The Walking Dead: 400 Days does little to make us feel better about the nebulous, open-ended finale of The Walking Dead: The Game Season 1. In fact, meeting five brand new characters and seeing their lives torn apart only reinforces how heartbreaking the world of The Walking Dead is, but anyone who wants to know how Season 2 is going to begin -- or at least some of the characters we’re probably going to see in it -- owes it to him or herself to play this stellar adventure in what can only be called short story video game fiction. 400 Days is a bridge between Season 1 and Season 2 of The Walking Dead: The Game. If you have a keen eye, you’ll see a familiar face or two, but this isn’t picking up where Episode 5 left off (even though it is reading your Season 1 save). Here, we play as five different characters through five different stories, each of which take place somewhere within a span of 400 days wrapped around a Georgia truck stop. What’s amazing about The Walking Dead: 400 Days is how quickly -- and how differently -- developer Telltale Games has you start caring about the folks here. Shel’s just trying to be a good sister, but when that conflicts with being a good survivor, what do you do? You’d think you could hate Vince the convict, but his motivations of family make him human. And anybody who plays “Would You Rather” in a zombie apocalypse is immediately cool. Of course, all this is built around the choice system we know from The Walking Dead: The Game Season 1. Your character starts talking to someone, and you have to choose what they say, which influences how that person views your character. Maybe Vince is a jerk in your game, but I’m making him be honest and own up to his mistakes. Thus, he’s endearing to me. That’s the thing about 400 Days: it’s concentrated Walking Dead. The entire episode -- all five stories -- took me just an hour and 20 minutes to see. That means that each time you start a section, Telltale immediately starts bonding you to a character just so the horrible thing he or she is about to go through makes an impact. It’s a brilliant move that works, even if the super-speed didn’t leave me in love with anyone like it did when spending 10 hours with Lee and Clem. From a breezy bulletin board littered with missing posters, you can tackle the five tales in any order. One starts two days into the outbreak and another 220, but most contain a thread linking them to the other stories. This could be a nightmare of different timelines and cheesy tie-ins, but Telltale finds a good balance. My playthrough had me see the demise of two people only to have another arc 30 minutes later wonder where these bloodstains came from. Look out the window of a bus, and you catch a glimpse of someone you’ll play as later (or already have played as). And the remarkable thing is that the gameplay in each episode feels different. I expected five versions of Lee palette-swaps rummaging through cabinets, and while there’s definitely one arc like that, the rest feel like Telltale experimenting and stretching its creative legs. Do you flag down the strange truck approaching you? Where do you hide in the creepy cornfield while gun-toting pursuers patrol the perimeter? Should you or your friend venture out of the vehicle and into the eerie fog surrounding you? The fives stories don’t feel like Season 1 thanks to to tension, suspense, and the unknown. That’s not easy to do, and it’s a welcome surprise. What’s not surprising are the same Telltale hiccups we’ve come to expect. Lip syncing can be off at times, the cuts between scenes can be abrupt, and so on. Just like last year, the tech problems aren’t enough to ruin the experience, but they are noticeable. FYI: This review is based on the PlayStation 3 version of The Walking Dead: 400 Days. As I play the other versions, I'll update the review to include those platforms. THE VERDICT: The Walking Dead: 400 Days is a great appetizer for Season 2. The ending’s a bit too simple (Wait, if they’re hiding from people, why would they do that?) and I don’t love the characters like I loved Lee and Clem, but the action and drama show that Telltale still has it and isn’t satisfied to pump out exactly what the developers did last year. That -- like these five stories -- is very exciting. +Fun stories +Gory moments +Cool characters – Weak wrap-up – Tech hiccups Review by: IGN
