Gamespotting: Walking Dead

Posted by on November 28, 2011 in Games

In the last episode of Walking Dead, one of the characters explains his cavalier attitude about being lowered into a well to try to extract a zombie from the drinking water. He says he approached it as if he was playing Portal. “It’s a videogame,” he explains.

I appreciate the product placement, but I don’t really get a Portal vibe from that scene. It does vaguely recall a certain Valve game, but not Portal. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe Team Fortress 2.

  • http://twitter.com/NeuromancerGAF Neuromancer

    Yeah that was a bit of a head scratcher. I could probably name a half a dozen games that would have made more sense for him to say.

  • Nikolaj

    Well, he couldn’t say Left 4 Dead, obviously. That would break the unwritten rule of zombie films that they take place in a world that prior to the outbreak had no conceot of zombies.

  • Wader

    I understood the comment to be him saying that he was treating the zombies like “a video game”, and using Portal as an example of acting cavalierly (ie, Portal ignores fall damage, etc), rather than saying that the well incident was specifically like Portal.

  • http://twitter.com/NeuromancerGAF Neuromancer

    We’re not using the zed word!

  • Dufresne

    I think you put more thought into that than the scriptwriters did. I figure it was just that the well = hole in the ground. Portal involves putting holes in the ground.

  • Anonymous

    Ah, good point.  Kind of like crossing the narrative streams?

  • Anonymous

    I like that Maggie gave him a quick nod, like, “Yeah, yeah, I know what Portal is”.  She’s some kinda farmer’s daughter!

  • Anonymous

    That makes sense of you think of the zombie-in-the-well dilemma as a puzzle, like any given room in Portal.  So, yeah, I’m down with your take on this, Wader.  Good call.

  • http://twitter.com/NeuromancerGAF Neuromancer

    Eh she probably dated a video game geek before (no pun intended)

  • Wader

    Tom, I noticed in a podcast a week or two ago, you described TWD as a show that keeps disappointing you.  What did you end up thinking of this episode?  Did it redeem some of the season for you?  (I would say the reveal at the end justified some of the slow burn that plot has taken this season.

  • Anonymous

    Oh, sure, I loved that ending. Episodic TV tends to do that. Be really awful and then have occasional moments that arguably make it worthwhile. But I’m concerned that the price of that barn sequence is going to be another six hours of soap operatics. I hope I’m wrong.

    BTW, was that stuff about Sophia from the comic book, or is that an invention of the TV script?

  • Wader

    Since I cant respond to your comment (I didn’t know disqus had a depth limit), I will respond here…

    Tom – The Sophia stuff was a pure invention of the tv show.  The whole “Sophia is lost” plot is tv show only, and she is still alive when the barn business wraps up.  Hershel’s farm plays out very differently in the comic book.  The general idea (zombies in the barn) is the same, but there are some characters which are present who aren’t in the tv show, and others who are present in the tv show and are not present in the comic. 

    I actually liked the tv show’s version better, mainly because of a couple characters who are present who arent in the scene in the comic.  

  • McG

    I couldn’t stand this show until I realized that the secret was fast forwarding every scenes without zombies. It instantly became 1000% more watchable.

    Although if it remains faithful to the comic, it will become totally unwatchable once they reach the next “building” after the farm. So so bad. I think the creator even realized this at one point and basically reset the whole thing with a new plot.

  • Anonymous

    There was simply way too much filler on the way to the barn resolution. Although that sequence was awesome, I see no reason why it couldn’t have come after three episodes instead of eight.

    Well, no reason other than the boatload of money the production saved by staying in one location for so long…

  • http://twitter.com/NeuromancerGAF Neuromancer

    Yeah they cut the budget dramatically for this season which is why we get so much talking and drama and so little zombie action. It’s a shame really.