The Walking Dead: Season One

Just finished playing and based on my opinion I think the game story is great , the chacters are well written and you grow attached to them , there are a lot of emotional points and a lot of tought decision, it's a point and click game so don't expect much action, there are just some quick time events , if you want to play it you do it just for it's amazing story. And here the NEGATIVES, the game is quite short 10 hours more or less depends on how you play it, and with close to zero replay value although the games keep saying to you the story is tailored to your choices , your choices ultimately don't change anything there are just slide variations in the dialogues and some minor changes but the story doesn't have different paths no matter what you choose, no different endings, nothing . So this bring me to my final judgement: this is worth purchasing at discounted price only . So I suggest you to pick it up when there are specials discounts available.

This version suffers from lots of technical flaws. You need an external (GOG provided) tool for language setup (Season 2 needs registry hacks). Cell shading would be OK, but due to low poly model and lowres textures, lots of things just look carelessly designed and flat. The locations are very small with fixed camera, invisible borders/obstacles everywhere. Controls are minimalist but don't work well: when selecting options via mousewheel sometimes nothing happens or the selection you wanted is skipped. Add time pressure and you end up with the option you wanted least. Also controls are inconsistent. Like options displayed as left/right arrows need a mouse click instead of pressing left/right. There's no option to speed up or skip dialogs or cut scenes. When you finished an episode, you need to exit to the desktop and start again to continue. Viewing the stats doesn't work and freezes the game. There are 3 save games with a bit of savegame handling and you can rewind to replay. However, the game created two save game folders somehow and when installing Season 2, it will select the wrong one. Game design wise, this is an "interactive story" which just consists of dialogs, very simply 3 click "riddles" and quick time events. The "your decisions are important" claim is not really true. You can't really change the story. If you choose between 2 characters, both will die in the next 5 minutes anyway. You get hints like "XY will remember this" and then "XY" dies 4 seconds later inevitably. The game tends to ignore your choices anyway. Like you decided not to take something and then are only presented with dialog choices allowing you to excuse or defend for taking it. There are some cases of unnecessary brutality where you need to chop into some body again and again and again - which is just gross and without any purpose. Don't get me wrong: I liked to protect Clem and the story is OK. But this is just too little of a game and too badly executed for the full asking price.

The Walking Dead is an excellent interactive story with believable characters, beautiful artwork, voice acting and music, and a powerful emotional impact. There are some puzzles to solve and zombies to kill, but mostly the game involves deciding what to do or say to the other characters during time-limited interactions that are often filled with tension. These decisions make the story feel like it is your own, allowing you to shape "your" Lee and his relationship with Clementine and the other characters, and I felt this resulted in it having more of an impact on me than if I had watched it on TV or read it in a book. The characters are well developed and felt real, many becoming people for whom I cared (and still think about) and it hurt to see them suffer during what were intense and sometimes devastating scenes. Oftentimes I found myself questioning my decisions, regardless of how justifiable they seemed. But while the story is pretty grim at times, there are touching moments as well, particularly during the interactions with Clementine, a wonderfully written child character who is the heart and soul of the game. There were scenes where I wished for more opportunity to decide the dialogue or for different dialogue options than what were available, but aside from that, I really enjoyed The Walking Dead, and it is easily one of the best games I have played.

This game is essentially a interactive visial novel. At different points throughout the game you can have an input on the outcome, for anyone wanting an overly interactive game this way not be exactly what you're after however if you can put that to one side and go along for the story I'm sure you'll love it. You follow the character of Lee, a convict on the way to prison when the "Walking Dead" starts, you quickly stumble onto a little girl called Clementine and from that point out you spent the rest of the game surviving and taking care of this little girl. To me the story was engaging, and well written. Compared to the later games in this series the characters are well developed and you do grow attatched to them. The episodes are a decent length and there are many chapters in each episode so you can stop for a rest. How you act and respond in this game will change dialog options, outcomes and in the end how Clementine ends up as a person. You may think a survival game about taking care of a little girl is boring but it truely gives you a whole other aspect for survival. You can't just be a solo act, you have to think about your actions and consequences and how they not only affect you but her as well. Theres no manual saving which I quite like about this game, however the game is a bit buggy at times. I have seen this with quite a few Telltale games however and I'm not sure if that has something to do with the engine or just poor coding. Overall I love this game as you can probably tell and out of all Telltale games this is one I would reccomend to anyone who wants to experience what Telltale has to offer.

It’s a point and click adventure game with light puzzle elements, but I think calling it an interactive movie would be more accurate. Most of the game consists of choosing dialogue and making tough decisions. Choices don’t effect the overall narrative too much, but they add some flavor to the story. Season 1 has five episodes, each are about 2 hours long, meaning the whole game will take around 10 hours from start to finish. This game is a favourite of mine and I’ve gone back to replay it quite a few times to experience it’s amazing story. Out of all the Telltale Waking Dead titles, this is my second favourite next to Season 2 and will always be special for being the original game to start the whole series off. It will make you laugh, cry, and cry some more. I highly recommend playing it. Pros: +Well written story and characters. +Great voice performances. The actors really gave it their all. +Comic-inspired visual style looks great. +Worth a replay to see the alternate dialogues and events that different choices bring. +Facial animations are well done, convey a lot of emotion. +Amazing soundtrack composed by Jared Emerson-Johnson, some of these songs bring me to tears whenever I hear them. Cons: -Animation is rough in some places, but good overall. -Game’s age is starting to show. Character models look a little rough. Kenny has a rogue outline hovering near his shoulder and you can see where his sideburn texture ends and his face texture begins. -The effect your choices have on the narrative are over exaggerated