The Walking Dead Review

Adventure games have been seeing a big return in the last few years.  With the rise of the downloadable market, many developers have saw a great opportunity to fund these games on their own as most publishers in this day and age will not fork out the money needed to make these games.   One of the developers at the forefront of this big adventure game renaissance has been Telltale Games.  This California-based studio has built a reputation among the game critics and hardcore gamers for creating quality episodic adventure games such as the Tales of Monkey Island and Back to the Future games.  While successful, Telltale never had the breakout success they were looking for.  That was until The Walking Dead, which has been their biggest commercial and critical success to date.  With The Walking Dead, Telltale takes adventure games in new ways by adding more interactivity during cut scenes and making every choice you made matter.

The Walking Dead is set in yet another zombie apocalypse, something that has become a tired trope in many forms of media by now.  What sets The Walking Dead apart from most other games set in a zombie apocalypse is the focus on the survivors.  While the zombies or walkers as they are known in The Walking Dead are the main threat, they are not the only threat.  The Walking Dead makes a point of showing how living people can be as or more dangerous than the dead walking amongst them.  You play as Lee Everett, a convicted murderer before the apocalypse, as you work together with a young girl named Clementine and a group of survivors in order to survive.  From Macon to Savannah, Lee and the group travel across Georgia to find a safe haven.  The journey is never easy as the group faces some incredibly tough and sorrowful decisions; decisions that reverberate throughout all the episodes of The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead is an incredibly tense game.  From simple conversations to big gunfights, everything you do in the game feels important and effects the way people feel about you and interact with you.  It really makes you feel that Lee is an extension of yourself.  There are no black and white decisions in The Walking Dead, only shades of grey.  Each decision you make in conversations or at big set moments will always have some sort of consequence, sadly not all turn out for the best.  While the storytelling and decision-making are the stars of the show, Telltale also adds some great ways of immersing you into cut scenes and other set pieces.   From shooting down waves of walkers to mashing buttons to fight off enemies, you are always immersed in the game as it is the difference the life and death in The Walking Dead. 

While an incredible game, The Walking Dead is not perfect.  Like most Telltale adventure games, The Walking Dead suffers from the occasional lip syncing and slow down issue.  Nothing too serious, but it can get a little annoying after a while.  Another little nitpick with The Walking Dead is how simplistic the puzzles in the game are.  It does keep the game going at a great pace and keep gamers from getting frustrated with obtuse puzzles, but eliminates much of the challenge of The Walking Dead.  Much of the difficulty I personally had with The Walking Dead came when the cursor would stick and take forever to move.  This issue happened more times than I would have liked and really took me out of the game as I fought with the controls.

Telltale’s The Walking Dead is easily the benchmark for modern adventure games.  It can easily be enjoyed by fans of the series or people who could care less about the TV show and comic like yours truly.  The Walking Dead is an experience like no other in this medium.  You will laugh, cry, get scared, and be disgusted, shocked, surprised, intrigued and every emotion in between.  When everything is said and done, you will be amazed at how much you care about each and every character you meet and interact with in the game and contemplate on what could have been if you did things differently.  The Walking Dead is an excellent game that should be experienced by all gamers mature enough to play it.

Year in Review 2012: Game of the Year

When I thought of doing this set of Year in Review articles, I did not think it would have taken me this long to complete it all.  It seems work, school and life just gets in the way.  One great result from this set of articles taking so long has been that I have gotten back into the swing of things.  It has gotten to the point that I have deemed Sunday evenings as my time to sit back and just write.  So I am hoping posts will be much more frequent this school term.  Hopefully once a week, but things might change middle to late February when I start my annual Road to WrestleMania series of posts on my wrestling blog.

Some may have noticed that while I did list my Top Games of 2012 last week, there was no game specified as Game of the Year.  Was there no games in 2012 that were worthy enough to garner this prestigious award?  Did I just missed out on what could have easily been my favourite game of 2012?  If you have been following this blog for a while now, you know the answers to both of these questions, which is no.  Out of all the great games I have listed over the past few articles, there is one game that made 2012 for yours truly.  The one game that I booked the day off work to play when it launched, the one game that I could not stop talking about for the first few months of 2012, the one game that I dedicated an entire week of blog posts to.  My Game of the Year for 2012 is none other than Mass Effect 3.

