The Walking Dead game review

Telltale's adaptations of popular media has always been hit or miss. Sam & Max? Hit. Back to the Future? Miss. Jurassic Park? Well, sort of a bunt. The point is, the company has proven itself wholly capable of bringing our favorite comics, television shows, and movies to life, it just doesn't have a batting average, which is one of the main reasons we were skeptical by The Walking Dead game. Now that the episodes are finally rolling out, we're getting a chance to see if Telltale has, truly, captured The Walking Dead's world into an adventure game worth experiencing...

Instead of following Rick Grimes and his ragtag group of mildly-unlikable friends, Telltale decided to cook up some new heroes for its Walking Dead game. Enter protagonist Lee Everett, a convicted murderer (it's complicated) freed from the shackles of law when a corpse meanders in front of the police cruiser transferring him to prison. A montage of fading in and out of consciousnesses later and all of Georgia is run by the Walking Dead. It's never really addressed why things go from bad to full-blown zombie invasion in what feels like a matter of minutes (the world is in as bad a shape as it was when Rick awoke from a coma after a few months in the hospital), but once that suspension of disbelief is hurdled you're in the clear.

After blowing the head off of a zombified police officer, Lee makes his way into a nearby home where he meets Clementine, a little girl whose parents are... erm... uh... away... on vacation. And totally coming back for her. He takes her under his wing and goes about trying to find help, food, water, and shelter from the flesh-hungry monsters trying to bash apart the walls of society.

The first episode of The Walking Dead game sets up the tone and setting well, and caters to fans of the books, fans of the television show, and even those who haven't cared about either. It also strikes a strong balance between Telltale's older point-and-click adventure games and the action-based gameplay of Jurassic Park. Whereas the latter felt like you were directing a movie instead of actually playing a game, Walking Dead makes you feel like you're actually controlling Lee as he bashes in undead heads. It handles action in an unorthodox manner, but it's, in a way, more realistic, making it feel like Lee's a fairly regular guy, and not an expert marksman. 

Also successful is the use of player choice. On several occasions we were asked to make fairly important decisions that affected the lives of the people around us. These choices had cascading effects on the story in both major and minor ways. Some simply altered how survivors viewed us, changing dialog options later in the episode, while others would lead to the death of one character over another. It worked as fluidly as could be hoped, and made us feel truly in control of the world, instead of the other way around. What's more, a trailer the played for the second episode after the first ended showed our choices carrying over - an extremely exciting prospect. 

There were some graphical and audio issues, as there often are in Telltale's games, but, all in all, we were genuinely surprised with how much we enjoyed the first episode of The Walking Dead. A New Day definitely sold us on the series, and we'll be coming back for more every month as long as the quality stays high.

Note: We'll be reviewing each of the episodes individually, but not assigning a score until the last episode is released. Check back whenever a new episode comes out for our impressions.