The Walking Dead Message Board older than one year ago

Episodes 2-5 of The Walking Dead are half-price in today's Xbox Live Countdown to 2013 deal. With that quartet now shambling for just 200 MSP each, and the first episode still creeping about at no cost, that means you can chomp on the entire season today for just 800 MSP ($10).

Telltale's zombified adventure has been a big hit at Joystiq HQ, with the series scoring an average of four and a half stars across all five of our reviews. On a sourer note, many users have taken to the developer's forums to report the recently released retail version is at present near-unplayable on Xbox 360.

As if hordes of the undead weren't problem enough, users are reporting that the retail version of The Walking Dead on Xbox 360 is nearly unplayable. Telltale forum dwellers note that the game has freezing and stuttering issues that render the game very difficult to play. This makes quick-time events particularly troublesome, with one user noting that button prompts appeared much too late, making the event impossible to complete.

Beyond these performance issues, several users report that they are unable to start Episode 2 after completing the first episode. Upon selecting the second episode, the game simply restarts Episode 1, according to the forums. An Xbox Live title update was released to fix this, though some users are reporting that it persists even after the update is installed.

As for the freezing issue, Telltale is aware of the problem, and states that it is apparently affecting users with the 4GB Xbox 360 Slim model. That said, there are users on the forum reporting the issues on other models, and Joystiq tipster Jared notes that it is also affecting his Gears of War 3 special edition console. Telltale is looking into the problem, and hopes to "provide more information soon." We've also contacted Telltale for comment, and will update this post as soon as we hear anything.

#yearinreview I didn't notice how fairly quiet a year it's been for zombies until doing this round-up, but there were definitely some highlights that more than fill those gaps. Some duds, too, but you can't expect such a watered down narrative to always go over so creatively. More »

The Steam holiday offerings keep rolling along, with "game of the year" contender The Walking Dead's price chopped in half. Telltale's modern adventure game is $12.49 until tomorrow... if we survive.

The Sims 3 is also 66 percent off the entire series, with the exception of Seasons and Supernatural (the latest expansions), which are 50 percent off for $20. That means the standalone game is $10.19, with several major expansion packs around the same price. It really is the ultimate doll/action figure house.

More deals today include discounts on Natural Selection 2, Legend of Grimrock, Spec Ops: The Line and ARMA 2. There's also still time to grab yesterday's deals if you act now.

"Game of the Year" contender The Walking Dead's first episode is currently free on the Xbox Marketplace. IGN believes it'll be available like that until the new year. We've contacted Telltale to confirm, but we're not sure how quick the response will be in their shambling post eggnog consumption state.

The Walking Dead has already started collecting year-end awards for crafting a classic adventure game with an intense narrative. Here's a chance to play the first episode without it taking a bite out of your wallet, or shoulder...or neck.

The awards continue today with another batch of categories. Be sure to check out the podcast to figure out how we came to these conclusions and check out the videos for a more meanderingly endearing way to consume the awards. See ya tomorrow!

Walking Dead Episode of the Year

Episode 3

The Walking Dead's first season didn't have a single bad episode. Not a one. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Considering most episodic games can barely muster a single stand-out episode, let alone multiple ones, there was no choice but to call out this year's best Walking Dead episodes in their own category. Well, okay, there was a choice, but we chose to do it, dammit.

It's safe to say that The Walking Dead's best parts came during its utterly brutal middle sections. Episode 1 set the stage nicely, and Episode 5 tied the story together in a genuinely heart-wrenching way, but episodes 2, 3, and 4 were so chock full of action/sadness/action sadness, that they proved to be the clear standouts. And of those standout episodes, Episode 3 proved to be the most memorable of them all.

It's not hard to explain why, though it is somewhat challenging to do so without spoiling the whole damn thing for you. If you want that, our video coverage will more than suffice. If you don't want to be spoiled, all we'll say here is that Episode 3 is full of tremendously well-written shocks, twists, and emotional wallops, the likes of which were most certainly the highlights of the series. It's an emotionally draining episode, the kind of thing that will either break you entirely, or strengthen your resolve to power through the last two episodes. Most series probably aren't best served peaking in the middle, but in the case of Walking Dead's immaculately paced campaign, it worked out shockingly well.

