This game I did not have high hopes for Telltale games in the past have made some pretty bad games, boy was I wrong this game blew me away. We should make two things clear here from the start: this is based primarily on the comics not the TV series, and features none of the same actors. It's also not a standard retail release, but a series of five episodic games which will come out monthly I believe. The first episode I finished in 2 - 3 hours since I played on the xbox it was 400 Microsoft points which I believe is about £3.50 or around $5 which to be honest you can pay a lot more to go see a film which may not even be good. The game also has multiple options which can change how the game plays slightly, not much though but we have been told they have massive effects in later episodes.
The Jurassic Park game released late last year was bad for the reason that it played out like a film with very little interactivity for players. The Walking Dead game solves these problems, it manages a much better balance between spectacle, storytelling, and puzzle-solving.
The focus of the game is a character called Lee Everett who's dark past is hinted at you progress. He isn't necessarily a bad person though and takes considerable effort to protect his child sidekick Clementine who he finds in a treehouse after she hid from her once babysitter. Clemintine is a perfect character I found myself ending up doing whatever it took to make sure she kept safe.
The main attraction of this game isn't the zombie killing, its the dialogue and character interactions that are the meat of the game. It was tough to decide with who I should side with at times and to make it even harder you are timed sometimes to pick, I loved this it was perfect as if it was real decisions would have to be made quick and there's no going back on your choices.
Interestingly, whatever choices you make don't affect the story very much but they do completely change the other characters' attitude towards you. This is important as I ended up making some very tough decisions which in turn made a certain character not think much of me and began to dislike me, this may affect me in future episodes its genius!
I love the art style as it resembles the comic in a way, fans of only the TV show may be put off by this which may be a shame. In places the flow of cutscenes can be a bit poor with some freezing screens for a couple seconds which sometimes took me out of the mood but nothing to serious to worry about.
I hope Telltale can keep up the quality in future episodes they do have a tendency to vary wildly in quality from episode to episode but this first outing is the best thing they've done for years.
Verdict: It's a lot more wordy than you might expect from a survival horror, but it is the best zombie game since Left 4 Dead 2. Excellent dialogue and voice acting, but art is not likely to appeal to everyone.
Score: A solid 9/10 AMAZING!
No comments:
Post a Comment