Zombies are nothing new to video games, but “The Walking Dead” isn’t like most zombie games.

While others focus on shooting, bashing or other actions, “The Walking Dead” game, like the TV series and comics it’s based on, is concerned more with the character drama that arises from day-to-day, zombie-filled life. The real (rotting) meat of the game is in the choices players make.

Set in the timeline of the comics, which differs slightly from the TV series, the game casts you as Lee Everett, a history teacher being taken to prison for supposedly killing a man who slept with his wife. “Fortunately” for him, the zombie outbreak starts during his ride to jail and quickly runs the car off the road outside of Atlanta. After escaping the wreck and a couple of reanimated corpses, he finds Clementine, a little girl who has been hiding out in her tree house. Her parents were away in Savannah, Ga., when the outbreak happened, so Lee takes her under his wing.

The story is told episodically, with a new episode coming out each month. Episode 4 was just released, and November’s will be the season finale. Glenn and Hershel, whom fans will remember from the comics and TV show, appear in Episode 1 offering some backstory on their lives before meeting Rick’s group. Players with no prior “Walking Dead” experience won’t be missing out, though: These characters are introduced like any others, and the rest of the story is entirely new.

Gameplay is slower-paced than one might expect. The developers at Telltale Games started with poker and CSI-based games before moving on to adventure games based on Sam & Max, Homestar Runner and Back to the Future. Their most recent and most action-packed game was “Jurassic Park,” which was critically panned, leaving fans concerned about how “Walking Dead” would fare.

Luckily, they pulled back on the action. The core gameplay here is conversation, often arguing with the other members of your group. You pick whose side you’re on or how decisions will be made. There are a couple of puzzles, like in traditional adventure games, but they are rarely more complicated than “this radio needs batteries, so go find batteries.”

The game is more successful as a choose-your-own-adventure story than an action or adventure game, but that definitely makes it stand out. This is a zombie game that’s about more than scares and headshots, and that alone makes it worthwhile whether you insist the comics are better or are totally new to this whole “shambling undead corpses” thing.

When there is action, it’s intensely framed, but usually poorly controlled. You’ll use the same cursor to shoot zombies as to pick up those batteries, which can easily lead to undeserved deaths. In a game where your choices can determine who lives and dies, it’s annoying that your own death happens over and over without consequence.

Those choices make it all worth it, though. You’ll have to divide scarce supplies between your group members, decide whether to put a bitten woman out of her misery and even choose between saving the lives of two people. Several scenes have the same outcome, no matter how you choose, but at the very least they’ll affect your relationships with the group. Each episode ends with a screen showing your decisions versus those of every other player.

It’s cool to see which decisions divide people and, better yet, which ones you chose differently from everyone else.

Published on October 22, 2012 at 12:36 am

Contact Isaac: ikdavis@syr.edu