Are there any standout titles when it comes to Zombies?

If you are like me you might have noticed that over the last five or more years there has been an increase in the amount of content across all forms of media when it comes to Zombies. This is fine with me even though I am not a massive fan of the genre but there has been one stand out piece that everyone has been talking about for the last three years and that is The Walking Dead.

Today I will be looking at the point and click adventure of The Walking Dead the video game that was released last year by Telltale Games but before we get into the game itself let me mention that The Walking Dead started off as a graphic novel that was created by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard back in 2003. Then in 2010 AMC then released a television adoption of the comic book which from what I have read and hear has been met with very high praises.

With all this praise it was only going to be a matter of time before someone decided to make a video game out of it and nine times out of ten that video game is going to be nothing like the show that it was created from but lucky for us Telltale Games decided that they would make a game based on The Walking Dead but as a point and click adventure.

Now I have never seen or read anything to do with The Walking Dead but from all the praise that the show and the game have received I knew that I would have to have a look at it at some point, lucky for me all five chapters went on sale back in March so I decide then that I would pick it up but have only just finished playing the game.

I should point out that from this point onwards there could be a chance of spoilers, so you have been warned.

Now as I said moments ago I went into the game completely blind and I had no knowledge of what I was getting myself into but that didn’t really matter because the game starts just as the Zombie outbreak happens. This to me was a good way to start the story because it allows for those that are new to the series to understand what is going on and enables you to experience what the characters are experiences as they learn something new about their surroundings.

Now without giving too much away for those that haven’t played the game yet, this is a story about a group of characters trying to survive the aftermath of the Zombie apocalypse, at the same time you will be playing as Lee Everett and making choice that will effect the group and Clementine who you find at the start of the game and have taken it upon yourself to protect.

As I have just mentioned this game allows you to make choice that can be carried over from one episode of the game to the next. Now if you have read any of my Mass Effect blogs that I released back in March you will know that I enjoy playing games and watching Television shows that show you the consequences of your actions. In this game these choice you make may not appear till later in the game which is good because you will never know on your first play through when these choice will come back to haunt you.

The way in which the game plays also is very good for a game that is based on a point and click adventure, what I mean by this is the fact the game makes you feel like you are in the games world looks for items that will enable you to survive.

The last part of the game that I enjoy was the way in which the characters develop throughout the game, as the game goes fewer on it throws in events were you have to make hard decision and because of these decision you as a character and those around you change as the story goes on.

So with a game that has been praised so much what were the problems that I had with this game, well one of biggest problems that I encountered was with the conversation options. The reason for the problem was the fact that it would give you up to four options when you are having a conversation with someone along with a time limit in which to give one of the four responses to them. Now I will admit that I am not one of the fastest readers and because of this I sometimes didn’t get the time to read all the options that where present to me and because of this sometimes I didn’t chose anything which just left my character saying nothing.

The next two problems I had with the game was to do with the story itself, I am not saying that the story was bad because to me it was very good but there were parts were I knew what was going to happen before it happened and that wasn’t because I had read up what was going to happen. Examples of this would be when you leave the motel in episode 3 and arrive at the train that is blocking the road, another one for me was also at the end of the fourth episode where you see Clementine’s hat next to a dumpster.

This also leads me into the final problem with the story, you are given the choice to go it alone to save Clementine which was what I decided but before I could go I had to have a chat with everyone were they would tell me if they are coming with me or not and even then when the final chapter gets started you end up coming back to the group that you left in chapter four to find Clementine.

Apart from very long conversation sections of the game and the small grips with the story the game as a whole was brilliant and because of that I now have an interested in The Walking Dead. If you are a fan of the show and haven’t played the game yet I would recommend you do so and if you are a gamer that likes a good story or a good game in general then I would recommend that you go and play this game right now.

Until Next Time.

Advice

Today I am going to spend a bit of time talking about something we are all good at but at the same time not good at following up and that is giving and acting upon advice.

If there is one thing that we are all good at doing is giving advice to other when they need it and I will confess that if there is someone that asks for my advice I will gladly give it. The two things that I have also noticed with this is the fact that we tend to not act upon the advice that has been given to us and second that when we end up in the same situation that we have once given advice on before we tend not to use our own advice, so why is this?

Now to answer the last part of that question is very easy because I remember being told by someone that we tend not to like using the same advice that we have given to someone else due to the fact of us not knowing what the consequences are. The other part you also have to remember is that if we do decided to use our own advice we have no one else but ourselves to blame if everything goes wrong and that is something we as a species don’t like doing because we like to blame others for our mistakes (most of the time).

So why do we enjoy giving others advice on other people’s problems to begin with, the reason behind this is because we like to see how they would handle themselves in the same problem and second to see if they can see something that we can’t see or can see but don’t want to admit to ourselves.

An example of what I am mean is if we take one of my ex-girlfriend, the two of us were in an on again and off again relationship for the whole relationship. I knew from the very first break up that the relationship wasn’t for me and that was due to the fact that I wanted more from the relationship than what she was going to give me. So when I took the time to talk to my friends about it they all said the same thing that I had said, about how she wasn’t right for me and that they also believed that she was using me which could have been true.

As you can see from the example my friends got the idea that she was using me which could have been true but was something that I didn’t see right away (but when I look back at it I could see what they meant), they also said that the relationship wasn’t for me. Now when it came to giving out advice on the subject they said I should one dump her and find someone else and second was that I should confront her and tell her what I wanted from the relationship.

I will be the first to admit that both of this came to mind but at the same time I also dismissed the second option due to the fact that the two of us had spoken at the beginning of the relationship about what we wanted out of the relationship and at the beginning we both wanted the same thing but we just couldn’t get it to work which left the whole dumping part.

If I dumped her I already knew what the outcome was going to be but I didn’t want to go with that advice or my own advice to dump her because part of me was comfortable with the way the relationship was when we did get back together.

So as you can see from my example it is easy to tell another person that you trust what the problem is and for them to give you advice on what you should do in that situation but when it comes to acting on it you may not act on it because you are afraid of what the outcomes could be or you could be happy with the way things are.

At the end of the day we all act to problems differently and we also like to see how other would act in the same situation as us, when it comes to giving out and using advice it comes down to what you really want to do, if you are happy with the way things are you won’t do anything and if you want to change things you will act on the advice of other or lastly if it gets too much you could just make the decision yourself.

Until Next Time