Review: The Walking Dead Point and Click Adventure Game!

Based off of quite possibly the greatest comic book series of the past decade, (and I heard something about a tv show?), Walking Dead gave the video game medium a shot with a 5 episode point and click adventure series. When it was announced, I raised more than one eyebrow upon seeing that Telltale Games were the ones behind it, seeing as they make the Law and Order point and clicks, along with Back To the Future and Tales of Monkey Island. I've been playing this Walking Dead series for a couple months, and now that episode 5 is done and completed, its time for the full review.

The comic book and tv show have achieved such great success because of Robert Kirkman's writing and vision of the world after a zombie apocalypse. What makes the stories so compelling is the fear, not of zombies, but of other people. Zombies ironically become an afterthought as other human beings fight and struggle for survival, and the vision definately stays true in the video game. You play Lee, a man who was on his way to prison the day of the outbreak for murdering his wife. What you get is a sort of redemption story for Lee, as he vows to protect adorable little Clementine, a girl orphaned by the virus.

Lee is one hell of a well written character (voiced by the amazing Dave Fennoy from Mass Effect and motherfucking Darkwing Duck), who really gives Rick a run for his money in terms of likeability. Lee struggles, first with surviving, then leading a group, getting closure for a dead family who had basically disowned him after the murder, and raising a little girl who depends on him completely. Throughout the 5 chapters, Lee deals with bandits, cannibalistic farmers, shady drifters, a lunatic cult of cancer survivors, and finally, in the 5th chapter, the most disturbing villain I have seen in a very long time. You get to know Lee pretty well by the end, and you should feel even more sympathetic to his desperate salvation story.

The game is centered around a Bioware style decision wheel, with super important questions lobbed at you quite frequently. You're also timed for each choice, making some of the bigger decisions a frantic and stressful ordeal (in a good way), which answering blindly can lead to serious consequences like the death of a team member, or loss of your own limb. The writing is so crisp that I never saw anything as forced, and the big showdowns at the end of each chapter are edge-of-your-seat exciting, as Lee takes seriously drastic actions to keep his group safe. Every decision you make has a serious effect, a small decision like who gets a candy bar in chapter 1 can decide if you're surviving or not in chapter 5. This gives the game a sort of random fate feeling, and I know that sounds bad, but it really makes the game more realistic in my opinion, you can prepare all you want, but you never know what going to happen.

This game series is amazing, and it is certainly on par with my favorite point and clicks, (Monkey Island, Myst). The Walking Dead game isn't just fan service, its a completely new story about a different group that is just as well written as the comic. Telltale created a game that achieves probably the hardest goal that development companies struggle with, making the player actually give a shit. Love it, can't wait for season 2.