Today sees the blog’s first guest post. One by a friend of
mine. He’s offering up an alternative view on The Walking Dead, and while it
differs with the correct perspective one should have upon such things (ie, my own) I'm going to
serve it up in the spirit of balance, and also, because he's my mate.
So, here it is:
You know what really grinds my gears (of war)? People
whose opinion was subconsciously swayed by the last 10 minutes of The Walking
Dead and now think it’s the best game ever.
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| An old photo of myself and my guest blogger. |
So,
a little about myself, the guy who has now made himself about as popular
as the perpetrators of the ending of Mass Effect 3 with that
comment. I’m a frenemy of our resident blogger and have known him since we
were kids. We’re something like Sonic and Knuckles circa Sonic 3,
before the countless annoying allies multiplied out of all control, like how I imagine Cream's
offspring would. Yeah. Anyhow, I’m here to provide an alternate
(better) opinion to that of our resident blogger.
Things start off well in The Walking Dead. I would go as far to say that episodes 2 and
3 provide some of gaming’s greatest moments. The decisions you were forced to make were compellingly horrifying,
enhanced by the believable reactions from a group of fellow travellers that you
could never ever fully trust.
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So it’s such a shame that it goes downhill from then
on. Episode 4 introduces some rather
bland characters to replace those that we bonded with from the first 3 episodes. Is it possible that Telltale Games realised
this and thus overcompensated with too many action sequences? This ended up with several zombies being
annihilated with ease and thus losing the feel of earlier episodes which
generated enormous fear when you were faced with even one of these vile
creatures. Did Telltale Games forget
that it was the harrowing outcomes from your impossible decisions which
provided a psychological onslaught on your soul? Because if not, then why did we have to sit
through overly laboured scenes like that burial?
To be fair, the end of episode 4 did leave a superb cliff
hanger which left me willing to forgive the discretions of that episode. That was until I played episode 5.
Episode 5 was always going to be a difficult feat to pull
off. However, I feel that Telltale Games
dropped the ball here. Episode 4 was too
long thanks to those action sequences and felt more bloated than a Boomer from
Left 4 Dead. Episode 5 overcorrected
that by being far too short. The
kidnapping cliff hanger was a huge disappointment and merely served to give you
a dull summary of some of the decisions you made earlier on. There was also a lack of tough moral choices
to make and the complete lack of robust gameplay in the series was especially
highlighted in this episode, a sin which escaped scrutiny in previous
episodes. However, the most frustrating
aspect of the episode was the feeling that the majority of those decisions you
made over the last 15 hours or so were never meant to have the sort of impact
you dreamt it would have on the story. It’s certainly not as unforgivable as Mass Effect 3 (Marauder Shields,
we will NEVER forget you!) but given the compellingly amoral nature of the game,
I had hoped for much better.
With all that said, I still really enjoyed The Walking Dead,
especially the earlier episodes. The
voice acting was of a high quality and the script had some truly powerful
moments, some of which our resident blogger has already highlighted. The relationship between Lee and Clementine
will go down as one of the greatest in video gaming history. Our resident blogger doesn’t have a heart of
stone – Princess Peach is more of a man than he is. I, however, do possess a heart of stone, and I’m not afraid to admit to the tear that
rolled down my cheek in those final 10 minutes of episode 5. Upon reflection on writing this blog, maybe
that ending was incredible enough for me to forgive all the mistakes Telltale
Games made in episodes 4 and 5. Maybe.
All I can say is roll on Season 2.
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