In Mass Effect 3, your main goal is to amass an intergalactic army to take on the Reapers and take back Earth.  With the stakes set incredibly high, you take your Commander Shepard (either new or imported from the previous games) through easily the strongest story in the entire trilogy.  The story twists and turns as you make some of the toughest choices in the series.  Choices so immense that they can determine the fate of entire civilizations.  Mass Effect 3's story you make you think, reflect, laugh, cry, smile and hate.  It is very easy to get emotionally attached to these characters and thinking about all the possible outcomes of your one decision will circle in your head for days.  The entire Mass Effect trilogy has been an experience like no other in the video game industry.  Seeing my Shepard evolve and my decisions reverberate throughout the annals of these games has been spectacular.  Mass Effect 3 serves as an excellent finale to this grand trilogy of games.

No matter all the supposed controversy with the ending that many jaded gamers got so hung up (an ending that I had no problem with), Mass Effect 3 is the one game that I had the most fun with in 2012. Be it spending 30+ hours completing all the side and story missions, slaying waves of enemies in multi-player in order to boost my Galactic Readiness Rating or continuing the story through some of the DLC released later in the year, BioWare's finale to their epic space opera was the only game that captivated me this much.  In my opinion, Mass Effect is my favourite game of 2012 bar none.  Agree or disagree with me, I hope you all enjoyed these Year in Review articles and would like to hear your favourite games of 2012.

Year in Review 2012: The Games

While there were quite a few games that I did not get around to in 2012, there were plenty of games that yours truly got to spend some quality time playing.  Some games on this list I played to completion before the end of 2012, some I did not.  Those games on this list that I did not complete, I still got quite a ways through them.  Enough so that they deserve to be mentioned in my top games of 2012.  Due to how busy I was in late 2012, my top games of 2012 will not be organized in a list of ten games in ascending order.  The games will be listed by the order of their release.  Each person is different so my top games of 2012 will most likely differ from your top games so I hope everybody will enjoy my opinion and feel free to share some games that I may have overlooked.

Run Roo Run
There is no other iOS game that I have found released this year that is better than Run Roo Run.  Charming graphics, simplistic yet intuitive controls, satisfying gameplay and a plethora of levels that test both your mind and reflexes, Run Roo Run is the complete package for only one or two dollars depending whether you get it for the iPhone or iPad respectively.  5th Cell's first game for iOS is a game that no iDevice owner should miss.

Journey
Journey is easily one of the most unique experiences I had playing a game this year.  There are no tutorials, no real instructions.  You are just dropped into a seemingly baren desert with this profile of a mountain in the distance.  The controls are simple yet incredibly intuitive, the graphics and art are just jaw dropping, the music is beautiful and the puzzles, while simple, are very charming and engaging.  Journey is a soothing and relaxing experience that can easily be finished in one sitting, which makes the game easy to sit down and play again.  I cannot stress enough how great of an experience Journey is.  If there is one game on this list that I highly recommend every gamer go out of their way to play, it is Journey.

Kid Icarus:  Uprising 
Nintendo may have took 20 years to release a new Kid Icarus game, but Uprising makes the time fans waited well worth it.  Kid Icarus: Uprising is a labour of love from Masahiro Sakurai and Project Sora that brings Pit to the 21st century in style.  While the controls can get in the way from time to time, the fast-paced action, witty fourth wall breaking banter, exciting story and fun multi-player experience sure make up for it.  Kid Icarus: Uprising is easily the best 3DS game of 2012 and one 3DS owners should not miss.

Xenoblade Chronicles
One of the last great games for the Wii, Xenoblade Chronicles is a grand RPG adventure from Nintendo and Monolith Soft.  Xenoblade Chronicles has an incredibly gripping story, fun real-time combat and an enormous world to explore with a huge amount of side quests to keep you occupied.  I have played over 30 hours of Xenoblade and I barely scratched the surface of all the content in this Wii RPG.  For a system that has been starving for RPGs, Xenoblade Chronicles stands tall as the pinnacle of RPGs on the Wii and for Japanese RPGs in this console generation.

The Last Story
The Last Story was the Wii's last story, pun intended.  From the mind of the most recognizable name in Japanese RPGs, Hironobu Sakaguichi, The Last Story looks to take the Japanese RPG in new and innovative directions.  The Last Story's biggest strength is its innovative real-time battle system that has you controlling the protagonist Zael while commanding the rest of your party to set up big combos of magic and physical attacks.  Along with Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story is another great RPG for a system that sure has needs it.

Darksiders II
Originally coming out for the Xbox 360 and PS3 in August, I did not get to try this excellent amalgamation of genres until I bought my Wii U in November.  The combat of great action games like God of War and Devil May Cry, the loot system from classic dungeon crawlers like Diablo, the massive over world of an action adventure game like The Legend of Zelda, the parkour-like platforming of a Prince of Persia and the classic leveling and skill system of a classic RPG can all be found in Darksiders II, but Vigil Games takes all these elements and makes it their own.  Vigil's effort has created a game that you can easily get lost in for hours at a time.  While a few glitches may pop up from time-to-time, Darksiders II is an incredible game that no gamer should pass on.

