Plot-centric games are a rare gem nowadays; a needle in the haystack in the midst of action and FPS games that flood the markets these days. Such games are amazingly difficult to pull off, given the immense amount of dialogue combined with the essence of a strong story, which had to differentiate from B-grade plot clichés that we see in most games. But when they do succeed, they shine gloriously.

The Walking Dead: The Game is an amazing example of a game that redefined a genre and going against the grain by breaking away from the cookie cutter mould of action-packed zombie-based games such as Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising and Dead Island. This means that if you are looking to run around the country and kill thousands of zombies, you’re better off playing one of those titles I have just mentioned. Developed by Telltale Games who specializes in episodic adventure games, the Walking Games is in good hands of the team that created Tales of Monkey Island and Back to the Future: The Game. Drawing inspiration from Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain, the developers mixed storytelling elements with quick-time events, delivering tension for certain climatic moments. When packaged together with your own emotions woven into it, The Walking Dead: The Game promises an unforgettable experience that will keep you riveted to plot till the end.

(You will be very disappointed if you are expecting something like this)

Inspired by the comic book itself, the game offers nice cell-shaded graphics that complements the look and feel of the comics, with cameos (I wouldn’t spoil it for you) from the main story appearing in the game. The voice acting is super, with emotion dripping in each sentence as a living breathing novel playing out by itself. The game is delivered in bite-sized amounts in the form of 5 episodes, starting in April 2012 and ending in November 2012. Each episode would take about 2 to 3 hours, which provides a short but intense experience aplomb with emotional tension, delivering what Telltale Games promises as the main selling point: that you as a player has the choice to choose your own story and your own adventure. In short, The Walking Dead: The Game is a game that concerns more on what you do than how you do it.

As the player plays through episodes one to five, the game would require responses from dialogue or actions that are timed (with only seconds to react) and critical, requiring the protagonist, Lee Everett, to make decisions that would alter the flow of the plot in a manner similar to RPGs like Mass Effect or Dragon Age: Origins. If you miss the timer, in some conversation trees Lee will end up being silent, which would have an impact on how others react to him. In other cases, it could result in Lee himself or another character being killed. Unlike Mass Effect or Dragon Age: Origins though, the moral choices aren’t so clear-cut in being “good and lawful” versus “bad and renegade”, which is true of life. In a post-apocalyptic world of The Walking Dead where hordes of undead walk the earth, the moral compass is thrown out of the window in the face of survival, making the player perform some really difficult decisions. Take, for example, a scene where Lee is only given 4 rations to a group of 10 hungry survivors with himself included. Would he give to the children out of compassion, or would he give to adults so that they can fight the zombies better? Other notable scenes include Lee having to decide if he should help a stranger by shooting at the zombies, but risking the horde flocking to him due to the noise, or leave her at lurch so that he can have more time to scavenge for supplies while the zombies are feasting on her. The game is peppered with all these hard choices, with seconds to decide, and it becomes a story of how humanity has crumbled and how bleak such a world can be.

When not making choices, the player can examine and interact with characters and items, and must make use of inventory items and the environment. That said, there aren’t many difficult puzzle elements in this game. Most of the puzzle involve menial activities like finding batteries for a radio or starting up a train, which acts more as a pacing to drive the central plot as well as to develop the world and the characters deeper.

Most of these choices and actions would not have mattered if not for a central character in the story: Clementine, a young 8-year-old girl left to fend for herself in an Atlanta suburb after her parents made a very bad call to take a holiday during apocalypse and her babysitter becomes a baby-eater. That is, until the protagonist, Lee Everett, comes along to become her guardian. During the game, Clementine was made to act as a moral mirror to reflect the decisions made by the player, as it shapes and moulds her to be a young woman in this harsh post-apocalyptic world. This is complicated by the fact that Lee Everett is a convicted murderer on his way to prison when the first episode begins, a difficult fact about himself that might work against him in a world where trust is a luxury to come by. And the duo sets off into the scary world in a mad quest to find Clementine’s parents despite having the nagging thought in your head that they are probably dead or worse.

That said, even though the Walking Dead: the Game is marketed as a game with choices, it is not a “Create your own adventure” game with millions of possible outcomes and limitless plotlines. The endings are driven by the same central story and leads to the conclusion that many of our life’s choices have predetermined outcomes, or some would like to call it fate or destiny or God’s will, and therefore some things, regardless of how many reloads you do or if you step back in time, cannot be changed. You might be given a choice, but after playing it a few times, you would realise that your choice may not change anything except for how other people view you. I personally would have liked a lot more diversity in the endings and plot branches, seeing how Heavy Rain managed to make it more diverse and gives it a lot more replayability. On the other hand, the Walking Dead teaches a valuable lesson about the limits of human choice, that despite giving your best shot sometimes, you cannot change a situation, but the situation will change you. It is the journey of building the relationships, losing them, and all the emotions I have felt that makes the Walking Dead so close to the heart and so memorable. The experience is much more impactful as a game than the drama series or comic book can ever hope to achieve.

9/10. (Try it and feel it for yourself. This game is pretty cheap sometimes on Steam, so be sure to check it out to get deals sometimes)