The Telltale Game

[Omar G.]

If you haven't played the first season of the Tellgame game, DO IT. It's really great and captures the spirit of the show, but with different characters. Only about three or four video games have ever made me cry and this was one of them.  Even if you're not a gamer, give it a try. It's on PC, iOS, etc. and not difficult to play at all.  Each episode (there are five) is only an hour or two long.  They're on Episode 2 of Season 2 right now and the story carries over from the first season.  There's an episode in the first season that has parallels to the Terminus stuff we've been discussing.

[RapBert]

The writing of the game is far superior than that of the show imo. The characters are much more engaging, the storyline is actually interesting and while show bores me to death most of the time, almost every minute of the game is tense and captivating. Clementine might just be one of the best written and acted video game characters of all time.

Also, if you do want to play the game: avoid spoilers! There are so many great and shocking moments that will lose most of their impact if they are spoiled.

[Omar G.]

I LOVE Clementine. And I loved the voice actor who plays Lee. Very great voice work all around.

[Bongo Fury]

I enjoyed the story in S1 of the Telltale game, I thought it was very well done, better than the comics. But as a game I thought it was terrible. None of the decisions that you made had any Real difference to the overall story line, and too often you'd get 'stuck' until you made the one action that would move the story forward, just as similar games from 30 years ago. I finished S1, but have zero interest in going further.

[Omar G.]

I disagree that decisions don't carry over. It affects what characters end up around you. The ending is mostly the same and so are a lot of the major plot mechanics, but the decisions are literally life and death and irrevocable (unless you go back to a previous save or start over).  

It's not the greatest as a game experience, but it's a devastating story told very well and that's plenty good enough for me.

[Bongo Fury]

Sorry, but I disagree, your decisions are relatively pointless. For example, early on you have to decide to save the girl or the guy, the other one is zombie chow. The person you save plays a minor, insignificant role in the coming episode, and after the cannibal story whomever you saved dies, so you are at exactly the same point regardless of who you chose to save early on. The big life or death decision, who to save, who to let die, is immaterial to the overall story. And it is that way throughout the story, your decisions change minor aspects in the immediate story, but a little further along in the story you end up at the exact same point regardless of what you do.

Like I said, the story is great, the game sucks.

[AlecSphere]

Have not read the comics, but I think the game's story/characters are SO much better than the TV show. It's not even funny. I would recommend the game to anyone, even if they're not a gamer. (Honestly, it's not much of a "game.")

As to the debate above, I think the choices you make FEEL momentous/tense/exhilarating when you make them, which is a credit to the game's design. (You have to be aware, on some level, that the game is rigged.) Playing through a second time (while still fun), you start to see through the infrastructure of the story and understand how your choices affect some things but ultimately don't change the story all that much.

The brilliance of the game's design is that there are no good choices. The videogame center of our brains wants to get a perfect score, but that's not possible here.

[halgia]

I bought Season One on the Steam sale last winter, but never got around to actually playing it. The praise here was what finally made me play it, which I did all of this weekend: thanks for making me do it. It was great.

[Omar G.]

Did you cry? I cried my eyes out.

[halgia]

Did you cry? I cried my eyes out.

I didn't, but I don't think I've ever cried at a game. (I do cry at movies/TV like, all the time; not sure why the difference. Closest I've probably ever been was Brothers, which

actually has a really similar scene to one of the most upsetting scenes from this game...

.) I bet if I hadn't been playing it with my roommates watching I might have though. :p 

[ZombieWoof]

Agree the writing in the game has been stellar. possibly more consistent than either the show or the comics although it is still a small sample size. Funny, because I don't think Kirkman was involved anywhere near as much as he is with the comics and TV show.

Would love to see the show steal or remix more ideas from the game, especially

the whole Savannah/Crawford arc

. Maybe they are doing this a bit with Terminus

/St. John Dairy Farm

as others have speculated; we'll see.

The actual game play is terrible although the illusion of the constant tough choices in a ZA is well done. I scoured Google for cheats on the PC (to no avail) to avoid the stupid button mashing whenever there is a walker attack.

Edited April 13, 2014 by ZombieWoof

[halgia]

The actual game play is terrible although the illusion of the constant tough choices in a ZA is well done. I scoured Google for cheats on the PC (to no avail) to avoid the stupid button mashing whenever there is a walker attack.

I play with a controller and, though, I agree that the gameplay/controls are not exactly first-class, it serves its purpose. I really like the "smash A" mechanic to do something because they use it once in a while to give you the feeling that you're trying as hard as you possibly can to open a door / push someone away / whatever and you just can't quite do it.

