The Walking Dead: The Game (Episode 1) - Review

 Fans of the Robert Kirkman comic book series "The Walking Dead" have been waiting with baited breath ever since it was announced that a video game based on the comic book universe was in development. With Episode one of five now available to download I can safely say that it was worth the wait for both zombie and adventure game fans alike.

The first episode in Telltale Games' Walking Dead series, entitled "A new day" begins with your character, a guy by the name of Lee, being transported to prison in the back of a cop car. Through a surprisingly civilised conversation with the cop behind the wheel you learn a little more about Lee as well as a few details about your escort. As you can imagine, things soon go wrong and through a series of unfortunate events (for your policeman friend at least) Lee is left injured and free from custody but with a much bigger headache to contend with.

The dead have risen from the grave and are hungry for some living flesh.

The opening conversation introduces the timed response mechanic

Pretty soon you meet up with Clementine, the 8 year old first grader who's well being it falls to you to ensure, as well as a small group of survivors that you will be spending a lot of the following 5 episodes with.

This game doesn't play like your typical adventure game, but similarly isn't hampered by the constant Quick time events that made Jurassic Park such a disaster in many peoples estimations. Quick time has its place but the gameplay is almost like a hybrid between the story driven Heavy rain and the point and click adventure games that Telltale have made their livings on for the past decade.It focuses much more on exploration than combat.

Movement around the environments (on consoles) is handled with the left analogue stick, while the right stick allows you to move a reticule around the screen with which you can interact with items, other survivors and in one early scene, a zombie intent on getting some dinner. This control system feels intuitive enough that anyone could quickly learn how to play the game, although it was disappointing that the reticule controls didn't have an inversion option for those who have played too many flight-sims for their own good. Even so, I quickly got used to the non inverted aiming of the right stick, and found that the standard presentation option, where interactable items show a white target dot when the reticule is moved, didn't detract from my enjoyment of the game and actually helped out a little from time to time.

Use the reticule to interact with items, people or zombies

Interactions play a massive part in the Walking Dead comic series, so it shouldn't surprise anyone to find out that a majority of the time you'll be talking to people, rather than wading through a hoard of zombies in a Left 4 dead/Dead Rising style killing frenzy. With this game Telltale have made sure that character interaction is treated with the importance it deserves. Many of the dialogue choices that you make as Lee will have knock on effects later in the series, and some even have an effect on this episode. Don't worry If you didn't like the way it turned out either. Telltale have allowed for three seperate play throughs to be saved so that you can experience the game multiple times to see how different choices affect the outcome.

Speaking of choices, On two seperate occasions in the first episode I had to choose who to save during a zombie attack. Whilst the decision of who to save might be an obvious one at first, the immediate consequences do make you question if you made the right choice. Ultimately though it's down to how you feel about the characters in peril, Save the idiot with the gun or the nerd with a heart of gold? There is no right or wrong answer, this is about survival. There's another choice laid out for you in episode one that is both heart wrenching and shocking, i won't spoil it here but it's an impactful piece of storytelling that leaves you questioning what you would have done in the same situation.

Another hallmark of the Walking Dead series is the well written characters, and while it's very early to be judging if every character in the game will display a similar amount of depth i think they've got off to a good start. Lee is a complex and mysterious character that isn't everything that he first seems, while Clementine is a smart, resourceful girl who is much wiser than her 8 years might suggest. Not every survivor you'll meet is a nice person, and i have no problem with that at all. A whole range of personalities will survive the zombie apocalypse and dealing with jerks makes it that much more realistic an experience. Other characters haven't really had the chance to be expanded on, although i very much doubt that Duck has any depth to him at all while Carley, a reporter from Atlanta, doesn't get off to a good start as she apparently can't fathom the complexities of electrical devices and how to use batteries (you'll see when you play it).

I'm amazed Carley hasn't managed to shoot herself yet

This dumbing down of a main female character isn't the only mis-step in episode 1 though.

I was left bewildered when Lee, after being chased by the walkers to a fenced off garden, started to shout for help to anyone that could hear him. The only reason that the zombies had originally left him alone was because they heard gunshots in the distance, it's not unreasonable to think that the sound of a guy shouting for help might get their attention back again. Probably just a brain fart on the part of the studio, but if i can pick up on this immediately why didn't anyone else?

The audio in Walking Dead, unsurprisingly for a Telltale game, can be sketchy at times and the animations can sometimes freeze slightly, but overall the presentation is excellent for a near ten year old engine. The voice acting is very good all round (TV's Steven Yuen reprises the role of Glenn for the first episode) while the graphical aesthetic of thick lines and cell shading makes the game pop. It really feels like an interactive comic book.

