10 Times Video Games Made You Feel

Few game series rely as heavily on creating player emotion as Tellgames Games’ choice ‘em ‘up based on the comics and tv series of The Walking Dead. The first season is particularly harrowing as we didn't expect it to confront us so directly with the consequences of our actions, and at one point in the second episode it takes advantage of our gamerly aggression to make us the bad guy.

Lee, the game’s hero. is looking after the adorable Clementine, both keeping her alive after the zombie apocalypse and trying to prevent the horrors of this world from brutalising the young girl. Lee’s group of survivors fall prey to a group of cannibals who, after offering them much-needed shelter at their farm, plot to kill and eat them. Lee discovers this and confronts one of the evildoers in the barn.

The player is faced with a choice of whether to let the cannibal live, or impale him with a pitchfork. Of course we killed him, we’re gamers and we have the power to kill bad people. Of course we’re going to give this multiple murderer the nasty, brutal death he deserves.

So we did.

Only Clementine saw us do it. She witnessed the man she’s grown to trust inflict an act of retributive violence on another human being. Our instant regret at what we had done, the quenching of our desire for justice by the shattered innocence of a child, is the cruellest and most brilliant trick The Walking Dead has pulled off to date.