But as I said, don’t go looking for a Left 4 Dead free-for-all melee battle with a horde of zombies. This game is very much an RPG (role playing game) that leads you through the experiences of Lee Everett, who you control, making all of the big choices on his behalf. When the zombies do attack en masse, you are often stuck with the decision of who lives and who dies. And it’s never an easy, clear cut decision. The game puts you on a timer and doesn’t let you off the hook. If you don’t make a decision fast enough, you all die (one would guess, but I don’t know because I always made a choice). Do you save the little kid or the man who saved your life? It’s decisions like those that can shoot the story off into broadly arcing directions and will determine your fate, much like one of those old Choose Your Own Adventure books. Only in this case, a slow decision gets you eaten by the ravenous undead. Technically, regardless of whichever decision you make, you’ll survive. There are no real dead ends, except when you don’t react fast enough. I learned that the hard way during the first zombie I encountered. He attacked, I hesitated (actually, I wasn’t sure of the controls as there isn’t really a tutorial I was aware of… you kind of learn as you go), and I got bit, bled out, and died. Much of the non-attack moments are filled with cinematics that move the story along, searching for supplies, and chatting with your fellow survivors. This game leans a lot more toward story than action, but when it hits, you’re often left scrambling for safety as things go to hell rather quickly, especially when you least expect it (you should always be expecting it, by the way). Those moments spent sneaking around, dodging zombies when you’re pretty much defenseless are some of the more thrilling parts of the game.

For Walking Dead comic fans, you’ll get to see and interact with a few familiar faces from the books and you’ll discover what they were doing in the weeks following the catastrophe and just before they would meet Rick Grimes. I love the comic series, so it was fun more deeply exploring a world with which I was already familiar. However, since I knew their stories were going to go on, I didn’t fear for their safety as much when things were their most dire (kind of like watching Star Wars Episode 1 and not worrying about whether Obi-Wan or Anakin would make it to the end of the movie alive).

I think my only complaints about the game stem from the times when it became all too apparent that no matter who I had chosen to save in the previous scene, the same dialogue would have been spouted at me. Some of the characters are a little cliche, but I completely understand the need for conflict. Someone has to hate your guts or at least not trust your judgement. If everyone got a long, it would simply be another zombie hack-n-slash battle game (which I LOVE, by the way – Left 4 Dead 4 Evah!). And while I appreciated the richness and depth of the world, there were some items that were available to view that didn’t seem to serve any purpose whatsoever, even for aesthetic purposes. No, not everything has to be a “big clue”, but it would have been good if the news clips on the wall or the greeting card rack in the drug store would have been more detailed, rather than just being a trigger for Lee to mumble something to himself.

The controls for the PC worked perfectly fine for me, but as I said, no instructions for how to control your movements in the heat of the moment were available until you were neck deep in biter drool. Markers, if you choose to use them (I did), appear at specific moments that tell you where to point your mouse and click (SQUISH goes the zombie’s brains!). In all, I never ran into an issue with movement or interaction. How this gameplay translates to a console controller, I have no idea. That’s why I’m primarily a PC gamer. I like the precision it allows me.

The sound, music, and voices all worked for me, setting the tone for the story. And, yes, the SQUISH you get when you bash a zombie’s brains in with a hammer sound wonderfully grotesque. And god knows I got to hear it enough, because one or two hits just won’t do when it comes to putting down these walkers. The voice acting is superb, even if much of the dialogue in the beginning comes off as flat exposition as you try to get your bearings in these new surroundings among these new people who keep asking too many questions about your mysterious past and the little girl at your side, who, it quickly becomes apparent to them, is not yours.

The graphics are grim and moody, even in the daylight, with heavily drawn lines around some characters and objects, to give it a very faithful connection to the comics the game is based on. The characters aren’t “real life”, but they aren’t cartoony either. It felt like I was playing the comic and, to me, that’s alright.