Transformers:  Fall of Cybertron
Not many licensed games are worth playing; fewer are praised both by critics and fans.  High Moon Studios' Transformers: Fall of Cybertron falls under those select few, no pun intended.  Taking the great framework set by War for Cybertron, Fall of Cybertron takes players through an incredibly focused and diverse campaign that explores the Transformers' final days on their dying homeworld.  Fall of Cybertron does justice to the Transformers like no other piece of media (TV show, comic or movie) has done for the franchise in the last number of years.  Also it has one of the finest final levels I personally played all year.

New Super Mario Bros. U
Another year, another side-scrolling Mario.  Many gamers, myself included, can remember a time when it was rare to see Gaming's Number One Plumber star in a brand new side-scrolling game.  While Mario platformers are some of the finest games around, it is a little hard to get excited when it seems like one comes out every year.  Seriously, we got two Mario platformers in 2012 alone.  While I was not really excited for New Super Mario Bros. U, I still picked it up for my Wii U at launch.  After putting the game in my brand new system, I learned once again to never doubt Nintendo.  New Super Mario Bros. U is easily the best game in the New Super Mario Bros. subseries and can stand among Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3 as one of the best Mario platformers of all-time.  The levels are expertly designed, the difficulty ramps up at the perfect pace (making use of all those lives you accumulate in earlier levels), there are a great number of secrets to find and plenty of modes like Challenges and multi-player that will keep you coming back for more Mario.  The one game that all Wii U owners should pick up when they buy their brand new console and one of my personal favourite games of 2012.

Year in Review 2012: Games I Missed

2012 was a very busy year in the video game industry.  So busy in fact that it has been very hard to keep up with all the incredible games that were released this past year.  Many of the games I have personally been most looking forward to play, I have not gotten much time to play between school, work and having a life.  Instead of a more traditional list of my top games of 2012, I want to write a few articles on my look back at 2012.  Each article will look at a different set of games.  First up will be the games I missed out on during 2012, but hope to spend plenty of time with in 2013.  The second article will be about my favourite games that I actually got to play this year and the final article will be all about my Game of the Year.  So without any further ado, let us get on with this Year in Review.

Dishonored
Before Dishonored came out, I was cautiously optimistic.  While what I had seen and read about the game was very promising, you have to be careful with new IPs.  They do bring about innovation and change in the video game industry, but sometimes they can completely flop.  Personally, I did not want to get my hopes up only to be disappointed in the end.  So I was very happy to see all the positive reviews for the game and see that it is among one of the best games of the year as it is up for many Game of the Year awards.  Dishonored looks like a great blend of the stealth of a game like Thief and the open world choices of a game like BioShock or Deus Ex.  While I have heard that you can easily run through the game if you do not care for the side missions, the charm of a game like Dishonored is the freedom to experiment with your powers and abilities.  Can easily see myself putting a lot of time into this game trying different tactics and approaches to the missions in the game.

Pokemon White Version 2
I am a huge sucker for the Pokemon RPGs.  Pokemon Black and White 2 came out at the beginning of October and I was busy with school and saving my money for the Wii U, so there was no time or reason to pick up this game right at launch.  With more free time this semester, I have enough time to plug away at White 2 (the version I picked up a few weeks ago).  While not much has changed since Black and White released back in March of 2011, White 2 looks to offer enough new additions to keep this Pokemon fan playing for another 40 or 60 hours.

The Walking Dead
Never been a fan of The Walking Dead comic and TV show and when the game was first announced by Telltale Games, I was not that interested.  What really got me and I think many others to take notice of The Walking Dead was all the reviews praising each episode of the game.  Also playing the demo really helped win me over.  With The Walking Dead, Telltale Games has single-handedly revitalized the adventure genre in the eyes of many gamers who have not touched an adventure game in years.  Personally, I have been a fan of Telltale Games for a couple years now from playing their other great adventure games (Back to the Future and Tales of Monkey Island) and I am excited to play what has been their most successful game both commercially and critically.

X-Com:  Enemy Unknown
Another genre that has gotten little love on this generation of consoles has been the turn-based strategy genre.  Other than Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn for the Wii (a great game that every Wii should own), there has not been anything to scratch that hardcore strategy itch on the consoles.  That was until 2K Games and Firaxis released X-Com: Enemy Unknown, a true sequel to the PC classic in October.  Enemy Unknown is not for the feint at heart and that is what gets me excited and terrified to play it at the same time.  You need to be very careful with each turn you take because one move can be the difference between life or death for one of your squad mates.  I cannot wait to spend countless hours becoming a great commander and protecting the Earth from all of it's alien threats.