Runners-up: Episode 2, Episode 4

Best Debut

The Walking Dead

By the end of The Walking Dead's season finale, once you're finished washing away the tears you swear you don't tell anyone about, there is one question on your mind: how the hell is Telltale Games going to top this? We're happy to see them try, but the creative turnaround of Telltale Games is a truly remarkable one. Many of us started to wonder whether Telltale Games still had it after the supremely lackluster Jurassic Park. There was a general sense that Telltale Games had accomplished its mission of bringing back the adventure game, but hadn't yet figured out where the genre had to go next. Bringing back old franchises wasn't enough.

The Walking Dead will likely have a profound influence on games both in and outside the adventure genre, but for fans of the point-and-click, it's a resounding shot of relevance. Through meaningful player-driven storytelling and a morbid tale about humanity in the most extreme of circumstances, The Walking Dead had players anxiously staying up late for each episode to go live. Telltale Games found a way to keep players interested in its episodic format in a way none of its previous games have, and created true watercooler moments once only the realm of TV and film.

Runners-up: Mark of the Ninja, Fez

Best Surprise

Asura's Wrath

If you wanted to get all mathematical about it, you could basically look at the Best Surprise as resulting from the difference between our initial expectations for a game and our final impressions of it. That game you thought was gonna be awful and then was kind of great? Yeah, that's this. In that sense, it would be hard to find a game that sounds less promising on its face than one made about 90 percent out of cutscenes driven by Quick Time events. None of us really wanted to give Asura's Wrath the time of day, and only dug into it grudgingly out of a responsibility to cover video games and generate site coverage.

Then a funny thing happened: Asura's Wrath grabbed hold of us with its six fiery, rage-fueled fists and refused to let go. It's hard to get more than a couple of episodes into the game's grandiose tale of scheming deities and Asura's burning need for revenge without just feeling aghast at the ridiculous enormity of the events taking place in front of you. Running the entire Earth through with your sword? Jump-kicking a planet-sized, Buddha-like starship in the face? All business as usual within the anime series-like episodic structure. What's even more astounding than the visuals, which consistently find ways to top themselves, is that CyberConnect 2 was able to come up with engaging and occasionally subversive uses of Quick Time events and simple button prompts that become way, way more satisfying than a game like this ought to be. If you can play all the way through this game without involuntarily yelling out "BURST!!!" at least once, there's probably something wrong with you.

Runners-up: Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry 3

Miiverse Community of the Year

Funky Barn

I think it's safe to say that we took issue with a lot of the ways the Wii U and its initial batch of games are built. But it's not all frowny faces and expired milk. The Miiverse, Nintendo's attempt at creating message boards and a bit of a social network to go along with them, is a fun take on some basic website concepts. The best part is that Nintendo creates a Miiverse section for every game and application on the Wii U, from New Super Mario Bros. U to Netflix. Considering there are plenty of Wii U executables that don't necessarily need a community of their own, you might think that the sections for smaller games and apps would be barren wastelands. But no. This is where the true magic of Miiverse lies.

The Funky Barn community is the best example of this because the game carries an extremely evocative name, leading to a lot of fan art (well, "fan" art) of sheep with gigantic afros positioned next to disco balls. And since you can easily see at a glance if a poster has played the game in question or not, it's easy to see that no one on this board is actually playing Funky Barn. Not to brag, but we may have been the first "played it!" checkmark on that board when Jeff cracked his copy open for a quick and dirty live stream.

