The Walking Dead: Season 1 (adventure game)

The dead have risen and the world has been thrown into ruin. A band of survivors gathers together to try to escape the chaos, but find that their greatest enemy may not be the walking dead, but themselves.

Much has been written about Telltale's computer game adaptation of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic series, usually involving such words as 'amazing', 'intense', 'emotional' and 'cried like a three-year-old'. They are not far off. With The Walking Dead, Telltale have achieved what may be the finest computer game adaptation of a pre-existing franchise in gaming's history, something that supports the original story whilst also standing completely on its own two feet.

The Walking Dead takes place in the same world as the comics (but not the TV series, which is an alternate reality) and is canon to them. The developers - working alongside Kirkman - take advantage of this to show off the backstory of comic characters Hershel and Glen, but for the most part the focus is firmly on the original characters created for the game. Chief amongst these is the player-controlled protagonist, Lee Everett. Lee is a criminal who was on his way to prison when the zombie apocalypse broke out, and some of the game's tension comes from whether he is honest or not about his background to his new-found friends.

The core relationship of the game is between Lee and eight-year-old Clementine, a young girl he rescues from a zombie attack on a house. A long-term goal of the game is to reunite Clementine with her parents (if they are still alive) in Savannah, Georgia, but as the game continues Lee becomes convinced that the chances of her parents still being alive are very slim and takes on a father-figure role himself. The relationship is well-portrayed by the writers and actors, with the apparent oddness of an unrelated non-parent (who is also a convicted felon) caring for a young girl he just met being addressed. The characterisation is extremely strong, though to so more of it may risk spoilers (a problem for any review of the game).

The game has echoes of events from other incarnations of The Walking Dead, such as whether it's a good idea to teach young children how to use firearms against zombies or not, but Telltale puts their fresh spin on each idea as it comes up. Particularly well-handled is the way that the same major worldbuilding bits of information from the graphic novels are discovered by this group of characters, but in a rather different manner to the comics. For example, the knowledge that everyone will become a zombie when they die (regardless of whether they are bitten or not) - a major revelation in the comics and TV series - comes up almost immediately in the game, whilst a more minor piece of info about the zombies that the comic series threw in almost immediately takes a long time to come up in the game, and is much more decisive (and horrible).

The Walking Dead's storyline is impressive, with the zombies acting as a catalyst for how the characters interact with one another and deal with the pressure of a crumbling civilisation. The game hits many of the same beats as the TV series and the comics, but in a much more immersive way due to the way your decisions have lasting consequences, and some events can be changed. The dialogue is well-written, with each of the five episodes having its own self-contained plot and thematic arc as well as contributing to the overall storyline of the game. Given the lack of time (even at 15 hours, there a lot of characters to get through), Telltale achieve an impressive amount of depth for each character in the game as well. In terms of writing, structure and pacing, The Walking Dead is excellent.

Where the game comes off the rails a bit is the gameplay. Simply put, you spend the majority of your time watching The Walking Dead, rather than playing it, and most of your controls are based around choosing dialogue options. The sections where you get to take control of Lee, talk to other characters at leisure, explore areas and solve puzzles are the most fun in the game, but also the rarest (roughly boiling down to one or two such sections per episode). There's also a significant number of irritating Quick Time Events as well. It's a tribute to the writing skills of the team behind the game that these issues are not the total game-killers they'd be in other titles, but it does make The Walking Dead less of a game and more of an interactive comic (though still a very good interactive comic).

More problematic is the fact that the game is sold as one where your choices matter, but the truth of that is up for debate. At one stage you choose to save one character or another and this leads to some different character scenes and dialogue for a while, but ultimately has no long-term ramifications. The major beats of the plot and most character deaths also happen regardless of your dialogue and choices, with what you do more impacting on other characters' reactions to you and what they do rather than anything substantive in the storyline. Oddly this doesn't seem to matter: moreso than in most games, it's the journey that matters much more than the resolution.

The Walking Dead (****½) is an intense, well-written and extremely atmospheric adventure game, but one where you do not have as much control over what is going on as what is promised or written. How much of an issue this is will be up to the player, but I found it easily ignored in favour of the smart writing and the fascinating character relationships. The Walking Dead: Season 1 is available now on PC, X-Box 360 (UK, USA), PlayStation 3 (UK, USA) and iPad/iPhone. A second 'season' will be released later in 2013.

The Walking Dead: Season 2

Rick Grimes and his fellow survivors have escaped from Atlanta. Making for Fort Benning and the hope of rescue, the group is waylaid on the highway by a horde of walkers. With one of the group missing and another severely injured, they find a safe haven at a nearby farm and the hope of a new home. But as the days and weeks pass, the unresolved tensions in the group threaten to tear it apart.

