The Walking Dead Game Bites

Ha ha! Wasn’t that hilarious? Anyway I’m currently bored to death with all existing MMOs, so I’ve turned to my Steam library to find a game that will hold my attention for more than a few hours.

I tried Rogue Legacy, which the GWJ people raved about. I can see why they liked it, but it’s basically a side-scrolling platformer and I’ve never liked platformers. It would take me a long time to get the hang of the controls, and at least in the first hour of play, I didn’t see where there’s any reward for spending the time to learn the controls.

I tried Torchlight II because I liked the first one, but it’s basically the same game, and it’s still that Diablo-style isometric view that I dislike in general (because the view of your surroundings is so limited).

Then I checked out The Walking Dead, which was recently on sale. This game is riveting and good. Well, let me amend that: The *story* is riveting and good. The game itself is not all that interactive; basically, you occasionally get to pick the direction that the story goes (usually in the form of picking who to help). Depending on your actions, the story will unfold differently, or different people will become friends or enemies.

I found that TWD works best with a controller. I say that mainly because you cannot change the default WASD movement keys and I did not want to use those. The only things you can really do to interact with the game is move your guy (sometimes), select a dialog option, or mouse over objects on the screen and interact with them, sort of Myst-style. It’s a bit awkward to mouse-over things with the controller, but still easily doable.