Runners-Up: YouTube, Netflix

Best Use of a Licensed Song

Far Cry 3 - MIA "Paper Planes"

Most games might try to make the player identify, or at least empathize with their protagonist, but Far Cry 3 does exactly the opposite in its opening moments, and deliberately so. While the handheld vacation footage of Jason Brody and his idle-rich posse of entitled Abercrombie & Fitch bros and bras flashing their Black Cards, doing shots of sambuca, riding jet-skis, and basically fulfilling the Ugly American stereotype with aplomb would've been enough to have you rooting for for the charasmatically psychotic Vaas, pairing it with MIA's druggy summer club hit "Paper Planes" really brings it all together. Never have I wanted to see harm befall my own player character as deeply or as instantaneously as I did at the start of Far Cry 3. Luckily, the game wastes no time delivering on that desire...

Runners-Up: Spec Ops: The Line - Deep Purple "Hush", Alan Wake's American Nightmare - Kasabian "Club Foot"

Watch us showcase all the goodies in Telltale's special edition.

#thewarz As promised, the strange saga of War Z just keeps getting stranger. Turns out this promo screen for zombie survival game, which was pulled from Steam earlier today, was plagiarized from The Walking Dead. More »

#offtopic More shows need Christmas specials. The UK The Office and more recently, Downton Abbey both had some pretty outstanding specials; surely The Walking Dead could use one? More »

#thewalkingdead Telltale's The Walking Dead game might be getting the lion's share of press lately, but there's actually another very good Walking Dead game out there: The Walking Dead: Assault for iOS. No, really: it's good! More »

#thewalkingdead Tonight's host of the Spike Video Game Awards will be appearing in some of the games being honored tonight. First up, The Walking Dead. More »

#yearinreview We hear all the time that video games are a young medium, that they've still got so much untapped potential to wow us in unique and meaningful ways. And while it may seem like it's been just another 12 months of sequels, remakes and disappointment, there have been signs that video games are maturing. Some of those baby teeth are shaking loose. More »

This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go.

Like many of you out there, I'm a sucker for anything with zombies in it. I've read The Zombie Survival Guide and I've have mapped out my own plans to deal with a zombie invasion countless times over. I've read a ton of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic - yes, I'm that guy.

Where Telltale's The Walking Dead is about player choice and guarding a young innocent against the evils of a post-apocalyptic world, The Walking Dead: Assault throws players into a different, albeit just-as-important scenario of a zombie world: how to take out the undead.

The Walking Dead retail version has been pushed back a week in North America, now scheduled to launch on December 11. The standard and collector's editions were originally slated to hit in physical form on December 4. We assume the undead don't shuffle as quickly as Telltale originally thought.

The standard edition includes all five episodes on-disc for $30, while the collector's edition runs $70 and features the full game along with the first 48 issues of the comic in an exclusive version of The Walking Dead Compendium One, all wrapped up in a special box.

The Walking Dead will be available at all participating retail locations for PS3 and Xbox 360, but the PC version is sold only at Best Buy.

The plague of Robert Kirkman's undead has once again spread to iDevices, the comic creator revealed through his Twitter account today. The Walking Dead: Assault is an official episodic adaptation of the comic series published by Kirkman's own Skybound Entertainment. The first episode "Days Gone By" is available now for a reduced price of $1.99.

The Walking Dead: Assault is a top-down strategy game at its core, propositioning players with corralling together their band of survivors and mowing down hordes of the undead. You build teams composed of comic favorites like Rick, Glenn, Carl, Andrea and more, and complete missions ripped from those same pages.

You can download the first episode right now through iTunes - the app is Universal and has support for iPhone 5 Retina displays. Other games within The Walking Dead universe include Telltale's The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, a first-person shooter from Terminal Reality due next year.

