I was recently visiting a friend in Hamburg, Germany, one of my only friends who appreciates a good PC game as much as I do. When Dieter’s not showing me the tourist sites he has yet to introduce me to like St Nikolai Memorial or Park Planten un Blomen, the subject will usually turn to the latest PC games we’ve discovered. This time around he praised one I had overlooked until now: The Walking Dead. I decided to check it out, and I’ve got to say, I could not stop playing it. At first you think that it’s just going to be another workaday FPS game, but it’s really an excellent situational RPG. No game has ever taken much of what you say and do into consideration.
Quick decision making is essential for this game as you have to react quickly when the undead come busting in. Shooting accurately is not really a factor, just do it quickly. Something else Dieter and I have in common is a fondness for playing poker; we’ve been known to check out a few casinos during my visits to Hamburg, and I’ve realized these skills are transferable and even beneficial when playing RPG’s and shooting games. People who often frequent online gaming portals like partypoker de will know what I’m talking about. Apart from the possible financial gain, anyone whether you’re from Germany or the UK can learn to make snappy decisions over time, playing both poker and shooter games.
Imagine holding 2 cards. The dealer draws the flop and you are given a limited time to both check your hand and calculate your chances of winning against the other players. All the while, ensuring that you don’t reveal too much of what you have during bets and raises. The game of poker can be a very challenging mind game and it can improve your reaction time. This can be handy playing Walking Dead or if a zombie apocalypse really does ensue. In any case, the game revolves around Lee Everett, a convicted felon on his way to the big house, when zombies ran wild and made the police car escorting him to prison veer off from the highway and overturn near a residential area. The decisions and reactions you make while playing the game, makes an impact on how the other characters react to you and how Clementine, the impressionable young girl you encounter, perceives you as her caretaker. Certain aspects of the game become difficult if the other survivors carry a grudge against you and will eventually change the game.
What’s interesting about the game is that it places you in a situation where you can act decent and continue to act as if the world didn’t get flushed down the toilet, or you could be practical and take what you can when you can. Interestingly my German friend seemed to have his moral compass in tact, in comparison to myself when making decisions in The Walking Dead. I’m not sure what that says about how we would actually handle a zombie apocalypse. Hasty decisions could also bring down a huge flock of zombies on you if you misuse your firearm. As you know, loud noises attract the undead.
Apart from being careful not to be zombie food, you also need to make some hard decisions when one of your companions dies or turns. The success it has garnered so far is immense, considering that the graphics are not as top notch as the newer games out there and that the game play is fairly simple and has no higher level of difficulty. The reason for its success can be attributed to the fact that watching humans survive and retain any form of morality is both captivating and entertaining.
Will you choose to be moral when everything else is taken from you?
