Re-Review!!
The Walking Dead
PlayStation 3
There is a first time for everything. When I first started this blog about three years ago, one of my main goals was to work through my video game collection one game at a time. I have a huge collection of games and I had been finding myself playing the same ones over and over again while a ton of them were not even getting played at all. My solution? Write a review for each game I complete. Put the game in a shoebox and store it away. If it was a digital game, delete it entirely. I'd work my way through my whole collection. If I ever felt the need to go back and play a game I had already reviewed – ignore it! It would take time but eventually I would get through my entire collection. But even three years into this project it seems I have barely made a dent in my collection.
So why am I breaking my own personal rule and playing the Walking Dead a second time? I have a good reason. That reason is called the Walking Dead Season Three: A New Frontier. I have played the Walking Dead Seasons one and two, but it has been a long time since I have completed season two. So I don’t really remember where things left off. I don’t remember the choices I made in the first two games. So before I play season three, I want to go back and play seasons one and two over again. Makes sense, right?
I just finished Season one and I figured this would give me a decent chance to try something new and write a “re-review” for the game. I would see if it stacked up as well in real life as it did in my memory. Did it? Well, yes and no.
I’ll start with the yes. I still had a great time playing this game. To me, it is one of the best Walking Dead stories out there. There are a ton of great moments in the game. The house full of cannibals. The supply raid on Crawford. Lee getting bitten on the arm. The heart-wrenching ending. If this was a movie or TV show and not a video game, I would still love the story. Not only is the story great, but the characters are as well. You really feel a kinship with many characters as you play this game. The relationship between Lee and Clementine is very touching and is something you don’t see a lot of in video games today. There is a definite emotional connection that this game made with me. I vicariously experienced the character’s highest highs and their lowest lows. When Clementine goes missing towards the end of Episode Four, I felt the panic that Lee must have felt settle in. When Lee got bitten and had to hack off his own arm, I felt the anguish and the desperation as well. I am not a crying person normally, but I did shed tears while playing through the game’s very tragic ending.
So in terms of storytelling, the Walking Dead Season One is still a very good game. What did I not enjoy about it the second time through? I’ll elaborate.
First and foremost is the game’s pace. Some of the conversations seem just a bit too drawn out. Especially when the characters are in the middle of some kind of panicked event. A generic example: zombies are busting down the door of the room you are hiding in. The game makes you explore a four segment conversation branch with someone before you can do anything about the zombies. Hellllooooo? Zombies are busting down your door. A little sense of urgency would be nice. That was just a generic example but things like this happen all the time throughout the game and it drove me nuts.
The game also seems very basic. Perhaps I am spoiled because I have recently played a couple of newer Telltale games: Guardians of the Galaxy and Batman. It seems like there is always something to do or something to see in those games. They keep you involved at all times. It is understandable that this game is a lot older and Telltale hadn’t perfected its craft yet when making this one. But there were times I just sat there staring off into space because things were moving too slowly or the conversations just would not end. It also seems like there are a lot of filler areas of the game where your only goal is to walk around and converse with each character before you can move on.
There are some technical squabbles to be found too. The save system isn’t ideal. You have to wait till the game automatically saves for you before you can turn the console off. You can’t just manually save the game yourself. Lee walks at a snail's pace and often will get hung up on small objects on the ground that you for some reason can’t simply walk over. You have to take the extra time to go around them completely. There is occasional slowdown during conversations as well. I was worried my game would freeze at a few points, but luckily it never did. Of course, the game is nearly five years old now so the graphics aren’t going to be as good as a lot of current Telltale games. The character models are fine, but I often found the areas and backgrounds uninteresting or boring to look at.
I also played through the game's DLC - The Walking Dead: 400 Days. It is a collection of five different stories that tell the tale of six different survivors during different random points of the zombie apocalypse. Each tale is about ten to twenty minutes in length. They are all pretty good stories, but because you don't get to spend much time with each character they don't carry the same emotional weight as the tale of Lee and Clementine. They tie together in the end, however, and the choices you make directly affect who appears in the Walking Dead sequel and who does not. Normally I am not a big DLC person, but for only a couple bucks this was definitely worth it.
Overall I still find this to be a very good and very deserving game. Is it worthy of the A+ score I gave it in my previous review? I don’t think so. Perfect scores should be reserved for perfect games, and this game is most definitely not perfect. I can see why I would want to give it a perfect score though, especially with the emotional heft of the game’s storyline and the way in which you connect with its characters. As characters, Clementine and Lee are nearly flawless. As a game, this title is excellent – maybe even great. But flawless? No. In fact, there are quite a few flaws to be found here. So its score is going to drop just a little bit.
Side note, I am very curious to play the Walking Dead Season Two over again now. Overall I recall liking that game, but at the same time I was slightly disappointed in it. I had such high expectations for that game the first time I played it that it was bound to let me down just a little. It was solid, but I didn’t like it nearly as much as I did the original title. I wonder if I will like it more this time since my expectations aren’t quite as high. We shall see.
Overall:
A-
(original score: A+)
(original score: A+)
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