#thewalkingdead Now that the first season of The Walking Dead is over, it's natural to ask the question: Did my choices even matter? Was this all smoke and mirrors, or did I really have a say over the outcome? It's the same sort of thing raised as any lengthy, branching video game story reaches its conclusion. More »

#thewalkingdead Like a mysteriously silent walker lurching out of the woods to sink its teeth into your face, Skybound's comic book based The Walking Dead Assault came out of nowhere this morning to take a large bite out of fans' free time. More »

#thewalkingdead I'm still coming down from the experience that was The Walking Dead. Without getting into spoiler territory, that was...quite the ending. More »

#thewalkingdead Telltale's fantastic Walking Dead game was a surprise for several reasons. Not only did it reverse the studio's reputation for middling-to-unsatisfactory games, it will no doubt be in the running for many a publication's Game of the Year award. It proved that good writing and characterization can carry a video game, that the point-and-click adventure game still had some life left in it, and that choice and consequence can feel vital and terrifyingly important. More »

Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic series has proved a remarkably pliant property in recent years. The comic is still going strong over 100 issues in, and the TV series loosely based upon it, despite some serious second-season hiccups, is finding new life in its third season. All this, despite an overwhelming sense of malaise related to all things zombie in pop culture these days. Granted, zombies are pretty much everywhere, and while they make for serviceable villains in just about any context, there are only so many ways you can stab, shoot, bludgeon, beat, kick, squash, crunch, or set alight the undead. They're always going to be screeching, gurgling ghouls who want to eat you, and the thrill of killing them can really only take you so far.

Lee Everett is as completely realized a playable protagonist as I can ever remember playing...

This is what makes Telltale's The Walking Dead such a marvel. Seemingly aware that the mere act of killing zombies is hardly enough to capture anyone's attention nowadays, lead writer/directors Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin have smartly focused the game on the human story of the zombie apocalypse. This is certainly in the tradition of Kirkman's writing of the comic books, but this Walking Dead tale is arguably even more gripping than Kirkman's own works. This Walking Dead puts you right in the middle of the fray as society buckles under the weight of the dead rising, and forces you to make tough decision after tough decision not only to survive, but to help others survive as well.

Split up over five episodes, the first season of The Walking Dead puts you in the shoes of Lee, a convicted murderer who may or may not actually be all that bad of a guy. You don't know, because the game is purposefully vague about your back story, perhaps so as to allow some malleability in how players see themselves. Lee is you, but Lee is still a character who speaks, emotes, and has his own distinct personality. That his dialogue choices in nearly every scenario allow for a range of responses means you can mold Lee to your play style. He's essentially a silent protagonist with a voice, if that makes any sense at all. That his voice can be so easily adjusted to your own style is a compliment to the writing, which is as mature and thoughtful as anything I've played in recent memory.

Over the course of the five episodes, Lee is joined by a variety of other survivors of the zombie apocalypse, some of which stick around for the duration of your journey, and some who simply appear for an episode or two and then are dispatched, either of their own volition, or by way of some grisly demise. One character who is a constant is Clementine, an eight-year-old girl who Lee stumbles upon in her otherwise abandoned suburban home early in the first episode. When you meet her, Clem is just a particularly vulnerable survivor, completely alone and terrified. Her parents were out of town when the outbreak hit, and until you come upon her, she'd barely had any human contact. No matter how you play Lee, it becomes apparent that this child is going to become your responsibility.

And what a wonderful, heart-wrenching responsibility she turns out to be. It is with no amount of exaggeration that I say that Clementine is one of the most fully-realized, brilliantly written child characters ever put into any kind of entertainment medium. Children are often impossible to write, given their innocence, capriciousness, and general inability to understand the world around them. Make them too dumb, and they become a shrill annoyance. Make them too clever, and they become cartoon characters. Clem is neither of these things. She is a kid who is at once capable, but deeply unsure of herself. She, like Carl from the Walking Dead comics, is forced into a situation where she must grow up entirely too quickly. That her upbringing into this ludicrously dangerous world is your responsibility is a gamble by the game's writers that brilliantly pays off. Not only do you want to protect this girl, you want to help her every way you possibly can. When that safety is threatened, it's not just Lee's on-screen anger that resonates. You feel it too.

What you have to do to keep her safe becomes increasingly grotesque and horrifying as the season wears on. Much as the comic rarely shied away from making characters do terrible things to survive, the game forces you to make constant life or death choices that can easily result in characters you like dying terrible deaths.

...but the real gem of this story is Clementine, a character I cared far more about than I ever thought possible in a game.

