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The Walking Dead Season 1 Review PS3

NOTE: This game was originally released as separate episode releases on online stores such as PS Store. This review focuses the complete version of the games first season, which includes all five episodes.


Story



You are taking control of Lee Everett, a convicted murderer who has escaped from his imprisonment while on his way to the prison with a police officer. While the police was escorting Lee to the prison, they met an accident on the road, and Lee was able to escape. While he was exploring a house, he killed an undead person, and met a young girl by the name of Clementine. From there on out, Lee needs to survive in this

The storyline is exceptionally great, with great emphasis on characters development, emotional moments and grim reality tone of the story. Unlike many other survival games, this game indirectly tells us players that survival can mean anything or nothing to you or someone else. Each character has their own unique and believable personalities that will either makes you like or hate them for good reasons. I like how Telltale Games did with the games storyline, since it was exceptionally well-done in all five episodes. I also particularly like the dialogue of this game, since it feels realistic and can be emotional in many ways. However, I felt that many supporting characters do not have enough developments in the game, such as Mark, Carley, Doug, and many more.

Gameplay


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This game has five episodes, with a number of Chapters in each Episode. To progress in the game, you need to complete puzzles, make decisions and complete QTEs. You will only have limited control in the game, and can only do limited things at the same time. In a way, this game is very similar to another interactive adventure game called Heavy Rain.

While exploring areas, you need to complete puzzles or other activities to progress. To do so, you need to move the games cursor by using the R3 stick and highlight objects or characters to interact with. While highlighting an object or a character with the cursor, you can either talk to the character, examine the object or look at the characters, or use the objects. Most of the puzzles in this game are not tough, but can be time-consuming to complete if you do not explore the areas carefully and thoroughly.



While playing in the game, you will encounter many survival situations, forcing you to battle walkers (a.k.a zombies) in the game. In order to complete these survival situations, you need to move the cursor to certain objects or to the walkers to kill them. If you are not able to kill them in a limited time, you will be killed and you need to restart from the most recent checkpoint in the game.



QTEs are also present in other situations, such as when making important decisions in the game, for example saving another persons life over another. The storyline can be changed slightly or greatly depending on what you have chosen in these situations. Likewise, you can also give different responses when people asking you questions, such as honest, silence, angry, or neutral responses. These questions will directly reflect Lees personality, such as he is an honest man, a silent man, or etc. The responses will also affects other characters perception with Lee, which can results either from being supportive of Lees actions or dislikes his actions throughout the game. Any decisions made in an Episode will be carried over to the next one.

Overall, I like the games gameplay, with one minor drawback, which is the fixed camera angle while exploring. I dont mind playing games with fixed camera angles like God of War games, but the camera angle in this game while exploring can be both obstructive and annoying. Other gameplay features such as conversation system and QTEs are well implemented.

Graphics


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The game has unique cel-shaded graphics. Although the graphics are not up to par with recent HD games, it still looks great, and it emulates the visual style originally from the comic series.

Unfortunately, the game has various technical issues, such as lagging issues, unsynchronised audio and video in cutscenes, etc. Although they are not game-breaking, it can breaks the mood of playing the game particularly.

Sound



There isnt much music heard in the game, but few of the themes played are played quite effectively in different scenes in the game. The ending credits song is pretty good, especially for players who like folk songs.

The games voice acting is superb. All of the voice actors did great job with their roles, such as Dave Fennoy (Lee Everett), Melissa Hutchinson (Clementine), and many more. I have to commend Telltale games for finding talented voice actors to voice the characters in this game.

Replay Value



This game has little to moderate replay value. If you want, you can replay previous Chapters in an Episode in the game and choose different decisions. It is quite interesting to observe what different outcomes after choosing different decisions in the game. However, I felt that this game is meant to be played once instead of many times, due to the episodic nature of the game.

Conclusion



When I first saw this game on Youtube, I was skeptical that this would be a bad game, and I dislike games that have episodic releases. This month, this game was released in a complete retail version and I purchased it to try out how good it is. Gladly, I was wrong, and I felt that this is a great game with excellent writing on characters and storyline. The gameplay is pretty good itself, making it a solid and exceptional interactive adventure game.

Many people including myself kept comparing this game with Heavy Rain, due to both games focus on interactive storytelling. It is very hard to say which one is better, since a person can like both games or not at the same time. If you like Heavy Rain, it is highly possible that you will like The Walking Dead, but not the other way in certain ways. It is advisable for you to download the games demo and try it out to see whether you will like the game or not.

Personally, I felt that this game is the better one, albeit slightly due to better and cohesive storyline, and much better characterisation on the characters. If you like The Walking Dead television series or comics, or if you like interactive storytelling games in general, try this game out on any available consoles. I personally cant wait for the Season 2 of this game.

Score

Story: 10/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 10/10

Final Score: 9.0/10 or 36/40

Pros and Cons

Pros

- Emotional and excellent storyline.
- Great focus on many realistic survival situations.
- Great characters, such as Lee, Clementine, Molly, and etc.
- QTEs are well implemented.
- Superb voice acting.
- Decisions can impact the games storyline in many ways.
- Unique cel-shaded graphics.

Cons

- Fixed camera angle while exploring is both obstructive and annoying.
- Many technical issues.
- May not appeal to people who dislikes QTEs.