The Walking Dead: 400 Days Review

The Walking Dead: 400 Days comes to xbox live arcade as one of  the last embers of a glaring flame for Xbox 360. It's going to be a tough transition for successful indie arcade games like the Walking Dead and State of Decay to be profitable with all that provisos that the Xbox One will have in place just to use it.

The Walking Dead: 400 Days opens with a missing person's bulletin board. You play as different characters from the board and learn their survival or side story. The stories takes place between the end of season 1 and beginning of season 2.  Sorry to disappoint fans, but there is no Clementine or survivors from the season 1 in this game. It's fresh start with new characters.

As usual, the writing is genius.  I really got the impression that most of the characters were in Hell before the outbreak happened: one character was going to jail and the others are junkies recovering.  Everything happens so serious, so quickly.  I felt like the story always was on point, but the same unfixed problems with the game mechanics become troublesome.

Often you find the simpliest things such as pressing X becoming the main reason you have to reply a scene.
I won't harp on this because developers have done a better job with making the game mechanics more smooth and controls practical with the expectations to the story.  I mean, that scene where you have to navigate thru the corn field while bandits search for you was brilliant use of the limit range of motion.

Overall, The Walking Dead: 400 Days is an expansion of the first game with new characters and stories. The weren't any changes to the game that was really new notably.  The game plays like a read thru of a comic book with optional choices that affect the outcome of the storyline. It's a welcomed summer treat for gamers, and I give it a 9 out of 10.  It's probably going to be the last best hit for the xbox 360 arcade so what a way to say goodbye.