Now I hate spoilers, so I'm going to try to write this whilst giving as little away about it as possible. That's hard - but it's worth my effort, because if you're in the slightest bit interested in following Lee Everett's journey through the Walking Dead world, then I strongly recommend that you give it a go.
This first thing to say is that this very much an interactive story, rather than an open world, sandbox adventure. Much of the action is scripted, and you have a limited set of options at each point. But - and this is a very important "but" - the story is really well written, the characters are believable, and there's a distinct lack of people doing really stupid, horror-movie, things: wandering alone into dark basements, setting up camp next to trees without sentries active at all times - you know the kind of thing.
And in any case, the lack of freedom isn't that different to most other games - even the sandbox adventures. Let's face it for all the freedom GTA IV gives you in roaming Liberty City, the number of storyline options you have are extremely limited. And, despite being heralded as the poster-boy of sandbox games, it's the only entry in the series that has any storyline choices at all.
The thing about The Walking Dead game is that it isn't afraid the hit you with some quite serious choices. Ones that quite frankly there is no right answer to: you're forced into a split-second decision, where either choice is unpleasant: you can only save one person, so is it Person A or Person B? Two people in your group have completely opposite views - so who do you piss off? (Knowing that the person you sided against will hold that against you, and the person you sided with won't give you much credit for siding with them.)
As soon as I started playing, I decided that I needed to play through it again when I'd finished so that I could go back and make the "best" decisions. But by the time I finished, I came to the conclusion that I'd make choices throughout that I was happy with and there's very little I'd change. (Well, perhaps one thing right near the end - but I'm not sure that would have made any difference.)
That's not to say that I think any less of the game for me not wanting to replay it (well, not right away) - far from it. It was an excellent story, an excellent exploration of the collapse of society and the struggle within a group to survive.
My only gripe was that when the game decided to kill off companions (which it did quite a lot), there was nothing you could do to stop it. If you replayed the game and avoided one decision that had killed off a particular companion, you'd discover that they died in a different way not so long after in a way that you had no control over.
I guess that's a construct that enabled the game designers to keep the scope of the game realistic - if you give a player one decision that fundamentally changes the game then you have two branches from that point on. Give them another fundamental choice and you now have four branches; another and it's eight... Eight branches based on just three meaningful decisions - you can see what a headache that would give the designers!
As for the ending... ahhh! I so want to talk about the ending, but I won't. Suffice to say that there's every possibility of a sequel - and I'll have no hesitation in buying it without a moment's hesitation.
And the final thing I'll say is that my wife was just as keen on playing the game as I was, and throughout we compared notes on what responses and decisions we chose... interestingly (and perhaps reassuringly!) we were extremely closely matched throughout. Come the zombie apocalypse, I'm pretty certain we'll make a great team :)
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