With the second season of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead coming sometime this fall, The Walking Dead: 400 Days was released as a bridge-gap episode between seasons One and Two.

For those of you who don’t know, The Walking Dead videogame series is comprised of episodes that tell a story much like a TV show does.

Season One followed the story of Lee Everett, a college professor convicted of murder who then finds himself the protector of a little girl by the name of Clementine in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

The Walking Dead: 400 Days keeps the “choose your own adventure” formulas, except instead of just playing as one character you play as five very different ones. Their separate stories center around a truck stop at differing points over the 400 days since the zombie outbreak.

This new episode, like its predecessors, centers around choices that you make that affect the world as a whole.

It’s because you play as five different characters that the game ends up lacking in the end. One of the greatest strengths of Season One was the game makes you care about the characters in the world. In The Walking Dead: 400 Days, you play so little of each character that you don’t get to know them that well or care as much.

One of the cool things about having five playable characters instead of one are the “ah-ha” moments you have when something that doesn’t make sense in one character’s story, then makes perfect sense in another’s.

This is where the “days” mechanic comes in. Vince’s story starts just two days since the outbreak; Shel’s story starts 236 days in. You can choose any character from the start and play them in any order, which makes everyone’s experience unique.

Unique can also describe the visual style of the game series. You really do feel as if you are playing a living, breathing, comic book.

The combination of the comic book visuals and great storytelling makes for a good episode, yet at the end of the day the little sections that you play as the characters feel way too short.

You’re left wishing there was more. That feeling makes this game a success overall, but a failure.

Vince’s section takes place on a prison bus and that’s it. I want to know more about his journey after the bus and how he gets from point-A to point-B at the end of the game.

The jury is still out on whether or not 400 Days was a successful bridge between seasons since Season Two hasn’t been released yet. But as a game, it’s another good installment in the series, but the sections of the episode were too short.

7.5/10