The Walking Dead on iPad

I recently finished playing through The Walking Dead on my iPad. The game has gotten a lot of press for being a great story, being well thought out and for offering some of the best voice acting in the business. It deserves the press. I had a ball playing the game and I found the story in particular, to be far superior to what is often available in video games.

I enjoyed it for other reasons too. First of all, I should mention that i've been reading The Walking Dead comic book series for years. I was disappointed in the AMC show and stopped watching after the first season. I pretty much expected the game to be similar. "Good, if you've never read the book" is a label that applies to plenty of TV shows and movies. I also expected this mantra to apply to a story driven game like The Walking Dead. But I was wrong. While the overall feel of the game and the art direction does depart from the comic books, I still found them enjoyable and excellent in their own right

I chose to share the experience of playing through the game with my girlfriend. The iPad offers unique opportunities for co-operative adventure gaming that aren't available on any other platform. In fact, we originally tried to play the game on PC, an idea that was eventually vetoed by her. As a non-gamer, WASD based movement with Q and E as action buttons seemed random and completely unintuitive to her. An iPad on the other hand, can be held between two people with anyone poking at the screen at the appropriate time. Time sensitive decision making sometimes exposed weaknesses in this method, but for the most part it worked really well. I now have a positive video game experience to point to and as a result she is open to playing other video games with me as well. I'd be quite thankful if that became the game's lasting legacy in my life.

I hadn't played an adventure game since I was pretty young and I was worried that The Walking Dead would feature lots of pixel hunting. Either adventure gaming has grown up since I was a kid, or The Walking Dead has an extremely slick design meant to smoothly move players along through the story. Regardless, those moments of frustration I used to feel at times while playing Full Throttle and Leisure Suit Larry were thankfully absent. The game is confident in its story taking center stage and any perceived lack of gameplay is pretty much ignored by gamers who are on the edge of their seats wondering what will happen next.

The Walking Dead really lived up to its billing for me. Not only engaging me the whole way through, but actually opening up new doors for both my girlfriend and me. I now want to rediscover point and click adventures and my girlfriend is now open to the idea that video game can be a fun, co-operative interactive experience. The Walking Dead was a blast from start to finish.