Review: The Walking Dead: 400 Days

Posted by angelcruz2241991 on July 12th, 2013 | 3 Comments | Tags: TellTale Games , The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead Season One was an awesome game. The storytelling and the way your choices actually mattered was groundbreaking. 400 Days tries to expand on that, by bridging the gap between seasons 1 and 2, but does it capture the same experience that the first game created?

The game starts you off at a bulletin board, with 5 pictures on it. You have the option of picking any of the 5 characters, and playing them in any order. Each character has his or her own story, and tough choices to make along with it. Each story has at least one of those choices to make, but I didn’t really feel they mattered as much as with the original game. 400 Days gives you a limited amount of time with each character, only around 15 minutes each. With that being said, I didn’t feel as connected and immersed in the characters’ storylines as I did in Lee and Clementine’s. I would have loved to see these stories expanded on a bit more, as they were interesting and overall good characters.

Another thing about the choices in the game, I didn’t feel they held the same weight as they did in the previous game. The repercussions were not as big. When you do something, or make a choice that is worthy of a “They will remember that” you never really feel the bite of it later in the game. Maybe the choices will come back in the second season, but they didn’t really matter for now. I played through the game twice, just to see the other options and how they played out, and the game didn’t change much either. Just a few dialogue alterations, but nothing to the main storyline. This was kind of disappointing to me, as I would have liked to see some more changes in the story, especially because the DLC is so small.

The game’s point and click adventure style kind of hampers the experience. It was fine for anywhere where you had to look for something, but in the more intense scenes, it kind of got in the way. When you are being swarmed by zombies, you would think it’s fast paced action, right? Well, the point and click here takes away all tension. The cursor moves really slowly, and to shoot all you need is a quick tap of the X button. Not really exciting zombie shooting. The camera can get out of whack too, a problem that also happened in the original. While walking around in Shel’s story, I couldn’t see where I was going half the time, and she would walk the wrong way, too.

The add-on is 5 dollars for the hour and a half of content that you get. This is steep, especially considering the game has little to no replay value, if you don’t want to experience the story for a second time. While I still believe it’s worth it, that’s still pretty expensive for a short add-on like this.

Technical difficulties and price point aside, The Walking Dead 400 Days still puts up good stories, and is an enjoyable extension of the game’s universe. While I didn’t feel the stories were as compelling nor were the decisions as tough, it still had good characters. I wish I could have gotten more, but I am okay and still satiated with what I got. If you are a huge TWD game fan, check this out. But, if you don’t have the money now, your purchase can wait.

A copy of this game was purchased for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here. This review is for the PlayStation 3 version of the game.

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