XBLA Review: The Walking Dead: Episode 1

The Walking Dead are back and not just in an Occupy L.A.-May Day convergence exercise in downtown Los Angeles.  Interactive story game maker, Telltale Games has put together something new based off the popular comic book series.  The art is nearly identical to the comics, but The Walking Dead game doesn’t bother retelling the comic or the TV series.  The game lets you play as a convict named Lee Everett, who manages to escape custody as the epidemic breaks out.  This allows the game to run concurrent to the early part of the story fans already know.

The Walking Dead game borrows heavily from the last couple of generations of survival horror games and the classic point and click type adventure games on PC.  Luckily, Telltale is mostly successful at marrying the two genres.  Most of the cel-shaded scenes are presented with classic Resident Evil-type fixed camera angles although thankfully, there are no tank controls.  The camera is slightly adjustable with the right analog stick and Lee moves directly with the left analog stick.  When the shaded crosshairs come across an item or person Lee can interact with, icons pop onto the display with your choice of action.

More than just solving puzzles, The Walking Dead game uses relationships and dialogue as the puzzle.  Nearly everything you say figures into how the game plays out.  Most of the characters Lee meets are, of course, suspicious of him due to the circumstances and some even know who he is.  Your choices are really about who to ally with and how honest to be.  There are also some optional fetch quests that can influence the others in your group.  The meat of it though, is your relationship with the little girl you’ve chosen to take care of, Clementine.  If the choices weren’t difficult enough, many of them are timed.

Though the game does contain a lot of dialogue, there are zombies to kill.  Many of these combat sequences require quickly lining up the cross hairs on a target and selecting the appropriate action.  There isn’t any swinging of melee weapons or unloading copious amounts of ammo into "walkers."  The combat is fairly rare which may dismay some potential players and result in the game being dismissed as an interactive comic like those found on smartphones.  While fairly short, there is certainly more to this game than just a lightly interactive television episode.

Article Author: RPGameX

Lance Roth has over 10 years experience in the video game industry. He has worked with developers along with retail outlets to develop training programs and sales strategies. He participated in all of the major console launches since the Dreamcast. …

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