The Walking Dead

Following a rather disappointing venture into a potentially positive zombie game, one which seemed to have some critical acclaim, I decided to explore an essentially identical scenario, given that my interest in zombie games seemingly will rise back up just when you thought it was dead for good, like a…zombie. This time, the game in question is Telltale’s The Walking Dead.

For this review, a bit of a preface is needed. I have watched the first season of The Walking Dead show on AMC, but read none of the comic books, and thus my knowledge of the universe this game is set in is rather limited. Having seen the first season helped as I was familiar with a few concepts, and a guest appearance by a character from the show, but was not something that I at all felt was necessary, meaning the game more than stands on it’s own merits, separate and apart from the other ventures, and can easily be understood without knowledge of those other parts of the universe. So, we’re off to a good start.

Episode 1 includes an appearance by Glen from the TV show. Such tie ins are unnecessary in a game this good.

While The Walking Dead is considered an adventure game, it really could be described more as a choose your own ending adventure book, you know, those books where you would read a few pages, and then are tasked with making some seemingly innocuous choice that sends you to page 87 if you decided to steal the car, or to page 103 if you hitch hiked. I point this out because it is not really an interactive game in the traditional sense. If, for example, you were expecting to constantly have control of the character, guiding him through levels, jumping, exploring, etc, you’re not getting that. Many of those things do happen in the game, but they are pretty rare. Rather, most of the game is one long cut scene where you can alter the direction of the game through your dialogue choices.

Spread out amongst these cut scenes are the more traditional adventure aspects of the game. For example, in episode one, there are three or so portions of the game where you are given free roam of an area, such as inside a pharmacy, and you must interact with the items and people available to find the solution to progress. If you so choose, you can utilize the standard UI, which highlights items you can interact with, so it makes it easy to, say, find the batteries you need to give to the reporter who wants to listen to the radio to find out what is going on at her station.

The most “game” like it gets are a few quick reaction or key mashing sequences scattered throughout the game.

Frankly, the game doesn’t sound too interesting at this point, and I can’t blame you for thinking that. It is largely hands off or slow paced during the few times you are allowed to explore. There are only a handful of events that really require quick action, such as quickly unlocking your handcuffs and reloading a shotgun to save yourself from the zombie crawling towards you. Dialogue options also maintain a timer, shown at the bottom of your current choices, but failing to respond quickly seems to be taken for silence. For example, at one point in the game another party member suggested we sneak up on another survivor who appeared to have given us trouble in the past. I opted not to object, or state my desire just to talk to, rather than attack, the survivor, and so this party member talk my lack of an answer as “no objections.” Interesting, but we’re still not at the part that makes the game good.

That comes from the game’s story and choices. Over the five episodes The Walking Dead encompasses (which is just another reason to abstain from purchasing anything immediately) you’ll be faced with a number of decisions. Do you tell this character what really happened in that dark spot in the previous episode? Do you lie to a little girl about her parents? Do you abandon a group member for dead? Some choices are more obvious in their implications than others, while others are much more subtle, and may not come up again until much later. Still, your actions are cumulative, and the game does warn that it tailors the narrative to the decisions you have made, further emphasized when, again with the standard UI enabled, a message pops up that lets you know that particular person will remember you sided with him in a moment of crisis.

Sometimes you’ll need to very carefully decide what you want to do.

The types of choices the game throws at you, and the resulting consequences, are the kind of thing that would drive me to play this game over and over again. Shortly after getting started, I convinced a close friend to play as well, with the result being that we took two similar, but not entirely the same, paths through the game. Suddenly we were comparing our every actions. Did you side with Kenny, or Lilly? Were you able to save the man in the forest? Did you kill that one person we both agreed we hated when you had the chance? While our discussions on the game proved insightful, the game itself provides you with much of the same information, as, at the end of each chapter, there is a screen that pops up, comparing your choices to those of other players. The next screenshot shows one such screen from the end of episode one, so it doesn’t include too many spoilers, but enough that you can now consider yourself warned.

Some decisions are extremely critical, such as who do you save when two lives are on the line. Here, most people chose the attractive sharp shooting reporter rather than the tech guy.

The game playing for keeps is just one aspect of what makes it so good. The other part of that is the great character development and the story. The game begins at the outset of the zombie apocalypse, with the character you have control of, Lee, being transported in the back of a squad car.  You’ll later find out the reasons behind this, and it can become pretty important later on. Needless to say, stuff gets bad, there’s an accident, and by the time you come to, the dead are walking the earth. Injured, alone, and confused, you stumble into an apparently abandoned house. Eventually you’re introduced to the most important character in the game, the heart breaking Clementine, and, after some ugly events, you two decide to stick together, with your relationship culminating in some pretty heart wrenching stuff.

From there on out its all about who else you meet, who you keep alive, and whose side you take during arguments. My personal prerogative was to attempt to protect Clementine as much as possible, while steering clear of the bitter dispute between two other group members that is most prominent in episode two - Kenny and Lilly.  Sometimes, attempting to take the middle ground doesn’t always work out well, and I’ll admit, some of the consequences to my choices actually made my jaw drop, in full comic fashion, since I couldn’t believe that X just Y’d Z.

