The Walking Dead Review (PS3)

     I've read 2 issues of The Walking Dead Comic book (one excellent, one meh), and seen one episode of the TV show (which was so so). I had heard nothing but praise for the game though, so I picked it up. It's an adventure game, but it only bears a passing resemblance to the adventure games I have tried in my life, like Myst and... that's about it.

     It's hard for me to review a game like this as I am very cautious about spoiler's and literally everything that happens in the game is story driven and therefore apt to be spoiled. So this might seem like a poorly written review, and for that I apologize (of course there is also poor writing involved too). I just do it because I love you and I don't want to spoil you. Smiley face. I also recommend not reading the trophies before playing the game, as some of their names are spoilers. Also, I'd recommend turning trophy notifications off while you play this game, as you get them all automatically and they are therefore pointless interruptions (although I love trophies in general!).

     The game is a story driven adventure that is all about how you act and speak in certain situations. Scenarios culminate in mucky moral dilemmas where you are forced to make a choice with drastic consequences. The game tracks what you say and do between episodes (the game was originally released as five separate episodes that came out 1 at a time).

     You control Lee Everett, a man who suddenly winds up in the middle of a zombie apocalypse that's just starting to happen. He finds himself taking care of an 8 year old girl, Clementine, whose parents were out of town when bad things started happening. They meet randomly and end up sticking together, trying to survive. I'm just giving you the very basics here. The story is top notch, I don't want you to know almost any of it when you go in. You'll learn a lot more than what I'm telling you here in just the first few minutes of the game, but I'm keeping it super spoiler free!

     Each of the five episodes takes, by my estimate, 2-3 hours to play. You're going to meet a lot of characters and be put in a whole lot of different situations. In many situations, you walk Lee around a set environment with the left analog stick while the right controls a cursor that works like a mouse. The cursor has four spaces around it, which correspond to the layout of cross, circle, triangle, and square. When you put the cursor on an object or person you can interact with, your available methods of interaction pop up as pictograms in these four slots, and pressing the corresponding button does that action. It might be a hand to pick something up, a word bubble to initiate a conversation, a hammer icon to bash a zombie's skull in, or a gun icon to shoot. Objects and people you can interact with have a white dot on them that appears when your cursor gets near them. This system works well for the times when you are left alone to walk around and do stuff freely, or when you are under the gun to try and do stuff during an intense situation. Sometimes you are deliberately searching for items or a way to do something with the items you have and sometimes you are acting on the spur of the moment, but this control scheme handles either pretty well. This is certainly a slower-paced experience than you might expect for a zombie game, but it works great. 

     Combat in the game is handled in a few different ways. Sometimes you may just click on a zombie to attack it. Other times you may need to actually aim a weapon and fire. Sometimes you have to mash cross and then press a button corresponding to an on-screen prompt to finish it off. Sometimes you need to click on a zombie as it is thrashing around and holding you to kick it off. These situations are some of the few moments where you can actually die and get a game over. Most of them work pretty well; some are frustrating because clicking on a moving zombie is a little awkard.

     Often you are in interactive cutscenes where the group you are with is interacting and doing stuff. In these situations you control what Lee says. You are given four options most of the time (well, three and the option to stay silent by pressing square). A timer bar appears at the bottom of the screen to count down how long you have to answer before you automatically say nothing and the scene goes on. Just hearing about this may sound boring or pointless, but choosing what to say is one of the most engaging parts of the game. What do you say to people you meet for the first time when you don't know if you can trust them? What do you say to people you know you can't trust, or who hate you, or who you are trying to keep secrets from? Or when you are asked to take sides? What you say and do defines how the game goes on, and trying to pick between the three options in intense situations with only a few seconds to make your decision is nerve wracking. The stakes are always life and death and your choices seal the fates of yourself and the people around you, so chooses wisely.. Just like real life, you'll wonder if you did the right thing or what would happen if you had done things differently.

     It can't be overemphasized how good the story is. What happens in the game will be defined by the choices made by each individual player. If you don't like it at first, give it a little time. The investment will be well worth it. The characters and story are in the top echelons of game story-telling. Only a small handful of games, like the Metal Gear Solid series, have great writing like this (and just so you know, the game is nothing like MGS in writing style. I'm just saying they both have great writing). And the fact that all the conversations are interactive and change based on what you say and do makes it even more amazing. At the end of each chapter, a summary shows you what percentage of players made the same choices that you did. This is a fascinating end to each chapter. If you know someone else who has played the game, talk to them about your choices. I had several interesting talks with another player about how he played the game and what differences there were in our stories. I didn't have a desire to re-play the game and make different choices. I felt very strongly that I made my choices and I wanted to stick with them, and that playing around would cheapen the experience. But discussing your choices and what happened with other players is really fun. I'm being super vague about the details because even talking about themes and ideas presented in the game can be a spoiler in a game like this (they were for me!). Going in cold is your best bet. I don't think you'll be disappointed. 

     The graphics are designed to look like a hand-drawn comic book. The game is in color, in case you were wondering (the comic is in black and white). This style works pretty well. It's definitely not the best looking game, but it works. There are a few ugly character models, namely Larry and Omid. I think they look like they were ripped out of a PSOne game.

     The sound effects are appropriate and when there is music it's good.

     Unfortunately this game has a laundry list of technical problems. Animations stutter. Lips get out of sync. Music gets stuck and loops. The game froze on me once (at a particularly epic moment). Character models sometimes pop into existence or move around when they shouldn't. Background items move around (I mean, like, trees and stuff are moving around in the background. The whole tree). Sometimes in the middle of intense moments you will click to do something and the game will freeze for about 2-5 seconds before doing what you said. This happens a handful of times right in the middle of intense action sequences. Worst of all, in my opinion, is the auto-saving. I had to re-play some segments after quitting to the main menu a few times, which is a total mood killer. One time, while re-playing a part I had already played, I noticed the game auto-save several times, so I don't get why it hadn't saved that part before for me. The absolute worst was an important conversation I had early in the game. Later in the game the characters acted as if this conversation never happened. My theory is that I had this conversation and then had to quit. The game wasn't saved. When I re-loaded I didn't re-do the conversation because I was in the same spot and it seemed like it was saved. So the auto-saving isn't consistent and the game doesn't save when you quit (to be fair, it does tell you this. But why doesn't it just save?). This conversation was very important to me, and when it came up later in the game that I didn't have it, I was mad.

     But the long list of flaws can't drag down the experience; The Walking Dead is one the best games I've ever played. The story is affecting and superb, and you really feel like you are crafting it, living it though your character's thoughts, words, and deeds. It will make you feel many emotions and debate with yourself what you would do in a similar situation. If it ran perfectly, I'd definitely give it a perfect score. Maybe even if we could eliminate half of the flaws I mentioned above. Together, that long list of problems do hurt the experience, but just barely. Everything else is just too good for the flaws to bring you down too much. It's a great game, Tier 2.