by Susan, HSM team writer

In June of this year, Zen Studios announced they’d been collaborating with Robert Kirkland and Telltale Games to bring to the gaming community another digital platformed pinball table, titled The Walking Dead. This game is based upon the award-winning game series The Walking Dead, created by Telltale games, and was created as DLC for the gaming platforms. Zen Studios describes the game thus:

““The Walking Dead pinball table features choice-driven gameplay across each of Season One’s five episodes, along with original story dialogue from the award-winning cast.  Scenarios include choosing who to save and who to leave behind in a walker attack, solving problems and raising morale within the group, searching for food and supplies, acquiring important tools, and navigating through the herd amidst an oncoming walker breach.”

If you played the Walking Dead video game (I haven’t) then you will be familiar with the locations used for the pinball game, such as Everett’s pharmacy in Macon, Clementine’s tree house, the walker-infested streets of Savannah, St. John’s dairy farm, the Traveler Motel and a few other locations which do a great job keeping the gamer involved in the lives of the main characters — Lee and Clementine. Original lines for the game were recorded from the cast and you will find them and a hoard of zombies rendered in 3D for your pinball gaming pleasure.

Zen Studios kept the trend of these games as being DLC so you will need either Zen Pinball2 for PlayStation or Android or Pinball FX2 for Steam or Xbox, which are free downloads. After you demo a table you can then decide if you want to buy it or pass. Don’t forget: you can import this game and other tables to the PS4 for free as well.

Can I make it to #1?

I had the opportunity to play the pinball game before it was released publicly, and the first thing I have to say after playing about five hours of is that my forearms are sore. My fingers are sore as well. It seems that even though the flippers are electronically controlled, I felt the need to squeeze the R1 and R2 as hard as I could, hoping to move the ball along. I am a fan of Zen Studios’ pinball games, and this one was the best I have played so far. The choice driven gameplay makes the experience so much more enjoyable, as you get to choose the fate of the characters by making moral decisions for them with your shot selection.

Who would have thought that a pinball game with choice-driven adventures would work as a merger? But it does. The table can go from being bright to the lights going dim and the streetlights being turned on. There is a sniper mode, and of course a mode where you must fend off the hoard of walkers heading your way. Sometimes at first it was a little difficult for me to keep track of all that was going on, but once I started to understand the concept of the game and all its idiosyncrasies  I was rocking that table to the point of being on tilt, and as of this writing (pre-release) I am ranked 9th overall on the all time leaderboard.

I found the skill shot to be a huge challenge, and I have hit it only once. The soccer ball that you can play with was a little distracting at times for me — especially when the table was in dark mode, because the pattern on the ball kinda messed with my head a bit while other action was going on. Unlocking and playing four balls at once was an experience you must try. I love everything about this pinball game with the exception that I can’t have one of these Zen tables in real life.

Thank you to Zen Studios, Telltale Games and to the Sony community management team for the chance to enjoy this game pre-release. I’ve been streaming my gameplay live on our Twitch channel, as have other PlayStation MVPs,so if you’re interested in the game go check out their channels — or just play the demo for yourself. But be careful, because you might become infected with the inability to stop playing the game.

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