I’ll let you in on a secret: I’m not much of a gamer. Sure, I can survive a couple of rounds in Tekken or Street Fighter, and I’ve put in countless hours finishing Resident Evil 2 and 3, but I never bothered owning a console since my PS1 broke, I don’t have any games installed on my PC, and if you put me in the middle of an FPS multiplayer match I will suck so bad my teammates will kill me once the 3rd match starts.
But then, I’ve always loved scary games with loads of zombies in them, hence my fondness of the Resident Evil series, even though I failed to finish 4, 5 kinda sucks, and I didn’t even bother with 6 due to the bad press. And, yeah, don’t get me started on the fucking stupid movies. Which brings us to The Walking Dead: The Game.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about this episodic game from my officemates. Once a new episode comes out, they’d download it, finish it in a day, and end up talking about it like some TV show. I decided to give it a try. And even though at $20 it was hella expensive for an iOS game, if everything people say about this game was true, it’ll be worth it.
If you’re familiar with the comic book and/or TV show, you’d know that The Walking Dead isn’t all about zombies. It’s about how people survive and cope with the whole world going to shit around them, and with occasional zombie attacks.
The Walking Dead: The Game takes inspiration from that concept and runs away with it. You decide what your main character – Lee Everett, a man convicted of murder – says and does, and you deal with the consequences.
Anyway, the zombie apocalypse happens, and our favorite convict finds Clementine, a little girl who may or may not be orphaned, but is definitely alone and in danger. He takes her under his wing and decides to protect her from all the shit going on around them. They travel, meet loads of people, piss off said people, end up getting said people get killed, slaughter a bunch of zombies, and so on and so forth.
Again, I’ve mentioned that deciding what Lee says or does takes up the bulk of this game. However, in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, your decisions will never keep everyone happy. You will be bound to piss off people. You will make a lot of bad decisions. Your decisions will get people killed. People will never forget. You will deal with the fallout. You will feel feelings for fictional computer-generated people. And, I swear to god, this game will take an emotional toll on you.
Oh, yeah, there are loads of action scenes, too, whenever the zombies catch up with you, and with a timer showing how limited your reaction time is, and even though killing these zombies are easy, you end up freaking out like crazy. There are puzzles, but they’re kinda stupid and pointless and the less said about them the better.
By the time you get to episode 5, you’d be so emotionally invested in the story of Lee and Clementine that you find yourself getting angry whenever Lee does the same. And honestly, by the time the final scenes played I was in “Ade don’t cry Ade don’t cry Ade don’t cry Ade don’t cry Ade don’t cry FUCK IT I HAVE SOMETHING IN MY EYES I’M NOT CRYING” mode.
Anyway, I’ve spent three days finishing this game, and I can see myself going through all 5 chapters again, doing different decisions, seeing how it all turns out differently with my choices. Sure, the controls aren’t really all that great, and the framerate stutters a bit every now and then, but they’re not major problems.
Seriously, buy and play this game. Now. It’s not just for iOS – it’s on a shitload of platforms, and it’s totally worth it. Go on, download it.
Have you played The Walking Dead: The Game? How did you find it? Let’s talk about it in the comments!
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