The Walking Dead: 400 Days

The extent of your enjoyment will largely hinge on whether you view 400 Days as an odd footnote to an incredible first season, or as the prologue to an even higher-stakes follow up this Fall.

For now though, if you’re considering picking up that second season 400 Days is damn near essential – and if you’re not, then it may well change your mind.

For a fantastic price of £3.99, fans should not hesitate picking up The Walking Dead: 400 Days. It might move at lightning speed, and we might not get the most out of these new characters, but the sense of drama coming from these short stories makes for a tantalising time.

Even though you'll never spend more than 30 minutes with any of the characters, you'll still find that you're invested in their well-being.

400 Days does exactly what a good TV pilot episode should do – catches your interest. [CD-Action 09/2013, p.67]

Five new stories, five new protagonists, five new fifteen minutes. All for five euros. 400 Days is an appealing canapé with highly standard storytelling of the original. However, it partially loses its battle because of the title's short length and its lack of inner interconnection.

The Walking Dead: 400 Days is a good expansion, but definitely not good enough. This DLC is very short and does not use the full potential of new characters (there isn't enough time to care for any of them). What's more, every piece of the game allows to play with the gameplay mechanic in different ways. The most important thing are the dialogues and attempts to introduce character in a very short time span. All in all (despite its flaws) 400 Days is a must buy for fans of the series that want to continue the story.

Although it's only one short episode, but it's a very good short episode. Even i could do some characterization for each survivors simply by doing conversation or other actions.

Well, it's not as good as the base game, that's why I rated it 7 Pros: comic book graphics that make the game never get old Cons: the characters are not as interesting as in the base game

To save a rather huge wall of text, I'm going to wrap up my problem with this installment quite quickly: You can't see the connection from your choices to the endgame. Your choices throughout the five different character pieces basically changes who's there at the end. But there's absolutely NO way to see "Oh making x choices means this character's not there." It just doesn't follow-- the ending honestly feels like a complete non-sequitur. Play it to get ready for Season 2, but it's just not going to have the impact of Season 1.

This was a massive step down from the original game. The DLC is incredibly shot maybe an hour in length. Each character's story is incredibly short and some are just plain uninteresting. Sure there's a reference or link to the original game but while that gives you a moment of "Oh, cool!" it is not developed enough to be interesting. The 5 stories crossover in parts (mostly location) but even that novelty wares off quickly. Each character's story finishes just as it starts to get interesting, leaving you unfulfilled as you go onto the next one. Each story feels like an unfinished project and the ending serves as a "lets see which stories you played right", and even that seems to cut off early. I wouldn't recommend buying this DLC, but the full game is amazing.

Granted, this DLC is only the price of about a beer or two, but I honestly think I would have enjoyed a beer more. Maybe it's just the fact that the original game is so well made and gave me so much for the money I spent, but I can't help but feel that this DLC is way too thin. I'm still OK with having bought the game because I feel like I have supported a studio that I really like, but that shouldn't be a reason to buy a game.