THE WALKING DEAD: STARVED FOR HELP REVIEW

By Sean Smyth... Obviously...

Walkers Aren't The Only Thing Lurking In The Shadows...

The Walking Dead is on the tip of everyone's tongue these days. From comics, to television, and its most recent foray into games with an episodic game series of the same name.

The game, for those who don't know, is not your normal, run of the mill, shooter or survival game or anything like that. It's more like an interactive comic or RPG. Most of the game is solving problems and puzzles and learning about the characters and making choices. Very little of it actually involves killing zombies, but when you do... man is it nasty shit. But that's not even the best part. The choices you make in previous episodes carry over to the next. Directly effecting how the story plays out.

The Walking Dead is developed by TellTale Games, who always puts an emphasis on story rather than action. Some of their past games include Sam and Max, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, and most of the CSI and Law and Order's where you basically solve crimes. 

Now seeing as how the first episode of this series was unleashed over a month ago, and I'm running a little late on the review for this one (it's been out for over a week). Let me try and give you the low down on where we are now. 

SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THROUGH EPISODE ONE AVERT YOUR EYES FROM THE ITALICS!!!

Now that we got that out of the way... Episode One, A New Day, introduced us to Lee Everett, an everyman with a mysterious murder of some politician in his past that was highly publicized.  Lee was being transported in the back of a police cruiser until BLAM! Zombie outbreak. Lee, after surviving a car crash, stumbles upon a young girl named Clementine who has been surviving on her own and takes her under his wing and protects her as they set of to a small town called Macon where Lee's family lives. 

Lee and Clem manage to meet up with the popular character, Hershal Greene, and another family who is also seeking refuge (Kenny, Duck, and Katjaa). However after an attack of Walkers on the farm, Hershal son dies and Hershal forces them all to leave and Kenny offers Lee a ride to Macon. 

Upon reaching Macon, the group is attacked only to be rescued by another batch of survivors (Lilly, her father Larry, Carly, Doug, and fan favorite Glenn). who were hiding in a Drug Store that is owned by Lee's parents. Ideals and beliefs clash between the two groups while Glenn goes off to try and collect supplies. Larry gets into it with Lee and Kenny allowing a heart problem to emerge that requires some medication from the Pharmacy to survive, only they don't have the keys.

Glenn calls in that he is pinned down by Walkers at a Motor Inn up the road and asks for help. Carly and Lee go to help and clear out the Inn. They return back to the Pharmacy with supplies and Doug and Lee manage to find a Lee's zombified brother trapped under a telephone pole outside the store with the keys. After some maneuvering they manage to get the keys only to set off an alarm when opening the Pharmacy door for the medication. 

The store is flooded by zombies and everyone is forced to flee, with only a single casualty that you are forced to let die to safe someone else. The group sets up shop at the Motor Inn that Lee, Carly and Glen had cleared out and Glen leaves, and pretty much everyone is mad about something. 

"HEY! I need to AXE you a question. Get it?

Episode One was great, and a wonderful piece of character work. Episode Two: Starved For Help, as it is so eloquently named, takes that character work and the interaction and survival of these very different people two steps forward along with the choices you made from the first episode.

Starved For Help picks up three months after the events of the first Episode and the group is, well, starving, and needs help. Over the course of these strenuous months little has changed. A new person, Mark, who had been in the Air Force in his precious life,  joined the group and everyone is choosing sides between Lilly and Kenny who both have their own opinions on what they should be doing as a group. Kenny wants to leave to the coast, Lilly wants to stay put and wait it out, putting Lee right in the middle.

This Is Mark, he's kind of a nerdy badass.

The episode opens with a bang, really thrusting you back into things well with Lee and Mark slinking through the woods hunting for food and killing Walkers when they happen upon Ben (a high school student and what seems to be a new regular character), a Music Professor caught in a Bear Trap and a fellow student. The group is attack by a horde of Walkers and you are forced to make a wicked quick decision of leaving the guy or taking him with you. And no, there is no release lever on the Bear Trap.  Dum Dum Dummmm.

The early parts of the episode are back at the Motor Inn where Lilly tasks you with giving out the rations to the rest of the group and it is here that the morality and choice mechanics truly come into play with the interactions with each individual character of the group. You walk around the Motor Inn talking to everyone finding out their situation then ultimately choosing who gets the food and the people who don't get the food needless to say aren't really to happy while others applaud you for doing what is right depending on what you choose of course.

No Nutrion Table? 

Soon after, two survivors come upon your Inn in search for gas for their generators and in exchange for food. Starving for Help? I wonder what they're going to do???

Needless to say Lee, Mark and a couple others end up going on a little walk up the road with Danny and Andy St. John (the two survivors) to their Dairy farm (St. John's Dairy) where we meet the mother who runs the farm, Brenda St. John.

Everything starts out all hunky dory as you try and earn the St. John's trust and earn your food and maybe even a safe place away from all the Walkers, while the other two who came along go back to camp to retrieve the rest of the group. Life seems good.

Then Andy asks you to clear Walkers from the fence on the farthest most part of the farm... Lee and Mark are attacked by bandits in the woods who wound Mark and you narrowly escape only to turn back up when the rest of the group comes to the farm.

Everything starts to go downhill and suspensions begin to rear their heads on both sides of the fence. What to do about here Bandits and who exactly are these St. John's?  Well I'm not going to ruin it for you but I will say it is a twist you see coming from a mile away, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is any less tense or mysterious.

TellTale has done an excellent job giving these characters full well rounded personalities, each with their own quirks, goals and really showing how far people will go just to survive. The plot is one of the better plots I've seen in a while, certainly better than most things I've seen on TV. The episode does a fantastic job, as I said, of building tension throughout making you really feel like you are on the edge of your seat, even though it seems obvious what will happen next. However they do manage to throw a few curveballs that can catch even the most cynical person off guard.

The moment you hit that single squeaky stair in a eerily silent farm house....

The gameplay is the same from the first episode allowing you to walk around and interact with a lot of objects and people with only a few buttons and the combat is simple and at times kind of button mashy, but you really don't mind because it adds to the tension especially in battles for strength.

The audio and graphics are all well in fine no big changes. Though in terms of flaws it seems as though the audio cuts in and out and sometimes the screen freezes during a scene change that makes the game feel a little choppy. But this really doesn't take away from how great this episode is and the reasons behind what people do are just dead on real.

The decision making and morality seems more potent in terms of what is actually happening in terms of story and you really feel like you are playing a game that you are a part of. Being able to play the way you want to play. My Lee will do anything to save anyone even if it means being unpopular or losing a friend.

So, we're not together anymore?

Oh! And Clementine actually has some use in this episode instead of constantly having to be saved like the first and it was a real growing moment for her as a character. Not to mention she has become an obsession for some crazy women living in the woods who teases the next episode with a small recording, warning Clementine via camera.

Overall the episode was great and I would recommend anyone who hasn't tired this game yet, and loves themselves a good honest story instead of the classic run and gun Call of Duty nonsense to give it a go. You won't be disappointed.  This particular episode gets 4.5 blips out of 5.

By the way this Blog actually launches for reals on Monday and I will be posting up to date information three times a day at the very least so stay tuned to Blip for all your Entertainment News needs. And please like and share this page across the interweb and comment with any suggestions or if you just wanna start some shit.  So until I come up with a catchy slogan... LATER!