You know the drill by now. Telltale releases a new episode of The Walking Dead, and Geekscape gets a zombie hard-on about it while swearing we’re not on the company’s payroll (really… we’re not!).
If you’re hoping for anything different this time around, you might as well go read something else (I’d recommend our weekly Walking Dead column, or at least something on Geekscape). Or you could simply put up with it and listen to how freaking INCREDIBLE this experience was, especially now that it’s come to an end. And what an end it was.
So let’s get to it! There will be light spoilers ahead, so I’d refrain from reading until you’ve finished the episode!
The first chapter of Telltale’s The Walking Dead launched just seven months ago, but it feels as though it’s been years: it seems so long ago that Lee was a prisoner in that police cruiser: it’s been nearly a lifetime since he found Clementine hidden in that treehouse: ages have passed since the group was starving in the motor pool: Duck and Katjaa left us abruptly so very, very long ago. This is a testament to the unparalleled character design of the title: none of these individualss existed just seven months ago, but now each and every one of them seems so real and so different than when we were first introduced to them. The simple fact that I feel as though I personally knew these characters is an accomplishment that in my opinion, no other game has achieved before. And it’s also why it’s so hard to say goodbye to them (and we’ve said goodbye to most of them)!
Eerie, intense, and climactic, from the first moment to the last.
As amazing as Telltale’s The Walking Dead is, it’s also an extremely hard game to review. Not because I don’t know what to score it or something silly like that, but because if I reveal one major spoiler and one person decides to read this before playing, I’ve ruined the entire experience, and I wouldn’t wish that upon my worst enemy (well, maybe that one ex-girlfriend). The Walking Dead is all about your experience. Not how it ended for me, not the decisions that I made, but you, and only you. It’s like The Sixth Sense: you don’t walk around asking people if they’ve seen it, and then blurt out the twist if they say that they haven’t. If that sounds like something you would do, then you’re an awful person and I hope someone ruins this game for you, but it’s not going to be me.
Someone ruined ‘The Sixth Sense’ for me… I’m still bitter about it. So I won’t be ruining The Walking Dead game for you here.
As the fourth chapter, Around Every Corner, came to a close, our survivors were left in pretty dire straights. The final moments of the episode were among the most jaw dropping we’d seen so far: a horde of walkers on route to Savannah, Clementine kidnapped, and Lee with a fresh walker-bite on his wrist… Yes. The main character… that you’re playing as! LEE WAS BITTEN! HOW COULD THAT HAPPEN!?
I had so many extreme emotions going through me in those closing moments. I was angry because I liked the character so much, and unless his hand was quickly removed (which these survivors don’t have a clue about), things were not going to end well. At the same time, I was excited: it’s not often that games surprise me anymore, and this was something that I never, ever saw coming. Where could things possibly go from there? This had to have a happy ending, right? After all this game had put me through, I really should have known better.
If Lee doesn’t make it, these two would make pretty great parents.
No Time Left fittingly wastes no time getting started. Within moments, we’re forced to make arguably the toughest, most cringe-inducing decision of the entire game’s duration. A decision has to be made about Lee’s bite, and just like the beginning of Episode 2, during Ben’s introduction with the bear-trap, the decision to remove a limb is a tough and grisly one (and one that Telltale is going to make us experience every moment of). As disturbing as AMC’s The Walking Dead can sometimes be, you’re still just a passive TV viewer. Here, you’re not just watching, you’re making every tough decision, stabbing every walker, removing every limb with a bone-saw and oftentimes worse. Your choices effect the group, it’s your fault when others die, and it’s you and the people close to you that will suffer if you make a bad decision (and you’ll make lots of them). In writing this review, I realized that I often spent more time thinking about how to react to something while playing The Walking Dead than I do in real life. That’s another testament to how well this game is crafted: I’m constantly worried that something I say will be taken the wrong way, and I sincerely care about what these character’s think of me. Is that messed up or what?
In another intense moment, the horde hits Savannah.
No Time Left takes The Walking Dead‘s already fantastic presentation, and somehow makes it even better. It’s hard to put a finger on, but something here just felt different, maybe because it was a constant process of saying goodbye to characters we’ve grown to love. Vocal performances were nearly perfect (as they have been in every episode), and music and sound effects were also at their best. The cinematography of this episode is what really impressed me: as Lee escaped up the hospital’s elevator shaft in the introduction, with light rays shining through the dusty halls of each walker infested floor, I realized that the world of The Walking Dead has never been more beautiful.
Unfortunately, No Time Left was also the shortest episode of the bunch. I say unfortunately only because while I couldn’t wait to see the conclusion and where our characters would end up, it was an experience that I never wanted to end. The plot of the episode is the rescue of Clementine from her unknown kidnapper and the story makes a straight b-line to this confrontation. While short, the pacing of this episode is perfect, and I felt as though if a single moment had been cut, we’d be losing out on something meaningful. Every line of dialogue, every tough decision I was forced to make (did they seem tougher than ever to anyone else?), every second that passed was absolutely essential to the plot and understanding of this bleak, bleak finale.
And the finale is bleak. As I said earlier, chances of a happy ending to this story ended when you pressed the ‘Start’ button. Even though the episode was the shortest, it also includes the best moment in the entire series (of which there were many): Lee coming face to face with Clementine’s kidnapper. This sequence not only ties the entire series together, it also plays completely on the specific decisions that the player has made going back to the beginning of the first episode. It’s an incredible, self-referential moment that twisted all of my previous choices and threw them back in my face. While it brought back some very dark memories, the sequence acted as both a story summation, a psychological profile and a chess game at the same time. I don’t recall another game that had ever put me in that position before and it’s yet another testament to how the Walking Dead has taken the Adventure Game genre to another level.
As always, I played the PS3 version of the game. As is common with playing The Walking Dead on the platform (again, I’ve only played on PS3, so I can’t vouch for other versions), there were occasional technical issues that kept the game from being perfect. For me, the framerate dropped a little more often than I’d have liked, and as I’ve mentioned before, there were sometimes brief pauses while the console loaded the next camera angle. Annoying and distracting, but not nearly enough to be very detrimental to the experience.
This isn’t the saddest thing we’d see this episode.
As the episode progressed I slowly realized how things were going to end and I was both shocked and helplessly drawn to the inevitable. When the time finally came and my assumptions were correct, it hit me much harder than I’d expected and for the first time ever, a video game brought tears to my eyes. Yes. Actual tears.
As the final lines were spoken and the game faded to black for the first time without a ‘To Be Continued’ message, I realized that I couldn’t have asked for a better conclusion. The credits rolled and I was mesmerized, frozen. The Walking Dead was not only the best game I’d play this year, but one of the best gaming experiences of my entire life. I just can’t believe it’s over.
Thanks Lee. Thanks Clementine. Thanks Telltale.
I can’t wait to experience it all again. I can’t wait to make different decisions just to see how things turn out. Most of all, I can’t wait for the announced Season Two!
The Walking Dead: Episode 5 – No Time Left scores a heartbroken 5/5.
PS: Make sure to stay through the credits. You can thank me later.
