LogFAQs > #949570668

#71 The Walking Dead: Season One (Playstation 3, 2012)

I think most people regard this as the best of Telltale's adventure games. I know that I do. The Walking Dead took Telltale's formula to a new level with a very engaging story and a strong cast of diverse characters who may or may not die based on what you do. Spoilers: they pretty much all die one way or another though. The flow of play is very simple and the focal point is choosing how the player character, Lee, responds to different situationsusually by selecting what he says in conversations.



What makes this game great is how well-crafted these situations are, and the grim world of The Walking Dead is really the ideal place for this. The tension in the game comes from Lee being forced to make difficult choices where often someone's life will hang in the balance. The classic example from early on is when another character (whose actions come off as somewhat racist) suffers a heart attack, and Lee has to choose between trying to revive him or destroying his brain before he possibly comes back as a zombie. There are many decisions you make that feel very impactful, and credit to the designers for very carefully obscuring which choices actually affect the direction of the story, and those that do not. This does not hold up the more you play through the game, and since Season One I have avoided playing Telltale games more than once to maintain this wonderful illusion.

So the combination of a compelling story, great characters, and a simple but satisfying game flow produced a game that managed to revive my interest in the adventure genre and served as a template for a proliferation of licensed adventure games that came out in the next several years, some of which were also good. But in my eyes none of them were as good as The Walking Dead: Season One.

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At least your mother tipped well