It’s been longer than expected, but we’re finally back in the comfortable shoes of Lee Everett. Lee and the rest of the gang is still holed up in a motel, and despite adding a new member with a lot of supplies, Mark, but we’ve already almost run out of that food and tensions are at an alltime high.

Much of the game revolves around a conflict in the group between Lilly (the self elected “leader” of the group) and Kenny. The conflict permeates almost every decision you make during the game and takes into account decisions that you made during the last episode, though not fully, as Kenny appreciated my friendship during the last episode, but made some odd decisions in this one.

The rest of the game involves what would be considered the “A” plot. A family of dairy farmers offers food in exchange for gas, but when a group of bandits attacks Mark and Lee things start to unravel. Unfortunately, the A plot isn’t very strong. While it has gripping moments, the big twist is telegraphed from a mile away and never really takes off because of that.

However, the big moments of the game are really well executed and make you think. I made a poor decision and Clementine, the little girl Lee has “adopted” for lack of a better word, saw it and just her reaction broke my heart. I can count on one hand the ammount of times a video game has made me feel geniunely awful like that. It’s honestly pretty amazing how they got that done.

One interesting note is that the game does play out slightly differently depending on whether you saved Doug or Carly in the last episdoe. Doug is more about comic relief and tech gadgets, while Carly is all about emotional drama and gun-toting action. It’s a nice little twist.

Extra Features:

There aren’t any extra features, to speak of.

Technical:

There have been some reported issues with trying to run the first episode clearing out your save files from Episode 1. Additionally, the PS3 version has issues with one section of the game wherein you have to play “Red Light Green Light” with another character that the game doesn’t recognize propperly and so it fails to initiate.

Graphics:

Again the graphics are suprisingly well done. Some of the characters are a little over the top, but the models display emotion extremely well and really works well to get you into the game. It does a really good job also of being brutal, bloody, and violent, without going way over the top with it.

It’s almost entirely new environments this time out and they’re all very well made. The dairy farm looks appropriately light hearted in the daytime and dreary at night. The campsite you also visit has a really eerie awesome feel to it that’s conveyed through the art style.

Sound:

Once again, the voice acting is pretty spot on. The dairy farmers aren’t particularly well done, but that has more to do with the telegraphed storyline than any fault of the actors. The rest of the acting is spot on, including, interestingly enough, Carly and Doug who essentially had to paly different sides of the same part.

The music is great in the handful of real action scenes, approprately ramping up the drama in the extreme. Otherwise it’s nicely unobrusive, allowing you to focus on the story, dialog, and puzzles, what few there are.

Replay Value:

There are some big changes that you can make from almost the first minute of the game, so it’s worth taking another playthrough. With the plot kind of branching and some big plot decisions coming up in Episode 3, it’s going to be interesting to see how the different permutations carry out.

Final Score: 9/10

It doesn’t quite live up to the lofty expectations caused by the first game, in part because there isn’t quite as much to do, but also because the writing isn’t quite as tight. As soon as you begin to suspect that something is awry, the game does nothing to even try to change your opinon on that. Plus, Kenny’s odd turn in this episode feels very incongruous from his character in the previous episode.

That having been said, it’s still an amazing experience and an excellent representation of the Walking Dead brand. Whether you’re a fan of the books or television show or even if you’re not a big fan of zombies in general, you should really give this game a hard look. This is what bringing adventure games into the 21st century is really all about. TellTale really has something here.

If you’re interested in taking a look at the game, you can find it at the TellTale Website.

Let’s face it, I’ve been more than a little rough on TellTale games the past two years, culminating in my nearly sounding the death knell over Jurassic Park. Law and Order and Back to the Future had their moments, but I thought for sure the company had spread itself too thin, and would become another in a long line of video game companies that collapsed under the weight of its own successes.

Well, The Walking Dead shut me right up. It is the perfect blend of interactive movie, cartoony graphics, serious writing, and adventure game which will suck in fans and non-fans of Walking Dead alike.

The game follows Lee Everett, a man recently arrested for murder but on the run ever since his guard was eaten by zombies. Through dialog in the game you get to decide whether or not Lee is remorseful about what happened, if he’s letting people know about his past, and how he interacts with the other characters in the game.

That’s where the game really shines. Like the much maligned Alpha Protocol, the game gives you around three seconds to think out Lee’s motivations and select a dialog option that fits that thought. From there, the plot branches out with major characters’ attitudes shifting and even some lives on the line based on your choices. TellTale promises that these major plot shifts will fuel your experience in future games, even making sure to point out those impacts in the “Coming Soon” blurb at the end of the episode.

So many cool moments like that occur, it’s easy to ignore the poorly constructed portions of the game. The adventure elements in particular are weirdly implimented. There is a scene where finding a set of keys is vitally important, but the way to get them doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. A common adventure trope, but not a good one.

Extra Features:

There aren’t any extra features, to speak of.

Technical:

There are no notable issues with the retail release of the game. I had a little difficulty getting my 360 controller set up with game on my PC, but it worked well once it was set up. I should note, this game is nigh unplayable using mouse and keyboard. I had to set it up with my controller to really work properly. But it’s worth suffering through if you don’t have access to a pad.

Graphics:

They use the same graphical engine that they had for Law & Order, with a sort of motion graphic novel feel slapped ontop of 3D environments. The characters are animated really well and once you settle into the look, it’s a pretty slick presentation.

The environments are well made, with a nice apocalyptic sensibility, but are a bit boring. I think it works for this type of presentation, however. Just know going in that you won’t be super excited about the handfull of rooms you’ll see.