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Conclusion
While recent Zombie games have been an excuse to hack, slash and shoot our way through a large number of shambling opponents, The Walking Dead takes a much more thoughtful approach to the genre which reflects the series from which it was spawned. Despite the seemingly illogical choices that characters make at times, and despite the same old audio/video issues that seem to be a Telltale hallmark, the well paced story shows great promise and sets up a believable and compelling cast and situation, while the cliffhanger ending make it a difficult decision to walk away from the season pass.

Catherine - Review

A certain Irish Stout advert states "Good things come to those who wait" In the case of Catherine this claim holds just as true. European gamers, unlike our American cousins, had to wait an extra 7 months for an English language version of the Japanese Survival horror/Dating Sim/Puzzler, but the wait was definitely worthwhile.

Those of you that follow this blog as well as the Killer Keyboard site will have seen the unboxing video for Catherine: Stray Sheep Edition that i made back in February. I've been a little slow to get into it, but when i finally did make the time to sit down and work my way through the latest Atlus release i discovered an extremely deep puzzle game wrapped in a delightfully vibrant yet disturbing anime style ribbon.



Vincent Brooks is the main character in Catherine, a man who avoids commitment and growing up at all costs. His girlfriend of 5 years, Katherine, is restless with the current state of their relationship and is starting to exert pressure on our man to commit to her long term (yep, the M word people) However, his increasingly complex life takes yet another turn when the morning after a heavy night's drinking he wakes up next to his dream girl, who strangely enough is also named Catherine, but as you can see it's with a C not a K.

Katherine and Catherine

 The game is, at this point, split into 2 main parts. During Vincent's waking hours you see him eating with friends, and can take control of him when he goes to the Stray Sheep bar to drink and talk to his friends. In the bar you can talk to the patrons, check your phone for messages, drink until you drop (the drunker you are the faster you move in your dreams) use the jukebox to play music that is unlocked as you progress through the game, and play a strange game called Rapunzel which bears a striking resemblance to the Nightmares that you will have to play through in the other half of the game. Texting is an important part of your waking life, the messages you send can alter how the story plays out so think carefully about how to end your texts in-case they give the wrong impression.

This Nightmare half of Catherine is where the puzzle elements come to the fore. Every night when Vincent goes to sleep he finds himself in a weird nightmare world where everyone else looks like sheep, and he must climb giant block mountains if he is to survive the night. Because as the theory goes, if you die in your dreams you die in real life too. The puzzle portion of the game is surprisingly deep and extremely addictive, the emphasis during the nightmare is to ascend the tower as quickly as you can while the blocks below you fall away. on top of this there are some stages where you will be pursued by your worst fears, be that a demonic chainsaw wielding baby or a shadowy reflection of yourself.



At regular points during your nightmare you'll reach a base camp of sorts which more closely resemble a church than anything else. During these levels you can save progress, talk to other sheep to figure out what's going on and even exchange techniques that could better help you climb the towers still to come. If you look closely you may even recognise a few of the sheep you talk to at this base camp...

As you progress, the towers will get more and more difficult to ascend, and more varieties of blocks will be brought into play. Immovable blocks, heavy blocks, black holes, exploding blocks and spike traps are just a few of the varieties you'll have to learn to use to your advantage because, and i forgot to mention this before, you might not be the only one climbing the tower, and the other sheep won;t think twice about throwing you off the block and down to your death.

When Catherine was originally released in Japan a lot was said about how difficult the game was, and that it was prohibitively difficult for Western audiences let alone the Japanese. Luckily Atlus patched the Japanese release to lower the difficulty, and included that coding in the EU and US releases of the game. There's also a "Very Easy" mode available if you're really having a hard time of it, but for the most part i have to say that Easy is rather forgiving while still frustrating you every now and then. Rapunzel, the arcade game in the Stray Sheep Bar also offers some fantastic alternative gameplay as it focusses more on solving the puzzle rather than getting it done as quickly as possible. It really is the hidden gem inside the larger hidden gem that is Catherine.

Music, as most of you will appreciate, is a very important part of any game and in Catherine this is just as evident. The Music is excellent, there's a good mixture of songs available on the Stray Sheep's Jukebox so everybody should be able to find something listenable there, while the classical music used in the nightmare stages is unsettling and atmospheric. As a fan of Samurai Champloo it was nice to see some J-Hip-Hop used in the Game intro as well, you really get the feeling that Atlus appreciate how music can improve the game play experience.

