I played 30-45 minutes of The Walking Dead last night. This was enough time to finish the first scene, with a suitable introduction to the main character. They’ve laid the foundation for an interesting story around the protagonist who may/may not have killed his wife before the game started. The writing is working out pretty well for me. The game feels highly cinematic, while it’s cell-shadedish textures looks a lot like a comic book. It’s a pretty interesting visual blend between the comic book and tv show. So far, the game isn’t really scary, but that isn’t the draw for this franchise.

The marketing around this game claims there are no quick time events. This is a goddamn lie. Killing zombies seems to be a process of mashing ‘q’ a few times, then ‘e.’ You know when to do this because of a prompt that appears on the screen. It looks like you want to be quick with your response, less you get zombified. If these aren’t QTEs, I don’t know what is. I didn’t play Jurassic Park, but I understand they’re trying to distance themselves from that game. So maybe this is a different style of QTE, I can’t honestly say. I took a look at a gameplay video for Jurassic Park, and I can say it looks really similar.

Assuming the $25 gets you all five episodes (roughly ten hours of game) and the quality of the game stays as high as this initial 30 minutes, The Walking Dead seems like a decent value proposition. I’m looking forward to finishing Episode One this week.