Sound:

The voice acting is great, overall. Dave Fennoy, the actor who plays Lee, does a particularily good job conveying the emotion behind all of the different lines you can give him through the course of the game. There are a few hiccups where it sounds like the actors are playing the scenes differently, so the conversation doesn’t quite synch up, but overall everyone does a solid job.

The music does a nice job of putting you in a survival horror mood. During action scenes it’s intense and at the forefront, and during the few down beats in the game, you don’t notice it. The sound effects are notably good here. Try not to wince when you hear Lee’s knee crackling as he tries to bend down to grab a shotgun.

Replay Value:

Quite a bit, there are a lot of points where just dialog changes, which is worth going back and taking a look at, but the half dozen plot points that will branch off in future episodes are the real key, and it’s worth going back through and exploring how your choices ultimately change the gameplay experience.

Final Score: 10/10

Put simply, I can’t think of a game I played in the past year that offered me a more fun and satisfying experience than Walking Dead Episode 1 did in its two hours of gameplay. If you were holding off on making a season purchase (given the continuous nature of the series, you can’t buy individual episodes) don’t. This game is everything you could hope it would be and more.

I do wish that they would’ve cleaned up the keyboard interface a bit, as it feels like a bit of sloppy porting, but it’s a small nit to pick in an effort like this. The only change I hope is really worked on in future iterations of the series is integrating the puzzles better into the story.

If you’re interested in taking a look at the game, you can find it at the TellTale Website.

I always like to open these reviews by giving a little background of how my mind is set up going into playing this game. Three things impacted how I felt about this series. One: Telltale has been on a cold streak as far as adventure games since Tales from Monkey Island. Two: I love the courtroom games genre, thanks in large part to the influence of Phoenix Wright. Three: I have no feeling one way or another about the Law & Order franchise, other than that I was never a watcher of the shows.

Remarkably, Law & Order – Legacies does little to change my opinions on any of the three seemingly divergent thought processes. It is, overall, a weak throwback to the early to mid-90s FMV adventure games where the game is less about actual deduction that constantly offering pop quizzes about how much you understand the premise of the game. However, despite still not being a fan of the series, I found myself oddly compelled by the storyline and the characters involved.

The episode plays like an episode of the television series, and on that the game delivers in spades. There’s good drama in the “law” portion of the game and the courtroom scenes do a good job of engaging you mentally. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of “game” even in this portion, as most of your time is spent clicking through rather spartan dialog trees (something Phoenix Wright hides well with bluster and humor), which can cause you to glaze over and miss salient points and rather good writing.

An interesting note, none of the television show’s cast reprises their roles here, which, while understandable, feels odd and may turn off fans of the show. The replacement actors do a fine job of mimicking their counterparts, but it does seem a shame that they couldn’t get anybody from the cast.

Extra Features:

There aren’t any extra features, to speak of.

Technical:

I haven’t come across any bugs on my machine, and the retail version seems to be relatively bug free.

Graphics:

You’re either going to love this or hate it. I sort of love the graphical style of this game. All the “actors” are presented in sort of a motion comic format, so they look like live actors painted into the 3D scenery. It’s a very interesting and unique visual style that I think works really well in motion, but it’s going to turn people who wished they would go full 3D or 2D off.

Sound:

As I said in the lead, the voice actors are fine, but they are generic voice actors which does more to detract from the presentation than anything. If you can get over that particular hurdle, they do a fine job of playing this group of characters.

The music feels like it was pulled directly from the show, which is a good thing. The opening score is there intact, and the classic DunDUN is inserted whenever possible to remind you that you’re playing a Law & Order game.

Replay Value:

Some, but not much. You collect a score for every quiz answer, objection, and line of questioning you get right, which the game spits back to you at the end of the episode. If you aren’t satisfied with your score, it makes sense to go back through and see where you missed.

Final Score: 6.5/10

This is TellTale’s best game so far in 2012, but that’s not saying much. I really think this series has some legs though, and I hope their integration of the technology into the story gets better as it goes, because I was a big fan of the drama being presented here and found the gameplay to be a huge hurdle to my enjoyment of it, which isn’t good.

I think it’s very telling of TellTale’s overall quality control problem currently. They are (understandably) very excited about branching out into the iOS/Android/X-Box Marketplace fields, that they’ve forgotten how to make a good game. This and Jurassic Park especially, have been dumbed down to the point of barely being a game anymore, is all just vaguely interactive fiction, which isn’t one of TellTale’s strengths and not what brought them to the dance.

While the Back to the Future license brought them a lot of eyes, I’m afraid this sort of slip in quality has been frustratingly evident in TellTale’s line-up since, perhaps Sam & Max Season 2 when they started eschewing their point and click roots to incorporate frustrating multi-platform control schemes. Since then, development has been about getting games out on as many platforms as possible. Which is, I understand, tremendous for business, but their game design philosophy has really suffered horribly since that point, to the point that these are barely even games.

It’s going to be interesting, given Double Fine’s recent success in getting their Adventure Project funded, how that will turn out (it’s already made a profit sales wise, and it hasn’t even started production yet). I’m hoping it spurs TellTale to dive back into the adventure pool with a fresher perspective.

In any event, I think the writing and art style of this game is easily an 8 almost a 9, but it’s so caked in bad design decisions that, while I think it’s worth a look at $19.99 for seven episodes, I can’t recommend it to anybody but fans of the show.

If you’re interested in taking a look at the game, you can find it at the TellTale Website.