The Walking Dead
Producer: Telltale Games
Release Date: December 11, 2012
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Rating: Mature
Genre: Story-Based Adventure
Walking Tall
Written by Josh Schilling
It is somewhat outlandish to believe the following true statement: a game that was derived from a comic book and was released exclusively as downloadable serialized episodes, is currently being hailed by numerous reputable sources as the Game of the Year for 2012. Yes, you read that right, and after finishing this game and letting the experience of it sink in, I have to whole-heartedly agree.
Walking Dead is a game based around a zombie apocalypse that doesn’t focus on the many joyful ways of combining weapons to disassemble the monsters by various means. Instead, it is a story driven game that focuses on your decisions, and lets you feel the repercussions of the choices that you make. This is a difficult game, but not in a trying-to-hold-off-hordes-of-enemies-in-a-dilapidated-Russian-carnival kind of way. It is difficult in the way that it stirs emotions as you experience the result of your actions. Character’s lives are in your hands (literally at times) and the zombies, while pertinent, serve more as a backdrop to the more interesting human stories. This type of game should serve as another huge question mark as to how a game like this could be so successful, but it is the quality of the overall story and the unique presentation that propels this game to its justifiably high standing.
This is a game that is very simple in its structure. Other than a few harrowing bouts of button mashing, you are challenged with making dialogue choices or finding items around an area to figure out how to advance the story. You take on the role of Lee Everett, a convicted murderer, who escapes out of a zombie-induced car wreck that thrusts him like a newborn baby into a newly undead world. From there, the story moves quickly, even including a couple of cameos from established Walking Dead characters, but the focus is on Lee and his friendship with a little girl named Clementine. In a world ruled by the dead, they are forced to finally begin living.
I read the comic before I watched the T.V. show, and I watched the show before I played this game, so I have been bludgeoned with the core notion of the Walking Dead story that the living people are the scariest part of that world. The difference with the game is that with the comic and the show, I understood the central concept. In playing the game, it could have been that the story was well crafted, or that by playing any game, intrinsically you are more involved, but what resulted was that for the first time I truly felt the Walking Dead story. This is a game that wears you like a coat and will make you want to talk with other people who have played it. It is not the best game I have ever played, but it is definitely one of the most memorable.