1UP- At one point in time, the concept of a zombie apocalypse stood as a genuinely terrifying idea. But, over the years, zombies have begun to serve a different role altogether; for the most part, they've become meat pinatas, assisting us in acting out our creative ultraviolent fantasies. Dead Rising and Dead Island may give us the chance to take out thousands of zombies with patently ridiculous weapons, but the badass protagonists of these particular games barely bat an eye at the moldering hordes trying to get a taste of their sweet innards.
When compared to these exaggerated experiences, Telltale's The Walking Dead feels much more like a documentary than Dead Alive; each and every undead encounter is meaningful (and horrible), and taking down a single zombie amounts to much more effort than tearing your way through wet tissue paper. This grounded approach meshes well with the typical slower pace of the traditional adventure formula, and also makes for one of the more atypical and interesting zombie games seen in quite some time.
B+/A+