One of the achievements of the game is that this tiny eight year old girl is this fully developed character, rather than just some annoying sidekick you have to deal with.

Not everything is perfect with The Walking Dead, and the few issues I have range from technical to content, but none of them are so major as to negatively impact the experience this game provides. One involves the use of autosaves,  since this game saves your progress after you make certain key decisions or progress. That might be fine, except there were a few sections of episode three I had to replay because they space between checkpoints was substantially large enough that I couldn’t make it to the next one in the free time I had, and so was forced to replay 10-15 minutes. There were a few times I also felt that Lee’s actions didn’t sync up to what the chat options implied, as in a case where it seemed I would be asking someone else for help, but it came across as being far more aggressive than I had anticipated. The biggest issue probably would be how quickly a friendship could sour, with just one decision going against, in my case, Kenny’s wishes, and suddenly I found I was on his bad side. It’s understandable, but at the same time it seemed like things were blown far more out of proportion than they should have been, and that our past relationship should have counted for more.

So, to recap, since this has been a bit of a vague review, and I feel that it has to be given the story driven nature of this game: It’s not that much of an interactive adventure, rather consisting of long conversation cut scenes in which you make critical decisions that impact your narrative experience interrupted with occasional areas wherein you can choose what to interact with, usually with the goal of overcoming a certain puzzle like obstacle, such as determining how to get a train up and running. When you make choices, you play for keeps, as the decisions you make will stick with the characters you’re interacting with, which, when using the standard UI, the game will notify you about, and that these decisions will come back to you in some way, shape, or form. However, it does seem that, no matter what choices you make, eventually all roads lead to Rome, with characters dropping out at prescribed times, and the way it happens being based on your choices, but ultimately unavoidable, which is probably the biggest fault of this game, but, given the ending, is well worth it.

Interactions can run the gamut from romantic to deadly serious, as you face issues such as who to willing abandon or determining who to feed on your dwindling rations. Sometimes a little comedy sneaks in.

You’re looking at roughly 12-13 hours of an incredible narrative experience, one that was so engrossing I couldn’t wait to get home and play it. After finishing it, all I could think about was if there were ways I could change the outcome - if different decisions would have saved certain characters at the expense of others, and ultimately this all spilled over into a continuing conversation with an ever growing number of friends who have all made different decisions about what their choices were, and why. Usually the game is on sale for $12.50, which is a steal for what you get, and I wouldn’t suggest picking it up at any less. Easily one of the best games I have every played, drawing me in in a way I would have never anticipated was possible before, even if it really isn’t a game as I’d define it - 10 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:

Score: 10/10

Suggested Price: $12.50+ 

*****

For more The Walking Dead images, check out this collection of various screenshots otherwise unused in this review. Click any one for a full sized image.

Deadlight

Deadlight is a beautiful 2.5D platformer with action elements set during the mid 1980s in a post zombie apocalypse Seattle. You'll find yourself navigating the ruins of one of America's major cities, long after the apocalypse has taken hold. Fleeing from the undead you'll make it through not quite so abandoned apartments, survive a madman's puzzle lair deep in the sewers, and face the far more dangerous enemy in any survival scenario - other people. Obviously, this sounds ridiculously cool at this point.

You take on the role of Randall Wayne, a man who has had his life turned upside down by the advent of the zombie apocalypse. At the outset of the game you know little about Randall’s background, but that he is traveling with a group of survivors to Seattle. Quickly you’ll learn that he is a Canadian refuge seeking what he believes to be the last safe haven his wife and daughter could have fled to when the dead started munching on the living’s brains.

The opening scene is actually one in which Randall executes another survivor, and then, when discovered by the others, particularly the now hysterical sister of the girl Randall just killed, is forced to explain that this girl had been bitten after she wandered from the group (but where were the zombies?!?). Things get cut short when it’s apparent that the gun shot attracted more attention than is otherwise beneficial in any zombie scenario, so the survivors need to get out, and fast. Of course, the ladder your group is escaping up breaks before you have a chance to use it, and so you’re forced to part with the group, letting them know you’ll meet them up ahead at the safe point. If I were personally in this type of situation, I’d much rather it was “I’ll meet you around back, or just down the road,” but I guess that doesn’t make for as exciting a game as being forced to travel through a zombie invested city on foot with the hopes of somehow finding your three remaining companions.

It’s also probably a bad idea for the guy traveling on foot to give up his gun. Just saying.

You'll quickly find yourself scampering up ledges, vaulting from window to window, or shimming along power lines and hoping they'll hold you weight, since there is a particularly hungry looking group of zombies down below. These are some examples of the platformer elements of the game, which makes up nearly everything you'll do. Much of the game is no more than simply running and making a few well timed jumps, or climbing up ledges, into windows, and then hoping over zombies, sometimes even whistling to bring them closer to you, since this game is not big on combat. Things get really interesting when you need to push a box around, kick down a door, or just charge through a weak wall.

