Post by protagonist on Mar 20, 2014 22:13:09 GMT -8
So, I've juuuust finished Telltale games' The Walking Dead: Season One. I'm going to tell you how I felt, because that's somehow important to you:
Aesthetic:
Nicely done. The cell-shaded look makes it look quite like you're playing a comic book. I really do enjoy it. It's probably nothing spectacular, however. Some of the game's visuals are pretty nice, though. One part in particular that standing on a walkway and you look down and the city is just filled with zombies below you. It's jaw dropping.
Gameplay:
The gameplay isn't what carries the game, but it's a bit more engaging than most games in its genre. The game's 'Fun', but not very adrenal most of the time. However, it's not trying to be. This is an adventure game, after all. Most of the puzzles in the game are...easy. Real easy. Part of me kind of wishes they were a bit harder, but they do work.
I also congratulate this game's mechanics for being...unique for it's theme. I mean, most games in this genre would be FPSes or something. Good on it for trying something new.
Plot:
The plot carries the game, and it carries it far. No really, this game made me start to tear up a little. In a good way. I like it.
Basically, the story goes like yay: You're a convicted criminal, and you're off to jail. (Un)luckily, zombies attack, and you get to go free. You meet a little girl named Clementine, who you team up with. You find a few allies and you camp out at a motor inn, and go on various adventures arguing with your peers about how not to get chewed on.
Simply put, every character is well-written, and none of the characters are unbearably annoying. The game does bog down during the ending, however. Still, it's a great game filled with all sorts of tear-jerkery moments and such. It's a bit hard to say exactly what without spoiling, but having to make hard decisions and watching your friends have to go through hard times...it really is a sobering experience. I do have complaints, however. One in particular is a character who's extremely incompetent and causes so many problems for your group that it's not even funny. Seriously, he probably causes more problems than the game's actual antagonist.
Another problem is that, often, your choices won't really matter in the long run. However, this doesn't usually get in the way, I think, MOST of the time. Which choices matter and which don't are hard to differentiate at times. Part of this is that I don't think the character himself has much agency in this world. Still, it can be a little jarring at times when you realize that about half of your choices will only matter in passing.
That's all I can talk about the plot without spoiling anything. So, time to spoil!
The character I'm referring to is Ben. Ben's not a bad guy, but my God! He really does cause too much problems than what one character should be allowed to do. As Kenny says "I can't think of ONE problem that isn't somehow connected to you!!"-and he's right! Now, if they split these mistakes up, made it so occasionally someone else did something stupid, than I'd be ok with Ben. But no, almost every stupid decision made in the game is by him.
My final complaint is that the game kills off too many of its protagonists, and the characters it does spare (other than Clementine) aren't eh...well, they're introduced at the last minute and I never really felt like I had grown attached to them. To be fair, I do think they could have been decent characters if they weren't introduced at the end of the game. And not to mention all the more 'minor' characters killed before that, like Lily, Larry, Katja, Duck, Carla, Mark and other guys.
I think that, what they should have done instead is have it so that at least some of these characters (I suppose Duck should be a character who's death is forced) were savable and then continued to develop them later on. For example, Larry. It would have been interesting to see where his relationship with Lee would go.
And then there's the two characters who do survive: Christa and Omid. I don't dislike these characters, but I think they're introduced too late in the game to be the characters we leave Clementine with. If I had written this story, I actually would have had it be Kenny who she were left with, since the player has known Kenny from the start, Kenny has the most experience with children, and the like. But maybe that's just me.
Overall: 8/10 (Great!)
Aesthetic:
Nicely done. The cell-shaded look makes it look quite like you're playing a comic book. I really do enjoy it. It's probably nothing spectacular, however. Some of the game's visuals are pretty nice, though. One part in particular that standing on a walkway and you look down and the city is just filled with zombies below you. It's jaw dropping.
Gameplay:
The gameplay isn't what carries the game, but it's a bit more engaging than most games in its genre. The game's 'Fun', but not very adrenal most of the time. However, it's not trying to be. This is an adventure game, after all. Most of the puzzles in the game are...easy. Real easy. Part of me kind of wishes they were a bit harder, but they do work.
I also congratulate this game's mechanics for being...unique for it's theme. I mean, most games in this genre would be FPSes or something. Good on it for trying something new.
Plot:
The plot carries the game, and it carries it far. No really, this game made me start to tear up a little. In a good way. I like it.
Basically, the story goes like yay: You're a convicted criminal, and you're off to jail. (Un)luckily, zombies attack, and you get to go free. You meet a little girl named Clementine, who you team up with. You find a few allies and you camp out at a motor inn, and go on various adventures arguing with your peers about how not to get chewed on.
Simply put, every character is well-written, and none of the characters are unbearably annoying. The game does bog down during the ending, however. Still, it's a great game filled with all sorts of tear-jerkery moments and such. It's a bit hard to say exactly what without spoiling, but having to make hard decisions and watching your friends have to go through hard times...it really is a sobering experience. I do have complaints, however. One in particular is a character who's extremely incompetent and causes so many problems for your group that it's not even funny. Seriously, he probably causes more problems than the game's actual antagonist.
Another problem is that, often, your choices won't really matter in the long run. However, this doesn't usually get in the way, I think, MOST of the time. Which choices matter and which don't are hard to differentiate at times. Part of this is that I don't think the character himself has much agency in this world. Still, it can be a little jarring at times when you realize that about half of your choices will only matter in passing.
That's all I can talk about the plot without spoiling anything. So, time to spoil!
The character I'm referring to is Ben. Ben's not a bad guy, but my God! He really does cause too much problems than what one character should be allowed to do. As Kenny says "I can't think of ONE problem that isn't somehow connected to you!!"-and he's right! Now, if they split these mistakes up, made it so occasionally someone else did something stupid, than I'd be ok with Ben. But no, almost every stupid decision made in the game is by him.
My final complaint is that the game kills off too many of its protagonists, and the characters it does spare (other than Clementine) aren't eh...well, they're introduced at the last minute and I never really felt like I had grown attached to them. To be fair, I do think they could have been decent characters if they weren't introduced at the end of the game. And not to mention all the more 'minor' characters killed before that, like Lily, Larry, Katja, Duck, Carla, Mark and other guys.
I think that, what they should have done instead is have it so that at least some of these characters (I suppose Duck should be a character who's death is forced) were savable and then continued to develop them later on. For example, Larry. It would have been interesting to see where his relationship with Lee would go.
And then there's the two characters who do survive: Christa and Omid. I don't dislike these characters, but I think they're introduced too late in the game to be the characters we leave Clementine with. If I had written this story, I actually would have had it be Kenny who she were left with, since the player has known Kenny from the start, Kenny has the most experience with children, and the like. But maybe that's just me.
Overall: 8/10 (Great!)