[halgia]

Season 2 (episodes 1 through 3 are out so far) has been so good, definitely better than the first one I think. The actual effect of your choices seems to have increased this time around (though I've only played through once so I guess I'm not positive on that front).

 

And an unrelated update on video games that make me cry: To The Moon, a short indie story game from a few years ago that's on sale for $3 on Steam right now, got me real bad yesterday.

[Trek]

TT: TWD is a superb story well told but, in all honesty, it can barely be called a game. It’s more like watching a series of storyboards being unfolded.  If you are a veteran gamer, a few design choices in particular are really going to annoy.

 

1. No independent camera control: Never mind for when walkers are around, even for mundane tasks like “talking to everybody in your group in the motel parking lot before proceeding” not being able to pan or zoom out to see where everyone is can get annoying real quick when you instead have to arrow key yourself around blindly until you run into each of them and fix their location in your memory.

 

2. Invisible walls everywhere. You can only go where they want you to go, there is not even a pretense of a virtual world. You will not be able to circle a building the game may want you to enter.  If there’s a car wreck on a bridge the game wants you to reach, that’s exactly how far you can reach, you cannot go more than a few steps beyond it, you cannot go into the woods to the side and approach it at a tangent. You will go toward it in a straight line. Period. There is no independent exploration whatsoever and there is only one fixed solution to any challenge.

 

3.Lots of railroading. If a game wants you to approach a situation stealthily, (e.g. peer over a wall without being seen) that’s what you should attempt to do. Now in a normal FPS/TPS/RPG, if you do get seen, you will still have choices; run away and try again later, conduct a fighting retreat,  or go ‘dammit I’m spotted, let’s fight it out right here and now’. So there was much rolling of eyes on my part when TT:TWD chose to instead immediately take away all my character controls and simply froze him in place until a zombie could shamble over and kill him.  Another example, is at one point a member of your party will be cut off by a few zombies. Because the writers

want you to discover his dead body in a sewer at a certain point later in the game

, if you are too handy with a pistol and might actually save the guy, the zombies will become completely immune to headshots. Yes that’s right, they even resort to giving zombies god mode so that they can ensure that the dramatic scene they have planned for later would still make sense. I can understand that from a story perspective, but as a gamer stunts like that are really infuriating.

 

The good news is, for non-gamers, TT:TWD is easy enough that you should not be daunted from picking it up as a first game. You don’t need to bother with stuff like assigning hotkeys to specific items or weapons and it is relatively free of housekeeping chores (e.g. inventory management) that would slow the pacing of the story. For casual gamers or those who enjoy adventure games, TT:TWD is one for you to jump right in.

 

For experienced gamers, the story is still well worth the many frustrating game design choices.

[mandolin]

Yeah, I have gotten mr. mandolin to play so I can watch, and he rails at the forced gameplay. "This is STUPID" is the most common phrase. :p

[halgia]

It's an adventure game, in which all of those problems are pretty common and most of them are just aspects of the genre. I was occasionally frustrated by the railroading and by how sometimes it presents a choice that ends up not mastering at all, but for the most part the strength of the writing made me not care too much. Season 2, unfortunately, had some writing weaknesses and was shorter overall, but it was still really great and frequently better-written than the show (not that those are really comparable things, but whatever).

On the other-great-zombiesh-games front, I just finished replaying The Last of Us (the remastered ps4 version), which is much more of a game and is really, really good....

[mandolin]

I'd heard the second season was better, but he got so frustrated with the forced story progression, I don't think I'll be able to convince him to play it. And yes! I've also been watching him play The Last of Us, and we are both enjoying it so far. We "paused" that to play Diablo 3 on the ps4, though. I actually play that one!

Edited November 9, 2014 by mandolin

[JBody]

I want to read about how bad Survival Instinct is and how much Kirkman loathes it. I can't believe they messed that up so bad, with Reedus and Rooker on board and all.

[Dobian]

I have finished season 1 and the expansion 400 Days, and am one episode into season 2.  I've really enjoyed it so far.  Lee and Clementine are great characters, and there are many others.  And the events in the game are every bit a sad and brutal as the tv show.  Keep in mind that this series is really an interactive story with a few gameplay elements in the form of quicktime events (i.e., a lot of key or button mashing), and some fairly simple puzzle solving.  If you look at it in this context as opposed to expecting an actual game like Far Cry, then you won't be disappointed.  And the cool part is your decisions do have an impact on the story and they even capture those decisions in recaps before subsequent episodes.  I also want to try Telltale Games' Wolf Among Us, which is also supposed to be very good.

Edited January 5, 2015 by Dobian