I found this game on the Xbox Live Marketplace and bought it on a whim. I’ve never given much time to the comic or the T.V. show, so I was delighted to find this game was full of great and engaging moments. The story contained both purpose and consequence. There were also some pretty good action sequences, and fun puzzles to flesh out the experience. I actually found myself caring about what happens to the people I was with, and I honestly could not stand some of the characters that I had encountered.
I think the puzzles are pretty straight forward, and leave no room for error or real puzzle solving. If you turn on the white circles which highlight the things that you need to do, it’s even easier. The voice acting and the graphics are top notch. I enjoyed this experience enough to watch all of the current episodes of the show after I finished it.
Presentation : A- Graphics / Animation / Sound I love this game’s graphic style. There is a very comic-book feel to the game, and they are realistic enough to be believable while still being concretely animation. I felt like I was in a comic book most of the time. The animations are fluid for the most part, but it had some voices that came out of mouths that weren’t moving at times. This is a bug and will most likely be fixed, but it did occasionally happen. None of them felt clunky or out of place though, and all of them had a very genuine feel. The Walkers also all walked as a zombie type creature should.The sound is incredible. Not only are the screams of the people very well done, the voiceovers are incredibly good. It has some of the best voiceovers I’ve experienced, and all of the dialog was in place and well thought out.
Single Player : B+ Game mechanics / Length / difficulty The single-player aspect of this game is superb for the most part. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, and it seems very plausible. Nothing was as extreme as to warrant a “hmm, this isn’t what should happen” type of a scenario. I really enjoyed all the dialog choices, and they all seemed to fit into the story and weren’t just thrown in to give you something to choose from.Some of my choices backfired, but I wouldn’t change any of them. I wish they wouldn’t have told me what was affecting each character though, as that began to play in my mind later on with other choices. I had to literally stop myself from picking choices I thought would have a negative effect based on previous choices. Though, this game does implement a timer on some of them, so it doesn’t give you a 100% chance to do it right all of the time.
The game directs what you do, and the choices you can make in a very linear way. All of the puzzles don’t have alternative ways of getting them done. It’s do A, then B, and then C. There’s no if you do B and then C, D will happen. I wish this would have been the case for some of it, but it wasn’t.
The combat system is fun, and I would have liked to have fought more Walkers than I did. I guess they may have some more of this in the future, but I believe I read that the combat wasn’t the main focus. While I do love this, I still don’t think there was enough to satiate my zombie killing fetish. Maybe I’ll just play this and then go right to Left 4 Dead 2 to quench that thirst…
Multiplayer : NA Game mechanics / features / Online features I would have loved a group system to tackle this game’s story, if not even just defending a house from invading monsters. The combat is pretty fun during the intense fights, and I would have liked to of seen it put to better use, but this is a story-driven single-player game, and I do respect that. Replay Value : C+ Lasting appeal / Bonus Content / DLC The replay value of this game and the lasting appeal are decent, but not permanent. I will play it through again, this time choosing drastically different scenarios. I will also do this for future episodes (hopefully) so that I can get a chance to experience a different story arch. It would be interesting to see how it is if maybe I just don’t care about Clementine, or if I save the older son instead of the younger. Apart from this, with no multiplayer mode, this will probably run its course of fun within a matter of 2-3 play-throughs.Considering this game is a 5 Episode DLC only game, it scored very high. The game is very cheap, $20 upfront for all 5 episodes or $5 each when they are released.
With a great story, fun gameplay, wonderful and stylized graphics, terrific voice overs, and a choice-based system, this game should appeal to a wide array of users. The cheap price for such a great game is beyond wonderful, and will also help draw many people to it. I wish it had some sort of multiplayer to keep me playing longterm, but with 4 more episodes to go, and lasting 2-3 hours each, it should be a good solid game for the price.
Overall : B
