10 Great Video Games You'll Never Play Again (And Why)

1. The Walking Dead

What It Is: An story-oriented episodic adventure game in which players control a convict (Season 1), then a young girl (Season 2) trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. Why It's Great: In a lot of ways, The Walking Dead is an evolution of the kind of storytelling offered up by Heavy Rain. But where the Heavy Rain cast was a bit on the cold and aloof side, in The Walking Dead every person you meet feels truly memorable, with their own background or survival story to tell. Few games make you care about their characters as much as this; a feeling made all the more powerful by the fact that your choices seemingly affect who lives and who dies. Why You'll Never Play It Again: The Walking Dead is a game that doesn't let you retract your decisions or undo events that occur, and much of its impact comes from this true-to-life fact that time is irreversible. If someone dies, that's it, and you have to live with it. To just replay the whole thing and have more control over who gets to live and join your zombie apocalypse Dream Team would defeat the point. But then there is also the sense that, once you familiarise yourself with how Telltale games work, you realise that the choices you make are kind of an illusion. Towards the end of Season Two of The Walking Dead, it's clear that certain events in the game were just inevitable, trivialising many of the seemingly weighty decisions you had to make along the way. The Walking Dead is a brilliantly crafted game offering you the illusion of choice, with very little actual choice. Once this illusion fades away, the gravitas of your decision-making dissipates. What games can you never bring yourself to replay, despite them being fantastic? Let us know in the comments!