Game Review: The Walking Dead - Season 1

Game Review: The Walking Dead - Season 1

   December 22, 2014       Mizu

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Game: The Walking Dead: Season 1
Played on: PC
Console: PC/Steam, Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, Mac, Ouya, PS3, PS4, PSV, xBox 360 and xBone
Price: $24.99 [Steam]
Genre: Graphic Adventure
Original Post: Nyantastic Review

Basically
You are Lee: A man who literally crashed and stumbled into a world of madness, death and survival, then you find a young girl hiding in her tree-house, waiting.
Given there is little choices at hand, you both forge a team where you venture into a world gone crazy to find truth and a way to survive. Remember, your choices you take and the things you say and do will impact your fate.

Mizu's Thoughts
Honestly, within minutes of playing this game, I found myself enthralled with the story and how it progresses with everything happening. However, 16 hours of gameplay later, I kept playing until I finished the game, there was a chance I felt very emotional at the end. Personally, I wouldn't know how many who would not be impacted by such an ending.
This game will break one as a player as they are faced with choices that can change everything in the game. All can be difficult and some can be, but not often, simple. Though, remember, each choice dictates what happens and even the simplest choice can kill someone. All in all, the game itself is cruel but addictive.
The game consists of 5 chapters and a bonus chapter called 400 Days, which is a downloaded extra for a price but does show what happened 400 days beforehand, a review will be written soon.

Now, let's begin with what is the easiest yet biggest aspect of this game, the story.
This is like most Visual Novels but let's you explore and confronted with more action and interactions with people and the environment. You are in control of Lee but given several characters to work with and you have a strong influences with the choices you are given at any given time. The story is what gets you and you will hunger for more, like a walker is like with fresh flesh.
With this in mind, this game takes after the comic serialisation with the the same name. Along with Telltales direction, the comic comes to life with more of a players interaction and input, making it more intriguing and possibly one of the greatest stories I have interacted with in a game for a long while.

Now, like most Telltale games, it has a lot of point and click interaction, which the company is known to utilise in their games. They may be limited in controls and movements and have some few issues of not doing what you want or overlooking a few points of interest but it works well with this game. Though at times, I did get agitated with the quick reactions and spamming of the Q button. Besides, the game is fairly simple to control and as a nice bonus, you can leave an overlay on to provide help but that is all up to the player.

There is very little music tracks used in comparison to the sound that is very frequent in the game, which suits the game immensely, such as the realistic sounds of muffled shuffles and moans of distant walkers, these sounds are what fuels the game and the imagination of the player. It helps make the creepy atmosphere all that more darker. Each area has it's own distinct feel and collections of sounds and music, you can also feel when there is danger lurking around every corner, even when there is no direct danger but you would think there is.

Now, onto the final piece of this artwork of a game and that is the graphics.
The western style art with the sense that this was a moving comic book, rather than a game of modern working of realism, set the visual standards of this game. It works well, so well in fact, that it made the game look as dark, dangerous yet beautiful as the world felt. It had a few scenes so clear when things were peaceful and looking hopeful but dark and gritty when things were at it's worse.

The creators did a brilliant job at making everything fit in together so well, I am so glad I got to play such a marvelous game that I do highly recommend all to play it or even give it a try.

Pros: The story is the most compelling, being trailed closely by the art and music, one really can't stop until the game is over.
Cons:  There isn't much to nit pick on, besides the few points of overlooking POI and slow reactions or missing critical points or making wrong choices. Chances are, those few points can end up with you dying.

Final Say
As a conclusive piece, this game is worth getting, regardless if this genre actually appeals to you. The story is worth checking out and where this games shines most brilliantly. The controls may not always work in ones favour and you can see the evolution of the graphics in each chapter (which is a nice thing, in my opinion) but this game is worth checking out, especially if you adore story driven games.

Score: 4.9 out of 5