Love hate with the walking dead

First off my relationship with the walking dead is nothing spectacular, I love the comic book yet I can't stand the show, at least everything after the first season.   The game however I have never played and after playing it I was satisfied.  Not from a game play perspective but from story perspective.  Jeff from giantbomb said it best "the only hidden object in that is the game play".  Not that it's a bad game, they gave it a 5 star rating and after playing through it I would give a similar rating.  However putting it up against other video games, even ones in the same genre such as the Last of Us it just can't compete.  But where I wasn't impressed with the game play I was with the story and characters.  Such a great story with so many options and an ending that leaves you thinking.  But did the choices you made throughout the game have any real impact?

In my opinion yes and no.  According to Kotaku yes the choices you make in the game do matter more or less.  The game developers have a story to tell and ultimately that story is going to be told.  If you wanted to make the choice to run off with Clemintine leaving everyone behind well that would be a whole other game and would be too much to program to create a game allowing the player to have complete control.  But as they say in the review you're choosing the person that Lee becomes and in a sense at the end of the game how Lee dies.  This was what really drove the story and kept me playing, I feel like a lot of my personal beliefs and thoughts went into the choices I made.  Even up to the last moment when I told Clemintine to leave and not shoot me, I didn't want to be selfish and scar her like that.  I do think it would have been interesting to make more choices that had a bigger impact like if you could have saved Carley and killed Lilly, but that would deviate too much from the story which I still feel is a great one.

Also according to the other article saying games must be played unlike music I do agree with.  Games are a complicated work of art music is what the artist created and that is final.  Video games however have a clear linear passage of what the creator sees as art, yet if you just leave it on a close up of a wall is that really art?

Which leads me into some questions

1.  Are video games art? if yes then how so if what I brought up before?
2. Do you find your personal beliefs coming out in the choices you made throughout the game or were you just making choices based on what you feel was best for the game play?
3.  Simply is there anything you would have done differently with the game?