Award winning games developer, Telltale Games, recently released the second installment, “A House Divided”, of its second season of The Walking Dead Game this Tuesday, March 4th. This episode contains almost all that you could want as a Walking Dead fan, explosive action, scintillating dialogue, gut-wrenching suspense and guess what you get to control how each facet of the episode plays out.
Telltale Games is a unique games developer in the fact that they make cinematic story-based games. The gameplay consists mainly of dialogue choice and on-screen prompt button pressing (quick time events) during action sequences. What makes the games so fun is the precedent that you are in control of story and every decision you make will determine the fate of the character you play, AI characters, and the general direction the story will go. No game I’ve played recently captures the essence of what a well-written story can bring to a game like The Walking Dead game and obviously so did many critics giving the first season of this series over 90 ‘Game of the Year’ Awards.
Note: I would recommend playing the entirety of season 1 of The Walking Dead Game before diving into season 2.
Season 2 follows one of the first season’s main protagonists, a little girl named Clementine, after the captivating end to season 1. Playing as Clementine in this season is great as you get to determine the growth of this character by the choices you make, make her a badass zombie killing machine, or a child who stills dreams about what would have been or somewhere in-between the choice is yours. In episode 2 of this season, no other episode has made your choices feel sooooo important. Choices where one could save a character at the expense of others, save the group or even save yourself. An example of this when I played was when one of your group members Dr. Carlos was having his fingers broken I had the choice to stay hidden, try and save him or look for help and this was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of important choice making in this action packed episode.
If you’re interested and want to learn more about the games from this great developer I highly suggest taking a look at their website where they have several more titles complete, such as “The Wolf Among Us” series based on the popular comic book series Fables (DC Comics/Vertigo) and in production like “Tales from the Borderlands” which follows vault hunters from popular FPS Borderlands in a Telltale style. If you wish to purchase any of the titles you can do so from their website, through Steam and also on console on both the Xbox 360 Marketplace and the PS3 PSN store.
Gamenomics & Comicology 