The story isn’t all that elaborate or innovative, but where can you actually go in a zombie apocalypse without making it into non-stop horror or exhaustingly campy. Thankfully, it doesn’t get close to either of those extremes. How fast the story unfolds depends on how quickly you can make it through the series of questions you’ll need to ask and answer throughout your journey to save yourself and the little girl that has trusted you to take care of her until you find her parents (what are the odds THAT will happen?). What becomes glaringly obvious soon after you’ve met up with a ragtag group of survivors is that the game isn’t just about making hard decisions or playing the role of the main character… it’s a puzzle game. It all comes down to the order in which you execute each of your tasks to achieve the singular result. In those situations, it becomes very clear that there is only one path to success, which allows you to know how it will end even if all of the pieces aren’t readily available to put into place to make it happen. Considering the type of game it is and its episodic nature, I’m not sure if I should be satisfied or frustrated that it took me less than 2 hours to make it through the first chapter. Yes, I’m sure many people got through it much faster, but I like to dig, explore, and touch everything I can. And although I don’t regret my who lives/who dies decisions, part of me wanted to go back and see what would have happened had I chose someone else or clicked on a door available to me that wasn’t any longer. What if we had ventured off at night rather than during the day? It’s these questions that make me think that there’s a lot of replay value in this game, even though I’m sure I’ll zip through a number of scenes that I know how they’ll play out. Of course, I’m also considering playing again and being a complete dick to everyone I talk to, just to see what happens.

In all, the first chapter of the Walking Dead game is a fun, sometimes harrowing experience. It’s got plenty of suspense and human drama. If you’d rather be flipping through a selection of melee and range weapons as you cut your way through the bloodthirsty masses searching for healthpaks, then this game isn’t for you. It’s all about balancing out the right and wrong or the big patch of gray area smack dab in between them every time you’re forced to make a decision that you know will end at least one person’s life. I do hope that now that the main character origin has run its course, the story will be able to go in more visceral directions, balancing selflessness versus a drive to survive against those who are struggling with the same issues. I’ve imagined what kind of game this would turn into if it could somehow go the multiplayer route, but I imagine it would devolve into madness pretty quickly.

If you’re a fan of the comics and how the living, breathing characters are truly the most dangerous creatures in the book, and you’ve always wondered what you’d do in Rick’s shoes (or someone in a situation much like his), here’s your chance to find out. Don’t expect hugs or stars or gold coins or 1-ups whenever you make a “right” decision, because there is no such thing as a “right” decision. But in the real world with the undead walking the Earth, having ANY choice to make about your fate in this new world is the best you can hope for.

The Walking Dead is rated ‘M’ (Mature) for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence and Strong Language by the ESRB.

First, a history lesson, and then some recently released suggestions.

Come back with me – to the dawn of personal computer time – and you’ll find Andriod Nim; written for the Radio Shack TRS-80, this is one of the very first graphical games. Because the whole thing had to fit in a 16K footprint (not much larger than this article), it was based on a simple game played with wood pegs – in which the last player with a remaining “Nim” was the winner. So stop here and take some photos for posterity. Moving on…

One of the first arcade games for the Apple 2 was Choplifter, which had the rare distinction of being ported from the 1982 computer version to a real arcade game, and then ported back to untold computer remakes later. Most every other arcade game has taken the reverse trek, with a few more early exceptions – like Tetris.

Fast forward to the last years of computer “bulletin boards” (what our PC’s connected to – before the Internet), and you’ll find the very dawn of Id Software (RAGE, Quake, Doom). They made downloadable versions of very slick arcade games. These games stand up remarkably well, have been configured to run on today’s systems, and can be purchased from Steam. Every student of (arcade) gaming development or John Carmack should be forced to pony up the 5 bucks and play Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy!

Our last museum entry is a great little arcade gem called Lemmings. You get a collection of the little rodents, some can dig and others can float. Play their skills right and you can successfully lead the herd to safety. Get it wrong and… well, they’re Lemmings. Arcade affectionados can play a web-based mini version of the game here.

This concludes your history lesson, my list of some arcade gaming essentials. We leave the museum and turn our attention to the present now.
New arcade stuff is just pouring out daily for the mobile environment, but my PopCultureGeek purview is limited to traditional desktop gaming, so I’ve plucked out a few recent releases you may like. They all work well with a keyboard.

Two Tribes is a developer based in the Netherlands, with a history of producing games for dinky screens. But on Steam, you can buy a Two Tribes Pack – which contains 3 cool ways to totally waste time on your Mac or PC – for less than a stop at Starbucks. Each one is a great way to top off an evening when your brain has little power left for team play, or aiming, or even speech, considering where you’ve been.

