BY ALEX BARNARD
The Walking Dead TV show provides a horrific story detailing the lives’ of several survivors trying to survive a treacherous zombie infested world. Adding to this universe, the new Walking Dead video game from Telltale Games provides a singular experience for fans of the franchise. The game tells a unique story while also bringing in an interesting assortment of new characters and locations. The story is broken into five episodes, each lasting a little over two hours, with each episode being released over the internet every other month. Currently four of the five episodes have been released with the finale planned to be released by the end of the year.
Contrary to what you may expect, The Walking Dead is far from your typical cliché zombie game. Instead of being a shooter following the likes of Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil, The Walking Dead is a point and click adventure game: a type of game where the player clicks on actions and makes dialogue choices rather than have direct control over the player’s action. The genre saw great popularity in the late 80’s and early 90’s, but there has been a serious drought in the United States for these games after players claimed they had become too difficult.
This kind of game play may seem like a hindrance, but The Walking Dead creates enjoyment by adapting to the decisions that the player makes rather than solely relying on action scenes or atmospheric tension. Many of the key narrative moments are controlled by the player, who can make irreversible decisions that impact the entirety of the story. Little is made out to be a clear “Good” or “Bad” decision, the player simply chooses how they would deal with grey situations in the way that they consider the best. The Walking Dead is interactive entertainment that allows you to face hard decisions on the lives of others that no other form of story telling can offer.
In this interactive adventure, players control a down on his luck survivor, Lee Everett, a teacher from Georgia with a problematic background before the zombie apocalypse. What makes The Walking Dead so great are the players’ impactful choices when playing as Lee. Whether his actions reflect a compassionate leader or a violent self absorbed individual is up to them. The other characters of the game all create strong relationships with Lee, and this yields an interesting personalized story full of exiting conflicts with zombies and survivors alike.
Truth be told, The Walking Dead is not for those with an itchy trigger finger and short attention span, it is instead a game with a gripping self contained narrative of survival and sacrifice, and for all those interested can be downloaded now on Mac, PC, Xbox Live Arcade, Play Station Network, and the Apple App Store.
