Cool - I'll probably pick this up even if it's mediocre. I liked the comic and the TV series - I get that some folks don't like either, but it's the only decent budget zombie story in the Romero tradition rather than the Fulci tradition. That means drama and focus on the survivors and social commentary, and a lot less mindless action - some folks want headshot-splatter, but that was only ever a minor part of where the genre came from.
Re: the 2nd season - it remains Romero-esque, so again, if you like action-flick-zombie then there won't be much in it for you aside from the last episode. If you like the original Romero trilogy, then it remains an excellent rip-off, though like the comic, it's a pretty blatant rip-off (but also catches the strengths of that setting - like the idea that it isn't spread by bites, everyone rises regardless of means of death, focus is on how you secure reliable food/shelter and then protect them from all the desperate bastards out there who want the same, etc). One point - I felt it was badly damaged by the moronic recent trend in US dramas where they split the season into 2 halves. There's a few deaths of major characters that seemed to come out of nowhere the first time I watched it. Rewatched it in a marathon session a few months later, and saw that in the first half there's a lot of work setting up a dichotomy between those characters, in their different machinations as to whether they prioritise retaining their 'humanity' or whether they prioritise survival (not entirely selfish - survival driven in large part by a desire to safeguard others in the group) - the deaths were both foreshadowed and driven by the underlying themes, but so much of the thematic groundwork is done in the 1st half of the season that when they put a big break in the middle, by the time the 2nd half was screened I'd forgotten much of that stuff (unlike plot, themes you have to 'feel', to an extent, and once you put a lengthy break in the middle of a series it's like starting from scratch thematically). Conversely, the 1st half of the season will feel rather slow - again, because it's groundwork for later character decisions, and the midseason hiatus screws that up.
Again, I liked it, and I can't imagine anyone who is a fan of the Romero-style zombie genre (I include in that films like Pontypool, Cemetary Man, etc - anything where the overriding focus is on analysis of the human condition, whether it's facing mortality, consumerism ala Dawn of the Dead, nationalism ala Night of the Dead, etc) 'hating' it per se, though it certainly doesn't have the thematic strength of those works. It's like what you'd get if you took Romero's work, but then stripped it of all political commentary and just focussed on the survivalist aspects. Given that, I'm not going to get stuck into folks who decry the focus on drama like I would someone who watches the original Dawn and then goes 'man that sucks - there was WAY better action in the remake' (missing the point of all the long still shots of zombies taking items off and on store shelves, pushing prams around, staring at billboards etc), as in TWD it's just drama, no big ideas or human inquiry underlying it.
Pity, from what folks have posted, that the adventure game doesn't try and fill that void. Telltale games have done 'big themes' before, even if only in a light-hearted way (I'm thinking of the whole 'commercialisation of the holy' theme that runs through all of the 2nd season of the Sam and Max games), and some greater underlying focus would be a terrific way of adding to the series. And whilst the whole 'zombies as consumers' thing is rather old hat these days, there's still a rich array of themes you could use: facing the inevitability of death, how do you identify/define yourself when the niceties of ciivilisation (your job, your family, your car/house etc) have been stripped away, what makes us human (sounds wanky, but great for a zombie setting - afterall, zombies are basically humanoids who eat and survive; the human survivors have been stripped to a state where they aren't able to do much other than find food/shelter and survive, so what things other than food and shelter do you need before your life is meaningfully different to the zombies'?).
Anyway, half-decent (and I MEAN only half-decent: I'm not looking for no Tex Murphy greatness here) adventure games are still a bit of a rarity, so I guess I'm picking this up.
