This week I played and finished The walking Dead Season 1, and I must say, I’m really glad I did. The game from start to finish made me question decisions and made me shriek with horror everytime I had to make one.
Gameplay was slow and at times annoying, especially with a controller. To put it in perspective, your thumb controls the cursor on screen using the right analogue stick, yet that same thumb is meant to press the correlated button to make a action. It means at times you have to move your thumb between places (losing valuable time in quick decisions), which is never a good design choice for any genre of game. Gameplay being slow is to be expected though, especially when the concentration is on the characters and story rather than the action. At the end of the day, we should be grateful there’s action at all in a adventure game.
Gameplay aside, the characters and story were immense, easily pushing the gameplay industry to the forefront of any art form of modern times. Characters were rich and full of emotion, each having their own traits, meaning some people I would love due to my own personality, and others I would hate. I can see how other players would love or hate depending on their own merits in life.
Decisions really have weight, meaning that if you tell a character to go into a room before yourself, you could be sending that character to his/her grave. But it’s the way in which the walking dead pushes you into these decisions that really makes an impact. You just never know when you’re making a life choice for someone. Some choices can be trivial and pointless, others terrifying and game changing, but there’s no way to differentiate between which is which, meaning you’re constantly on edge, not wanting to progress.
I can understand why so many publications have given it game of the year, and would happily suggest anyone give this game a play through. It’s about 10-12 hours in length, so there’s really no excuse to give it a go.
4/5