The Walking Dead

     The popularity of the AMC television show based on a comic has exploded the past couple of years. Of the many walking dead games made and in production I chose to play a point and click adventure The Walking Dead made by Telltale Games. When I was telling my friend about this game he asked me if it was hard; I said no, you just have to make decisions. This game is 10 hours long of intense story telling. I played it in two chunks, because I sat down to play it and I suddenly realized it was the middle of the night and I had to go to sleep; playing the rest immediately when I woke up. After finishing it I just thought about it for the whole week following.

     First playing it for PC, I eventually bought it on 360 when it was on sale because I wanted to see if the dialog and choice system was better on the console. I also wanted to see if I could change some crucial choices. Some things you can change but a lot of events are hardwired. I couldn't change the things I wanted, however some different things happened the second time through. The dialog choices and quick-time events feel a lot more smooth on the console, but the combat was a lot better with a mouse. Since I'm one of those people who have to invert the Y axis on a gamepad, I had trouble on the console version because there's no way to invert.

     It's difficult to tell a whole lot about the game without massive spoilers. The main character is a man named Lee who thrust into the beginning of a zombie apocalypse. He happens upon a young girl named Clementine and becomes her guardian. Together they meet people and have terrible adventures. Your actions and words mold her as you continue through the game. The whole game in turn adapts to the way you play it. The combat feels kind of weird, I never got too used to it. It's an amazing idea for a point and click style game.

     It was all an emotional rollercoaster and when it's over you'll just lean back and say "Wow....". I can't wait until they release more episodes.