The second season of The Walking Dead picks up shortly after the events of the first. Whilst the first only had six episodes to tell its story, the second has thirteen, giving it more time to explore the premise and characters.

Things get off to a strong start in the first few episodes, which focus on the confrontation on the highway and the attempts to bring the group back together. New characters - the Greene family - and a new location - a large farmstead - are introduced and events unfold with some vigour. However, after the third episode the story bogs down a little as characters start spinning their wheels at the farm. This is where the ramifications of a major pre-season production crisis - a budget cut that infuriated showrunner Frank Darabont and saw him leave the series - are at their most noticeable. Whilst the budget problems ground the series for a little too long at the farm, the producers do make the most of the money they do have. The zombie effects are a cut above the more variable effects of the first season and there are some truly gruesome moments that equal the most visceral scenes of any zombie movie that comes to mind.

The long pause at the farm does allow some effective character development, particularly of Shane (Jon Bernthal), whose growing disillusionment with the group and his inability to accept the new status quo and move on is depicted quite well, even if the story does take a few too many episodes to come to a head. However, probably the best characterisation is left to Daryl (Norman Reedus), who evolves from the quieter brother of racist redneck Merle in the first season into a conflicted, complex character who refuses to fit easily into any stereotype. Rick (Andrew Lincoln), our main protagonist, gets a little lost in the mix this season with storylines focusing mostly on other characters, but comes back strong towards the end of the season as he starts to show signs of not handling the stress of command very well. However, his dynamic with Herschel (Scott Wilson) and the twists and turns it goes through is fascinating, with Herschel moving from a pacifistic man of faith to shotgun-wielding zombie-slayer under Rick's (not entirely laudable) influence. The introduction of Maggie (Lauren Cohan) as a love interest for Glenn (Steven Yeun) also adds a rare glimmer of sunlight to a dark season.

Whilst the season does suffer from some slow pacing in its central section, it remains highly watchable, and the pacing issue is mitigated considerably on DVD without a week-long break between each episode. There are some effective moments of dark humour (the 'zombie well' scene is hilarious), the writing is pretty good and the actors mostly effective. Aside from the pacing issue, the character of Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) suffers the worst from inconsistent writing and motivations, which the actress does her best to make sense of but can't quite sell.

Events culminate in a fairly epic two-part season finale in which the bubbling tensions within the group boil over and the biggest battle between the survivors and the zombies to date takes place. Despite some longeurs and niggling problems, Season 2 (****½) ends on a high that leaves a lot of balls in the air for the third season and its promise of introducing some of the best characters and storylines from the comic book to the TV series. The series is available now in the UK (DVD, Blu-Ray) and USA (DVD, Blu-Ray).

The Walking Dead: The Heart's Desire by Robert Kirkman

Rick Grimes and his band of survivors have taken shelter from the zombie menace in an abandoned prison, only to become embroiled in an internal dispute. The arrival of a mysterious, katana-wielding woman sows further discord amongst the survivors. Events eventually prompt a moment of revelation for Rick.

The Heart's Desire is the fourth graphic novel in The Walking Dead series, Robert Kirkman's 'zombie movie that never ends'. It immediately picks up the storyline after the third book, Safety Behind Bars and...well, doesn't go very far at all.

The Heart's Desire can best be summed up as the Crossroads of Twilight (the infamously static tenth novel of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time sequence) of The Walking Dead. Nothing much happens of consequence to the overall story arc. The characters regrouping and taking stock of themselves after the first three books would make sense, but Kirkman is not a sufficiently good-enough writer of character to make this work across such a length of time. He is solid at plotting and structure, but his characterisation skills are highly variable (at best) and quite lacking during this particularly collection. The story breaks down into a melodramatic soap opera, with characters more concerned about who is sleeping with who and who should be in charge than actually dealing with the zombie menace or their own survival.

There are flashes of competence here, but these are not developed far enough. Michonne has a hell of an entrance and shakes things up a bit, but then doesn't really do anything. Rick angsts at some considerable length about the burden of command which would have made for a more interesting storyline if it hadn't been so badly-written. In fact, the entire book seems to be building to Rick's moment of self-revelation at the end which is puzzling: Rick realising that the zombies are not the 'walking dead' is something I think most readers latched onto in issue #1, and is the reason for the title of the entire comic book series. Kirkman presenting it as some kind of massive plot twist is simply inexplicable, and ends the book on a completely pointless note that led this reader with little desire to read on in the series. It is rather telling that the upcoming third season of the TV show will apparently condense the events of the third graphic novel with the one or two that come after it to create a far more compelling narrative than relying on the events of the third and fourth books alone.

The Heart's Desire (**) is a seriously sub-par and disappointing entry to The Walking Dead franchise. It is available now in the UK and USA.