The Walking Dead: Episode 5 - No Time Left

Editor's Notes

The following review assumes you’ve played the first four installments of “The Walking Dead” and understand to discuss this latest installment; spoilers regarding previous entries are unavoidable.

Introduction

Telltale Games already had a solid reputation amongst gamers with their prior episodic game offerings including “Tales of Monkey Island,” new “Sam and Max” adventures, and their not groundbreaking, but enjoyable “Back to the Future” offering. “The Walking Dead” managed to buck expectations, by making a zombie game less about split-second action (ala “Left 4 Dead”) and more about what goes on in between attacks from creeping death; in other words, the often intense human interactions.

Over four installments, Telltale has built up a tremendously emotionally trying story, having players assume the role of Lee Everett; a prisoner turned group leader and protector of an orphaned girl, Clementine. As Lee and Clementine’s journey progressed to the epic conclusion laid out in the fifth and final installment, the aptly named, “No Time Left,” Lee’s group has changed, often as a result of player choices, most dramatically at the conclusion of episode four, where your attitudes and interactions with characters might leave some players racing against impending death, following Lee’s heart stopping encounter with a walker, but more importantly on a quest to save Clementine from a mysterious and sinister voice on the walkie talkie.

The Game Itself: Our Reviewer's Take

It’s no shock that in the final fifth of the game as a whole, nothing’s changed from a game play standpoint. “No Time Left” is definitely dialogue and decision driven, saving the action-oriented moments for a few key sequences late into the game. To make up for the in-your-face thrills, players will be making a lot of decisions, often with little time to react and often meaning life-or-death for characters who cross Lee’s path. The game thankfully results in a payoff equal, if not greater in satisfaction and emotional impact of the previous installments. To make a long story short, now that Lee and Clementine’s whole story has been told, “The Walking Dead” justifiably earns praise as the best game of 2012.

If there’s one complaint to be raised, it’s that “No Time Left” feels like the shortest of the five episodes, but the interactions are quite rich in content and draw on actions from even the debut installments of the series, to remind players, that everything Lee has done to get to a resolution to his and Clementine’s story, matters, even if it’s not apparent at first. I obviously can’t spoil the ultimate conclusion to the story, but I will say, as a whole “The Walking Dead” is a game that is full of despair, genuine emotion, heartbreak and hope, and “No Time Left” hits every one of those points, multiple times.

The slow burn of the series’ episodic nature really let how you played Lee and Clementine’s story sink-in, and I’d argue, few players making it this far don’t feel some sort of connection and concern for how Lee and Clementine will end up. The folks at Telltale have thrown down the gauntlet for the entire game industry, proving one does not need ADD-levels of action game play nor the most crisp graphics available to make an entertaining game. Furthermore, the maturity of the entire series is a firm challenge to the vocal naysayers who argue games cannot be art. “No Time Left” as it’s own entity, but more importantly, as apart of this first season of “The Walking Dead” is a work of art and anything Telltale chooses to do, as a follow-up to this series (and yes, a season two is coming, although we have no idea what it will be about) has my money, day one, minute one, no questions asked.