1. EDGE – You’re given a single fricken cube to roll around the ever-changing play field with your arrow keys. Up and down stairs, or along a narrow bridge. Sure, it sounds easy enough… but occasionally you have to demonstrate a flash of coordination. That little shot of adrenalin can keep your conscious – so you can once again try just one more level…
2. RUSH – This is EDGE on steroids, and reminded me of Lemmings. Here’s a growing family of cubes with minds of their own. Your job is to corral them all to a safe finish. This one might require a slightly clearer head, but with each level you feel the sense of reward that might otherwise come from helping your drunk roommate find the bathroom.
3. TOKI TORI – This lush side-scroller – which features the Two Tribes’ mascot bird (a morbidly obese version of Tweety – to better appeal to today’s youth). Each level deals my bird a fixed hand of special power cards (transport, gun, bridge, etc) and a play field which seems to always require one more card than the ones I had. But surprisingly, I would always find the secret by the second or third try (especially if I go to the web site and watch the solution… but I digress).

And here’s two more for the road…

VVVVVV – That’s the title. A bunch of V’s – which are the pointy ASCII symbols that kill. The game by Terry Cavanagh is a celebration of the old-school arcade challenge like Id first made. Press the up key and your little guy falls UP. Press the down key and he falls like normal. Press other directional keys with spastic precision and you might get somewhere!

Vessel – This current release has all the elements of an arcade game: Side-scrolling, puzzle solving, etc. But the lush graphics and thoughtful premise stretch the boundaries of the definition. You are a handsome little dude with a magical gun that brings liquid to life, forming helpful beings that further your progress. Just stop reading, go to Steam and play the demo for a fitting conclusion to my little history lesson. See for yourself how the “arcade game” of today would make it’s parents proud.

Check out the launch announcement video for yourself…

But if you can’t wait for the NES version, just go to Google Maps right now and click the QUEST button in the top right corner. Also, make sure you zoom in as far as possible to see the stunningly low-res Street View!

Good news for me then, because Robert Kirkman has teamed up with the folks at Telltale Games to create an immersive, story-driven video game, doled out in downloadable episodes, for the PC, Mac, Xbox Live Arcade, the Playstation Network, and other leading platforms.

First, a few quick facts:

• It’s set in the world of the Walking Dead comic series, not the TV series.
• Rick Grimes is not the center of the story or a playable character.
• However, you will run into a few familiar faces from before Rick met them, including Glenn and Herschel.
• The game is story and decision based, not simply a gnash, slash, and bash style game (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

If you want to know more about this game and a few behind the scenes secrets on how it came to be, check out the Playing Dead online video series below, starting with the official trailer:

Debut Trailer

Playing Dead Part 1

Playing Dead Part 2

Playing Dead Part 3

Also, by pre-ordering the Walking Dead, you could win the chance to be zombified and put into a future episode of the game!

For example, if you were one of those folks who – after hearing all the hype surrounding movies like Lost in Translation and The Royal Tenenbaums – felt cheated after falling asleep trying to actually watch them; then you might not want to plunk down the 10 bucks on Steam for this product. Despite all the gaming hype: It’s not a game. There’s no action or weapon, you can’t jump or crouch, and – I think I’m not giving too much away by saying – there’s no creature that jumps out and goes “Boo” here. You simply waft through a first-person world in an exploration of (to use the author’s original project description) “experimental game play and storytelling”. You can save your progress, but you’ll probably down this apéritif in a single evening.

In the words of the author: “Dear Esther is a poetic ghost story told using game technologies. You explore a deserted island, uncovering a tale of love, loss, grief and redemption…”. But if you came to shoot or see ghosts, or even fall in love, you’ll be disappointed. This is no tropical Far Cry island either, it’s obviously in the North Atlantic. You’ll wander the cold, rocky paths and trigger narrative installments – which reveal the anguish of someone who has tragically lost a love. The story culminates as one might expect, in a sequence where you can no longer control yourself – and are lost to a cut-scene that first felt like a rip-off – but ultimately gave me adequate redemption for my $9.99 investment.

So, having turned off traditional gamers to this “game”, I now give my endorsements: If you – like me – are into the art of game level design, then you should watch “Dear Esther”. If you like to traverse Valve game mods like “The Lost Coast” – with the developer commentary turned on – then you too should watch “Dear Esther”. If you love emotional journeys as much – or more – than BFG’s and health kits (ya know… like a girl), you’ll enjoy this little head trip.

