Beitrag von: Aura am Oktober 01, 2013, 06:00:17 Nachmittag
The game is set-up in seasons (similar to the TV series). The first season has five episodes, and a bridge (called 400 Days) to the upcoming second season.
The game connects itself to the comic book series by introducing both Hershel Greene and Glenn Rhee during episode one. You hang out at Hershel's farm for a short while, this before most of his family become barn zombies. Then you meet Glenn after moving on to Macon, Georgia. He hangs out with the group of survivors for awhile, before heading off to Atlanta on his own (ostensibly to save Rick Grimes from being trapped forever inside a tank.)
You start off as Lee Everett, currently in custody and being transported to prison. For murder, as you quickly learn through parlaying with the chatty cop up in the driver's seat. Something to do with a senator and your wife, an affair of some sort. This back-story is slowly revealed over the course of the first two episodes. While in transport, the police car crashes. Lee survives. Comes into contact with zombies for his very first time. Escapes. And then eventually meets Clementine, a small girl hiding in a tree fort. He becomes her protector throughout the course of the series.
The big selling point to The Walking Dead is that it allows you to make hard choices and that those choices have consequence. This is the description that greets you as you enter the game. That description is somewhat disingenuous, though. There are no endless permutations to the story. The story is still quite linear in nature. The choices you're presented with can have an impact on what characters live and die, but ultimately similar fates await either character down-road. You can think of the story as having these fixed points in time, and you can only cause story divergences between those fixed points.
For instance, later in the first episode you are presented with your first difficult choice of the game. Save Carley. Or save Doug. One lives and one dies. That is your choice. But eventually, somewhere down the line, a singular fate catches up to them. You hit one of those fixed points in the story.
The real strength of The Walking Dead is the storytelling and the characters. Both immerse you into the atmosphere of this world. You feel tension. You feel suspense. It is an emotionally engaging experience. You'll feel genuine shock over events that happen. You'll be genuinely upset at the deaths of certain characters. Relief over others. I'm still upset, a few days after it happened, over the death of a particular character in episode three.
In terms of gameplay, it's pretty minimal. There isn't a lot of action, and when there is, it's mostly just mashing the Q key. Though when you are mashing that Q key, you are doing so desperately. There's also some minimal scope and shoot opportunities. Most of the game revolves around conversations, and the three choices you're presented with. Those choices fall into two patterns. The first, choose side A, neutral, choose side B. The second, be the good guy, neutral, or be the jerk. And each episode usually presents a couple of hard choices, which usually results in deciding who lives or dies. Move right to help character X, or move left to help character Y.
There's probably not a lot of replay value to The Walking Dead, due to those fixed story points. You play once as a super good guy, you'll get certain reactions from characters. You play as a jerk, you'll get another set of different reactions, but the story itself will move onwards like a juggernaut.
I also really quite like the graphical design. It does a pretty good job of bringing the comic book's artwork to life in colour and 3D. The voice acting ranges from the decent to the very good.
The few complaints here are quite minor, because the story and characterization really overshadows everything else. If you want to play a game that you're going to feel emotionally invested in, then The Walking Dead will do that for you.
Source: The Walking Dead ? The Game (http://)