Graphically the game looks superb, Atlus themselves have said that it serves as "an experiment for Persona 5" and there's no doubt it was a success as the engine runs superbly. The animations are smooth and natural while the cell shade style gives it a unique look that few games can match. Studio 4 degrees C have done a stand-up job with the story animations as well, they mesh perfectly with the rest of the game thanks to the cell shade colouring of the in-game engine.


Fans of Japanese games will lap this up while most gamers who enjoy a puzzle game should find plenty to enjoy about the game too. The multiple endings give Catherine decent replay value as do the nightmare levels themselves as they all have multiple solutions. Rapunzel offers something different while the additional Babel and Colosseum game modes offer something different for anyone who wants to slide some blocks around outside of the main story. 

Anyone looking for an off the wall puzzle game with charm and personality could do a lot worse than giving Catherine a try, This is a great example of a game being different and better for it.

It's been a while...Blame Minecraft!

It's been quite some time since the last article was posted here on Game for a Laugh. I apologise for the lack of content over the last month but i promise i have a really good excuse, and it has nothing to do with the dog eating my laptop (although i swear he did try that once due to a rather fetching Pedigree Chum screen saver). You could say that i've been doing research for the blog, but i don't think that you should have that much fun researching something, unless it's porn or product development at Frankie and Benny's. Nope, the reason that it's been so quiet can be summed up in one word.

Minecraft.

I've heard a fair bit about Minecraft over the last year or so, until recently i just ignored it due to the large number of AAA titles that were on the horizon. Red Dead Redemption, Fallout New Vegas, GT5, Portal 2 and Fight Night Champion, which i'll be writing about later on, all took my attention away from the small game originally developed by one man in the snowy depths of Sweden in May 2009. That is, until i saw a video feature on IGN about the popular indie game scheduled for full release on 11.11.11 (that date sounds familiar).

You'd think i would have learned by now. Games such as the super successful Angry Birds proved that low budget games with reasonable price points can be just as enjoyable and deep as the biggest budget blockbusters. Minecraft cost me just short of £14 and has swallowed literally days of my life in the last month, Angry Birds did just the same thing a few months earlier.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself here, let's talk a bit more about what Minecraft actually is.

Minecraft was developed by Swedish game designer Markus Persson after he quit as a developer for King.com to concentrate on his independent work. Partly inspired by Infiniminer, a mining game by Zach Barth, it was initially released on May 17th 2009 and continues to be in Beta to this day. The game is graphically very simple, the environment is rendered in 3d but the textures themselves are extremely reminiscent of Doom. While it won't blow your socks off in the looks department it's great to see a game that is so confident in its game play that it couldn't care less how it looks, and to be fair to it the graphics actually grow on you after a while to the point where it becomes charming. The low res graphics also have a practical purpose however. Persson has been quoted as saying that he wanted to create a game that could be played on anyone's PC. He certainly achieved that since i can play it on my Laptop with very little slow down at all.

Gameplay consists of mining blocks of wood, dirt, cobbles and gravel and then using these resources to craft your shelter, weapons, clothes, tools, torches and even your own bed. The list of items you can craft is truely exhaustative, everything from sheep sheers to garden hoes can be made with the right ingrediants. The real appeal of this game is simple, You create everything. It's like seeing the condensed history of man in video game form.

Make a shelter, form stone tools, mine metals, make better tools, protect yourself from the things that come for you at night... Oh wait i forgot to tell you, there are Zombies in this game too.

While daylight hours are the time when you collect resources and form the world as you want it to be, darkness belongs to the things that go "bump" in the night. This sets out a very rigid structure for how you should proceed. Make a shelter and arm yourself before night falls or you're in serious doo doo! Of course the options allow the player to turn the zombies off or on at any time, giving you the opportunity to build a fortress before you need worry about uninvited guests slathering after your poor overworked brains, but for the hardcore out there you can struggle through your first night with the hoard after you.

It's the shear freedom and creativity in this game that appeals to me. Minecraft is a sandbox game in its truest form, allowing you complete freedom in what you do with it. Form your own kingdom? Go ahead! Make a recreation of Hyrule and have yourself a 3D Zelda adventure? Why not! Make a 1:1 scale model of the Enterprise? Well it's a pretty nerdy thing to do but Yes, indeed you can!

The reason i can't put this game down is simply that it's endless, both in possibilities and in game play. Every day i set off in a new direction and find another strange unexplored island full of caves and resources to be tapped in to. How can i stop when there's so much still to explore?!

Now i know how Sir Walter Rayleigh felt...