You will encounter a couple of means of defending yourself beyond jumping over zombies or tackling them as you progress. The foremost of these is the handy-dandy fire axe. It’s great for knocking zombies down, or, if you’re good enough, chopping their head clean off. Later in the game you’ll encounter a pistol and shotgun, which double as a means to take out locks on gates, and eventually find the useful slingshot, which is largely used to trip special switches during the largely puzzle based platforming section in the middle of the game. However, limited ammo renders your firearms mostly useless, except as a means to escape a particularly tricky situation, and as such you’ll rely much more on the axe, that is, when it’s available.

The middle of the game involves several puzzles and zombie traps. In this one there are many switches you'll need to trigger to move platforms around.

Associated with all this running, jumping, climbing, and axe swing is a stamina mechanic. Its simple enough: hanging from a ledge burns up your stamina, and when it reaches zero, you let go. When your bar hits zero when you’re swinging an axe, your attacks become much more spaced out, weaker, and your character beings to hunch over between attacks. The latter scenario is the only time I really ran into issues with lacking stamina, since it’s not very often that your jumping from ledge to ledge without adequate time to recuperate. Stamina, as well as your health, can be upgraded if you find the right item, which is nice particularly in the case of your health bar, since the only way to heal is to find a medpack, which cannot be taken with you.

Unfortunately, I’m at the part of this review where I’m out of content to talk about, and it’s onto the quality of the experience. In that sense, Deadlight falls terribly short of what I was expecting. It is, as I’ve said, not heavy on the combat. For the majority of the game you’re unarmed, and so your best defense includes things like tackling zombies or jumping over them - this game is almost strictly a platformer, which in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if it essentially picked a hole and stuck with it. There are also quite a few sequences where the tolerances for failure were a little too strict. A split second hesitation while running through a collapsing missile silo, or an ill timed jump when vaulting over a series of spikes can doom the entire “scene.” Add in controls that, whether utilizing an Xbox 360 controller or keyboard and mouse, could feel very awkward and seemingly not respond to your inputs in the way you’d expect, particularly when dealing with fences that you climb over and them jump off, and the frustration of watching Randall keep switching sides instead of simply jumping off. Top it all of with a story that is unfulfilling, told in cutscenes that all bugged out on me, resulting in no sound, a main character I can’t empathize with, and a surprisingly short game, and the result is an experience that was not at all what I had hoped for going in.

A notebook full of collectibles, as well as notes on each chapter, provide a story that is lackluster and makes you feel a bit odd about the main character.

There are certain design aspects of Deadlight that I thought were really neat, but turned out to just not be enough to make the overall experience a positive one. One of the best is the use of 2.5D. First, it's beautifully executed anyways, and the game get's points for the atmosphere it presents. Probably my favorite part about the 2.5D though is that it's not uncommon for enemies to wander out of the background, approaching the screen until they are ultimately on the same plane as Randall, where they proceed to attack and generally be the pain that zombies usually are. Another cool mechanic is how rooms are hidden until you approach them enough to peer inside, acting as a different form of line-of-sight. If you see a closed door in the corner of a room, you'll have no idea what is there until you open it. It could be a path out or filled with zombies, but it will all be totally blacked out until you crack that door open. Again, cool mechanics, but they can't cover up the game's other failings.

Interactive items are either highlighted or will pop up with an icon, but only when you get right up next to them.

I suppose what I had really been expecting from Deadlight was something that was a better blend of action and platformer than what it was. I do like platformers as well, but this one just felt off the whole time. It was never that challenging, or presented you with puzzles or other difficult obstacles to your progress, with the exception of maybe 4 points throughout the game that just required moving through an area with such little tolerance for error as to be frustrating, rather than a challenge to be overcome. Honestly, I can't at all agree with the critical reception Deadlight got, nor even the trailers on the Steam page that would seem to present the game as far more action centric than it really is - the type of information I utilized when I decided to get this game.

I spent nearly 7 hours in Deadlight, but that was largely due to attempting to replay cut scenes that bugged out and did not have any sound, or going back and collecting everything because I needed to do something to justify the copy of Torchlight II I had traded in exchange for this game, otherwise my total time was closer to 3 hours. And just a heads up, the collectibles, which consist mostly of journal entries and stranger’s IDs didn’t really add much to the game, except for this feeling of how odd Randall is. Of course, there is an alternate ending that comes out of left field, and I guess it ties in with those collectibles better, but to unlock if you’d have to go back and beat the game on Nightmare mode, which means no saving, and frankly even I am not that much a of a masochist, so just go to YouTube. While the lowest price I have seen it individually was $3.75 on Amazon or Steam, I have also seen it as part of a bundle with 4 other games on Amazon for $10. Usually $15 titles don’t dip below the 75% off mark, so expect to see it at $3.75 again, though you might want to pick up the soundtrack instead, because that's actually much better than this disappointingly mediocre game - 5 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:

Score: 5/10

Suggested Price $3.75

*****

For more Deadlight images, check out this collection of various screenshots otherwise unused in this review. Click any one for a full sized image.