The Walking Dead: Episode 2 - Starved for Help

Life is all about the decisions we make?a mantra upheld by Telltale Games' The Walking Dead: Episode II - Starved for Help. The latest entry in the five-part downloadable Mac, PC, and console point-and-click adventure video game series sees protagonist Lee Everett placed in even more high-stakes, life-threatening circumstances than in the first episode, A New Day. This time out, however, the zombies aren't the creeping threat.

Starved for Help, like A New Day, is priced at $5 (or 400 Microsoft points) from the XBLA and $4.99 on the PlayStation Network. Mac and PC gamers can purchase a $24.99 pass that grants access to all five episodes as they're released.

Desperate Times Call For...
It's insanely difficult to dive into Starved for Help's plot without spoilers, so here's a very basic summary: Lee and his ragtag group of zombie apocalypse survivors are extremely low on food. Just as the desperation sets in, the group encounters a pair of brothers who own a farm with an overabundance of edibles. The farmers offer Lee and his crew food in exchange for gas, which the brothers use to power an electric fence that keeps zombies at bay.

That's the last moment of normalcy before everything goes to hell.

Adventure games are known for their strong storytelling, and Starved for Help lives up to that legacy. It expands A New Day's narrative and serves up even more gut-wrenching situations where you have to make life-or-death choices. In fact, one choice that occurs in the game's second half left me emotionally drained. Not only from the action that I undertook, but from the reactions that it caused in others. This is coming from someone who has a video game body count in the millions from killing zombies, aliens, street thugs, foreign soldiers, and other enemies in 20-plus years of gaming.

Note: If you have a New Day save on your PC or console, the way Starved For Help's story unfolds is affected the decisions you made in that episode.

Faces of Death
The comic book-inspired graphics are the perfect vehicle for telling the harrowing tale. The characters?ranging from a Florida redneck to a former college professor?are well-animated and carry expressive countenances that convey emotion. When characters are angry, joyous, frightened, or sad, you feel their highs and lows.

That's essential as the majority of the gameplay involves chatting and interacting with other characters by selecting a line of dialogue from four available choices. These choices carry over from game to game, and affect relationships. And, save for one character?the boorish Larry?the characters are fleshed out with interesting back stories and personalities that play into how they react to the apocalypse and each other. Starved For Help also has the occasional puzzle to solve, none of which are very difficult to solve.

Get This Game
It's these interactions that makes Telltale Games's latest effort succeed; it makes the human drama (battling roving bandits, shifting allegiances, and the fear of a zombie attack) the center of the conflicts, not emotionless zombie headshots. The Walking Dead: Starved for Help is the rare game that showcases the developer's care for a licensed property. Some may lament the game's short run time (you can finish it in approximately 2-3 hours), but it's a must-play title that easily receives an Editors' Choice nod.

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