Choice. It's an interesting buzzword in gaming that too often boils down to a meaningless, binary path selection. If I choose A, I get this ending, and B, this other ending. The Walking Dead has these moments, but more often choice comes in the form of smaller decisions that nonetheless can have grave impact on your ability to move forward. Even your choice of tone in dialogue with other characters can have an effect on how other characters react to you in subsequent episodes. You can be the selfless hero, the selfish dick, or some amalgamation of the two. Regardless, those choices will add up over time.

Of course, the main story is always going to play out the way it's going to play out. While you can affect endings, who lives or dies, and how people interact with you, the truth is that the larger scope of the story is very much out of your hands. After all, this is a work of fiction, and as a result your choices still have to work within the machinations of the game's (apparently huge) script. In a sense, The Walking Dead is almost like an examination of fatalism. You can choose whatever path you like, but in the end, the larger world around you is going to do what it's going to do. All you can truly hope to affect is how you get to that end, and how you spend your time with others who may or may not be fated to survive.

Those choices prove a remarkable source of tension in a game that already has plenty of walking, slobbering, biting sources of tension. Ultimately, The Walking Dead treats its zombie antagonists the way the comic and TV series has--a deadly nuisance. Zombies are sentient weeds to be plucked, or simply walked around. That makes them no less dangerous, mind you, and the game certainly has plenty of breath-holding moments featuring Lee and other characters struggling against hordes of the undead. But more often, the tension comes from interactions with other people, be they fellow friendly survivors, or unfriendlies who regrettably cross your path. The choices you're forced to make in how you deal with these people is The Walking Dead's greatest fount of dread and terror. Even simple dialogue choices often left me pondering far longer than I ever expected.

To dig too deeply into the individual choices you will make is to dig up too many potential spoilers. Suffice it to say, each episode requires some tough thinking, and no matter what you choose, not everyone will survive. In this regard, Telltale's traditional episodic structuring is something of a blessing. Trying to play the entirety of season one in a single sitting is an incredibly draining experience. Emotions run high throughout each episode, which individually clock in between 90 minutes to three hours apiece. Each story is like its own individual tale, spun as part of a larger anthology. The second episode, for instance, is practically a self-contained story featuring multiple characters who never reappear, but nonetheless have a great deal of effect on what happens afterward. The writing and voice acting remains sharp throughout. Though some episodes are certainly better than others, there isn't a bad one in the bunch.

What's interesting is that very little about what makes The Walking Dead so special comes from the act of actually playing it. There's no secret sauce here that differs from Telltale's other point-and-click adventure games, save for the copious amounts of blood everywhere. You're still exploring environments, solving light puzzles, and occasionally engaging zombies that get a bit too close. But those mechanics are simple, generally uninvolving, and only occasionally frustrating. If anything, the choices and dialogue trees are the core of The Walking Dead's gameplay. Everything else is just necessary machinery to make it go.

Zombies are always a looming threat, but it's the living people you've really got to watch out for.

Sometimes that machinery does falter, though only rarely. Though the game's cel-shaded art style looks terrific on every platform, the console versions of the game are definitely prone to frame hitch-ups and occasional crashes, at least in my experience. I did most of my playing on the PC, which generally seems to be the best version, though some players have reported issues with saves wiping between episodes on that platform. I never experienced this myself, but it's been reported pervasively enough that I feel it warrants a mention. This is one of those cases where I feel the quality of content is worth the risk of potential technical hurdles, no matter which platform you choose to play on.

Yes, The Walking Dead really is that incredible. Relying so heavily on the writing, atmosphere, and emotional content of a game to carry you through a five-episode season is a risk that has paid tremendous dividends for Telltale. The Walking Dead is no mere interactive story. It is an immaculately paced, painfully affecting story featuring some of the most lovingly crafted characters ever to appear in a video game. From the very beginning, The Walking Dead sinks its teeth in and never lets you go. It's a journey in the truest sense of the word, replete with tragedy, heartache, tension, fear, and even brief moments of catharsis. Calling The Walking Dead a work of entertainment almost seems like a misnomer, considering the heavy tone and general lack of sentimentality in the writing. This is a sad game that will weigh heavy on you long after you've completed it--it even wrung some honest tears out of me on a couple of occasions. But you'll suffer through the emotional swings because they're ultimately worth it. No matter how depressing, gut-wrenching, or flat-out horrifying The Walking Dead gets, you will want--nay, need--to finish it. It's just that good.

