14 DAY TRIAL // 
The Walking Dead is an episodic game series developed by Telltale Games that asks gamers to engage with a limited number of gameplay mechanics and to make plenty of choices as they try to guide a number of characters faced with an undead apocalypse to temporary safety.
Zen Pinball is a title from Zen Studios that offers pinball tables for a variety of platforms, with an emphasis on innovative design and on cool moments that manage to capture the spirit of the intellectual property they are working with.
Initially, the two concepts seemed incompatible, but the two studios have worked well together to create an interesting pinball experience with some cool moments and a lot of style.
The Walking Dead Pinball continues a busy period for fans of the franchise, who are also now able to play the final episode of the second season on their platform of choice, but it invites them to take a look at the past rather than the future, reliving some of the most interesting elements of the first set of adventures focused on Lee and Clementine.
By design, the table does not actually have a story that gamers can move through towards a conclusion, but rather offers a set of snippets, greatest hits if you will, all of them available to fans as long as they can deliver the ball in the right places.
Recognizable elements include the pharmacy where the pair spends a lot of time with other characters in Macon, the Savanah locations with their zombie crawling streets, and the treehouse the Clementine has built. Those who already know the events that took place will have an easy time connecting the various locations.
The very fact that Walking Dead Pinball is based on a gaming episodic series, that in itself is linked to a comic book universe, has created some interesting challenges, but the team at Zen Studios has managed to create an experience that should satisfy fans while also offering some teasing possibilities for those who are just looking for a new pinball-based experience.
The core mechanics of pinball, with the ball and the flippers used to try and gain as many points as possible, remain mostly unchanged regardless of the intellectual property that Zen Studios is using for its newest releases.
For the Walking Dead, the team has chosen to introduce all the five episodes of the first season as potential options on the table, with the gamer able to activate them at will in order to then play them, making choices by using the flippers and the launch button.
Many of the choices that are central to the series are present here and they create mostly interesting gameplay challenges, although an actual snipping sequence feels entirely out of place, but a little more context might have been a good idea for those who might have forgotten a lot about The Walking Dead.
Players will also have to hit targets in order to deal with food shortages and so that they increase the morale of their party, which creates a nice dynamic where points gathering sometimes takes a back seat to more pressing concerns.
When it comes to graphics, The Walking Dead Pinball does not offer any sort of clear upgrade over previous releases, but as always, the power of the PlayStation 4 is put to good use and gamers will be able to experience a game that’s crisp, filled with color and makes it easy for the player to plan a strategy, even if the execution might be a problem.
Artwork from the Telltale Games series has also been used to bring the look as close to that of the original as possible, but the downside of this is that it is initially a bit problematic to actually know exactly which lanes and targets to go for.
There’s even a shooting style gallery at the top of the board with inverted flipper placement that will automatically become the preferred target for many of those who pick up the new table.
The biggest gameplay issue I have found is that the design of the experience makes it much too easy to lose the ball through the extreme left side, sometimes very quickly after it is launched and just after the Shoot Again icon no longer flashes.
Some gamers might also complain that the number of missions included is much too great and tends to stifle the creativity of the player, as it makes their attempts to design their own approach for a high score somewhat unnecessary.
When it comes to the sound of The Walking Dead Pinball, the development team has managed to work with Telltale Games in order to bring in the voices for both Lee Everett, Dave Fennoy, and Clementine, Melissa Hutchison, in order to record some original lines.
There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but the feeling of familiarity with the two actors, coupled with the solid graphics, makes it easy to become immersed in the world of the game.
The Walking Dead Pinball is a solid experience from a mechanical perspective and once again proves the quality that Zen Studios can deliver on the current generation of consoles both in terms of presentation and gameplay.
The product is a little weaker in terms of story and those who buy it need to be already somewhat familiar with the original video game in order to understand everything that’s going on around them.
Nonetheless, this is a good way for fans of The Walking Dead to get past the fact that the second season is ending and to pass the time until 2015, when a new episodic game series will be launched.
