part, wretched. Credit to Telltale for strengthening ties to the point where scripted behavior even has the slightest impact emotionally.
But, oh, those moments -- they're why we play. You'll lose people this episode. You'll probably do a few terrible things, too. But you might also gain a new friend. You can no longer ignore Clementine, as the ties between the girl and Lee are strengthened through a couple of forced, yet touching scenes.
Long Road Home doesn't answer our larger question about the long-term consequences of playing Lee as we do. Yet, it's still an amazingly impactful episode with tons of great emotional moments that we're afraid to even be vague about, as evens hints would spoil the fun. The conclusion in particular is one of those "Oh my god what how is this oh no" kind of things that have us absolutely stoked to see Episode 4 when it hits.
Conclusion
Overall, The Walking Dead appears to be delivering on the comic book's vision, but it's also executing on things that we rarely see in video games. Its people feel like actual people and we're making tough choices as we explore this world as Lee. Fantastic writing bolsters an overall package that feels like something Kirkman would pen. Puzzle sections are also good; they might feel slightly out of place, but they serve the story in smart ways.We just wonder now if any of our choices will truly matter as the series progresses. That's a question we'll have to keep asking over the next few months.
It's arguable that this is a video game. Aside from short puzzle sections, you're mostly just answering questions and building relationships in a world gone bad. That's kind of what The Walking Dead is all about though. So, if you're fond of The Walking Dead and want to play something that takes that source material seriously, and tells a great story while it does it, this game is definitely it. If you're looking for something much more involving from a joystick perspective, you might want to look elsewhere.