For # 3 we have arguably one of the best written games released in 2012
#3 – The Walking Dead:
The Walking Dead by Telltale Games has been featured on just about every top ten list for the past year. There is a lot that Telltale did to break out of the normal adventure game conventions to make a very appealing title.
The story that was based on the popular IP told a different tale compared to the TV show and comic and instead focused on a different group of survivors within the same universe. I talked about how great the writing was in my analysis of The Walking Dead, as Telltale creating an interesting group of characters for the game.
Now in my analysis I did bring up my complaints about the player’s actual effect in the game, but Telltale does deserve credit for trying such an experimental concept. We rarely see adventure games these days that give any type of control of the character to the player outside of puzzle solving.
Depending on how you choose to respond to the many questions and situations, your interpretation Lee would be different from other people. He could be a man trying to earn redemption from a past mistake, to a violent criminal with only one good thing left in the world and everything in between.
Telltale did not shy away from making the player have to make tough decisions, which since this isn’t a spoiler post I’m not going to go into detail about. They were also not shy about showing violence and The Walking Dead is easily one of the more violent games released in the year. This is even more surprising when you consider Telltale’s portfolio of mostly E to T rated games.
The Walking Dead was not afraid to show body parts getting hacked off and there were no such thing as cut-aways to avoid showing the event. Where most video games would go over the top to try to add levity to the situation, the actual blood flow was restrained to make these situations as brutal as possible.
For the adventure genre, to have such a breakaway hit even getting the “best game” award from the VGAs in 2012, definitely shows just how far the adventure genre has come. It’s interesting to remember that there was a time where people were forecasting the death of the genre, but the indie market has definitely helped bring it back.