The levels and visuals are spectacular. My Alienware M15X laptop has a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M and Windows 7 64 – and I felt like I could reach out and touch the waving grass, or catch on my tongue the drips from stalactites. The caves were beautiful (I just love the way the Source engine renders water) and navigation within their tight spaces tended to confirm my suspicions that our character was perhaps not really embodied – a nod to Pinchbeck’s “experimental storytelling”. Jessica Curry‘s soundtrack is mesmerizing, and Nigel Carrington‘s narration is perfect. The ocean, wind and story all gave me chills.

It’s unfortunate that all the hype surrounding Dear Esther is coming from the gaming world though, because it’s not really a game. It’s just a great production.

The movie stars Jason Mewes (Jay and Silent Bob), Blake Freeman (Gawd Bless America), Moises Arias (Ender’s Game), Matt Shively (True Jackson, VP), Zelda Williams, Casper Van Dien (Starship Troopers) and Jon Gries (Napoleon Dynamite). Look for the film in early summer 2012.

Here’s some pics I shot from behind the scenes during filming…

So wouldn’t it make sense to take the music of the new Tron movie and retro-fy it by remixing it and re-sampling it back to the era of 8-bit goodness when Nintendo, Intellivision, and Atari reigned. Here’s your chance to get Daft Punk’s Tron Legacy music (among other tunes) in the format you imagine it would sound like, had it been recorded in the era of the original video game back in the 80s. Each volume is downloadable for FREE on the official Da Chip site! It’s some amazing stuff. But don’t take my word for it, listen to both volumes below…

Unfortunately, “picturing this” is all we could really do; as Interwave gave us a single ticket to a multiplayer party. We could not get the competitive play to even start until we had at least 4 players in our game – and the online servers last weekend were either empty or secured. So it was difficult to enjoy features like command view without shelling out for additional licenses… something were remiss to do (not for any principle really, just that 25 bucks per license can also feed us all ramen and cereal for a week).

Still, the levels we played (well… wandered really) we’re beautifully designed and rendered. Play is set in post-apocalyptic imagined cityscapes of UK, Japan, Dubai and elsewhere. The terrain is littered with torched cars, waste and bodies – as the vast majority of humankind is gone (except soldiers… and those exclusive radiation-resistant workers who keep the electricity on). Except for the specific controls of the game (like resource centers), there’s little interaction with props, like vehicles; “Damn, why would they put a tricked-out snowmobile here if I can’t fire it up?”

Here are some cool vehicles I can't seem to ride.

Your team is pitted against another, in an attempt to take each others flag… er… command center – assisted by one uber-player who can coordinate your movements and grant supplies from above, via isometric map view. The description claims “Nuclear Dawn is the first game to offer a full FPS and RTS experience…”, which kinda spits in the faces of the old Battlefield 2 development team.

Taking a page from Team Fortress and others, you pick your solder from a list of career types, to match your style (lurk and snipe vs. stand and deliver, vs. perhaps fix some things). Experienced players can unlock weapons and premiums to enhance game play, and industrious players can create their own maps too.

Powered by Valve‘s Source, the experience is as good as Half-Life 2, Portal, Left4Dead and the others which use this engine. My Alienware M15X laptop has a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M and Windows 7 64 – and had no problem giving me smooth action and beautiful imagery. Some maps and gameplay devices – like the command centers, spawn points and recharging resource units – are even reminiscent of the Half-Life’s Combine. The way the secondary resource unit activated itself and started doing little “mechanized push-ups” had me thinking that it was scaring away City 17′s Antlions, rather than pumping out numbers to recharge me. Ah, memories…

This game would be a blast at an old fashioned LAN party – or perhaps a sponsored expo competition. But like I said at the start: we need 4 live solders for the challenge to even begin. This is possibly because someone at Interwave decided you needed 2 to control some resource points, times the two teams it takes to tango.

Without a lower threshold to entry (not just price – but something to DO until you can herd the requisite quantity of players, like a single player campaign – or some bots to play) this game might become a victim of bad timing: Some heavy hitters with huge promo budgets are hitting the market this winter (MW3 for example), and Team Fortress 2 is free now. Events like these are likely to siphon away the same “team theme” players this game sorely needs to build market momentum.

UPDATE: I just checked the Nuclear Dawn server community recently, and it looks like the lower Valve price – perhaps combined with Free Weekend promos and other giveaways – has drummed up a fair community of (likely Counter Strike ex-pat) players, and servers to host them. Interwave has just released a nice update as well!