Stay after the credits of The Walking Dead Episode 5: No Time Left.

I don't care what decisions you made throughout the episode, and I don't care how many people you killed, saved or sacrificed in all of the previous episodes combined. I don't care if you played Lee as a passive leader or a vengeful one, compassionate or sterile or practical, or if you think the entire series sucks - stay after the credits of the final episode. To cut off the credits of this installment early is tantamount to taking a bathroom break one minute before Darth Vader mutilates Luke in Cloud City, or Bruce Willis realizes he hasn't spoken to another person in weeks.

The moment is brief, as is the entire episode, but believe me, you won't feel cheated. After all, Telltale warned you: There really is No Time Left.

Telltale Games is looking to move out of its current space and into an office nearly double in size. Currently employing 125, the company is looking to up its headcount toward 160 individuals, starting in March or April of 2013. Back in October, Telltale signed a five-year lease for a new 22,000 square-foot space in San Rafael, the town Telltale Games has called home since its formation in 2004.

According to the North Bay Business Journal, Telltale CEO and co-founder Dan Connors pegged the company's success on its ability to employ "digital distribution and episodic production to take advantage of licenses." Telltale launched a Jurassic Park game to lukewarm critical reception last year, but also has strong licenses like Back to the Future and an upcoming game based on the comic book series, Fables.

Telltale Games is working on the second season of The Walking Dead, the first season of which concludes this week with the launch of "No Time Left."

#impressions [The Walking Dead is a difficult series to write about. I want you to experience the game for yourself. After all, your game will likely play out entirely different from mine, given how dependent on player choice it is. But I still want to give you an idea of what it was like to experience the final episode of this season. So think of this less as an impressions piece, and more of a diary entry.] More »

You know shit is getting real when even Ben looks steely and determined.

There’s a still a certain resistance in myself I have to battle when mentioning The Walking Dead games. I’d allowed myself to become so prejudiced against Telltale’s games after their patchy resurrections of franchises that meant a great deal to me as a child, and it doesn’t help that the Walking Dead comics have often demonstrated attitudes I find to be highly unsavoury. But TT’s Walking Dead games are deftly done slices of tension and humanity, reimaginging adventure games’ abstract puzzles as gut-punch moral dilemmas. Tada! My prejudice is defeated.

I imagine a second series of these episodes is all but guaranteed at this point, but the final episode of the current one approaches fast. Will it resolve Lee and Clementine’s tale once and for all, or pull a Homeland and delay much-needed denouements and resolutions until a second series? All we can do for now is watch the finale trailer and comb it for clues.(more…)

They don't want to eat you, the zombies just want hugs! Okay, probably not, but this week Telltale's episodic adventure The Walking Dead comes to an end and all of our questions will be answered. We hope.

No Time Left is the season finale for Telltale's game, but does it live up to our lofty expectations?

It’s all been leading up to this! Tomorrow, Telltale Games releases what they’ve dubbed the “season finale” of The Walking Dead, which I suppose bodes well for the possibility of future installments. For me, Telltale’s series represents the best of the adventure genre, with likeable characters, grim scenarios, and a player-guided narrative. I’ve made no secret that The Walking Dead has quickly become one of my favorite gaming experiences of the year, and I’m dying to see how Lee Everett’s final chapter plays out in this companion piece to Robert Kirkman’s much-loved graphic novel series.

(Spoiler) Sad to say that Kenny won’t be joining me on the final journey, though. What about you? Who are you taking with you?

It's all come to this. Walking Dead ends this week. Bring tissues.

#thewalkingdead More »