On the Download: 400 Days Review

Telltale Games has been around for years as one of the few developers that continue to work on traditional point-and-click adventure games.  Gaining a cult following for their Sam & Max, Monkey Island and Back to the Future adventure games, the first season of their Walking Dead adventure series was the game to finally garner Telltale some mainstream success.  The Walking Dead not only marked Telltale’s rise as a prominent developer when it comes to adventure games; it marked the revitalization of a genre which has not seen much love in the last decade.  The story of Lee Everett and Clementine was a touching and disturbing tale of how far people will go to protect what they cherish in the most dire of situations.  While the door closes on that story, it does not close on Telltale’s Walking Dead universe as there are still many more stories to tell.

400 Days is the start of a new story that will come to further fruition in the second season of the Walking Dead.  In 400 Days, the player follows five poor souls at various points during a four hundred day period.  Each of the five segments takes about twenty minutes and serves as an introduction of some of the key characters of the second season.  From escaping a prison bus to fleeing from enemies in a cornfield, 400 Days has a key focus on action due to how little time there is dedicated to each character’s story.  This action gives 400 Days a much different pace than the first season of the game, which is very refreshing and engaging.  Even with such a short time with these characters, Telltale does a phenomenal job of investing you in their stories and making you truly care about their well-being.  400 Days allows you to tackle the stories of these characters in any order.  Also some of the smaller choices you make in one segment will affect something in another.  While these changes are more on the cosmetic side, it is still neat to see how each segment interweaves with one another.

Much like the first season of Walking Dead, 400 Days suffers from the same technical problems.  These problems are the cursor becoming next to impossible to move at times, some lip syncing hiccups and the stuttering which happens a few times when changing between scenes and camera angles.  These technical problems are easy to work through, but they do break the immersion 400 Days tries to establish.  Clocking in between one and half to two hours in length, 400 Days is one of the shorter episodes in the Walking Dead series.  While length does not determine the quality of a game, it does determine how long one experiences said quality.  400 Days gives a great taste of what there is being set-up for the upcoming season, but you are left wanting more.  Do not get this writer wrong; wanting more is not a bad thing.  Just 400 Days seems a little incomplete considering the story of how these characters all come together is not included.  This omission will not be much of a problem if and only if Telltale allows gamers to play said omission in the second season of the Walking Dead.  Right now, it just feels like a missed opportunity. 

The Walking Dead: 400 Days is a very good yet short episode of Telltale’s acclaimed adventure series.  For those who have played through the whole first season and cannot wait for the second season, 400 Days is a worthwhile investment.  For those who have not given the Walking Dead a try, 400 Days is not the preferred episode to jump right into as the focus is more on rapidly introducing these new characters rather than sinking your teeth in a getting to know each character on a personal level like in the main game.  400 Days serves as a great bridge between season one and two of the Walking Dead, but not as a standalone entry in the series.

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.