5 Reasons The Walking Dead Deserves To Be Game Of The Year

WC - Fear not those of you who haven’t yet played the series – this article is spoiler free.

First off I’d like to say congratulations to Telltale Games for the well-deserved award for Game of the Year for The Walking Dead. They also won Studio of the Year, Best Performance by a Human Female Best Downloadable Game, and Best Adaptation. What a night for them.

[rpd123]

I've seen these reasons in plenty of games, a few of which were released this year. I think the fact that this won is kind of ridiculous. Is it fun? Yes. Does it have a good story? Yes. Does it have strong gameplay? Not at all, which is kind of important consider gameplay is a big part of the whole "game" thing. It's essentially an interactive storybook. I'm not saying it's not an awesome experience, but it certainly isn't game of the year. Borderlands 2 (how that wasn't even nominated baffles me), Assassin's Creed 3, Mass Effect 3, and Dishonored are all more worthy (in my opinion). Yeah, they have flaws, but the sheer amount of time and effort that went into those games shows.

[WildArmed]

Are you saying the classic point and click adventure games lacked in gameplay?
That genre defined gaming in it's early years. The gameplay works perfectly for what they set out to do. I don't see why only action/shooters games should be the only ones that get GoTY. I'm glad Walking Dead broke that trend. This game did the 'choice' aspect much better than anything I've played. It blew Mass Effect / Dragon Age / etc etc out of the water and actually gave you choices and consequences.. not a shallow good/evil.

" the sheer amount of time and effort that went into those games shows."
Just because it's not a AAA budget game, does not mean it should be excluded from big awards

[Soldierone]

It's a step in the right direction, but thats it. It isn't the big ground breaking step in the right direction.

I'll get this out of the way, I loved the games, they were awesome! I love The Walking Dead.

However it didn't give you choices. It gave you some choices, but all it did was change the next conversation, thats it. None of the choices had real impacts on the core game until episode 4, then it went right back to being very linear in episode 5. If you choose to save a character, it should let you save the character.... not have them still walk away or die no matter what.

No matter what gameplay is part of playing a GAME. Otherwise just call it a interactive movie. Ultimately, the game played terribly, and had so many issues visually it was hard to ignore.

I think a majority of these issues came from the fact TellTale had a small budget to work with. I can't wait to see season 2 because hopefully they have a much larger budget and put more effort into it.

[rpd123]

That's not what I'm saying. Even in terms of point and click adventure games, the Walking Dead is an average point and click adventure.

And just because the choices don't have a specific moral attached to them, doesn't make them any more meaningful or significant. Eg: Choosing between Carley or Doug in episode one is the same exact thing as choosing between Kaiden and Ashley in Mass Effect 1. What makes the Walking Dead choice so much better? Just like in any other video game with choices, they are severely limited in what you're allowed to do. I don't see how this excelled in choice making any more than Mass Effect or Dragon Age did.

[ZBlacktt]

In next, 95 reasons why it should not. Seems like so many people never even played this game. Much less call it game of the year.

Must of been a very weak year in games. Lucky FarCry 3 wasn't on the list. It would have smoked everyone.

[Hicken]

It wasn't so much that the year was weak, but more that the worthy games weren't as popular as they should have been.