The Walking Dead: Season Two: Episode One shoots for the stars!
The Walking Dead: The Game by Telltale Games surprised everyone and made a lot of people, me included, cry like a baby. It was powerful and moving, extremely emotional, but the most important of all, it was real believable story. The main characters, Lee and Clementine, their relationship, how it developed and grew depending on my choices and my god that ending... it was a true storytelling masterpiece.
Now the first episode of the second season or call it sequel, just released and by the looks of it, we are going to cry...a lot...again. Reviewing Telltale games is kinda hard cause I can't really talk much about the story without spoiling it for you. Sure I totally could say that Lee is back as a zombie and hunts down Clementine through the woods, but I won't do that cause that is spoiling the whole experience. This is not a game per se, it's more like an interactive experience where every choice you make affect the story or tale. Now if you haven't already played the first season (shame on you) absolutely go buy it and play it, but know that I will be extremely careful with spoilers. If you have played it and know what happened in the final episode of the first season, then you will understand what I will be talking about.
The game picks up several months after the events of the final episode of the first season and sees you playing as Clementine. Clearly devastated from what happened things don't get easy for her, not by a long shot. Tye story starts a few months after the final events from the last episode where Clem along with the other two survivors from her group head towards "salvation". But in a "Walking Dead" fashion, sh*t hits the fan and things only get worse. What started as a joyous and life inspiring tale, quickly shifts to a tragedy and it only get worse...
As I previously stated in The Wolf Among Us review, life ain't easy. It ain't easy in normal conditions let alone in the "crazy zombie apocalypse all alone" conditions that Clementine is thrown in. And to see how she deals with that is amazing. She is a little badass in the first episode, she wants to live, she wants to be a survivor and most importantly she wants that all of the sacrifices made for her in the first season weren't in vain. And how Telltale managed to portray all that is outstanding.
Sure there are many things that are done really fast and are kinda improbable to happen, especially on those conditions, but still Telltale had to do a lot and had to set up a lot of things to play out in the future in a very limited amount of time so that's kinda justified. I can say that she joins a new group of survivors and we are introduced or at least he hear about a human "bad guy", but that's probably as far as I am going to say. Again this is an experience and the best part of it is well, the experience and how it unfolds depending on your choices. As for the choices you make, there are some very interesting ones, but I can't really predict how is going to affect the whole story arch. You only need to know that if you liked the story of the first season, you'll love what happens here.
What I can talk about more is the presentation. It still retains the graphic novel cell shaded style of the previous games, but it is way better, with better looking environments, character models and faces and the gore is just amazing. Bashing a zombie head with a hammer has never been satisfying. The animations are still kinda silly and wooden, but again, way better than the previous ones. There are also some new touches like when Clem finds herself stranded on a river bed and has to walk to reach something, a breeze of wind will pass and you'll see her cross her arms to get warmer. Now I know that these are totally scripted, but still look really cool and make everything more believable.
The frame rate still stutters at some moments, but again, not as bad as we have previously seen. And the whole freezing while loading/saving/giving achievement/trophy is gone!
Bottom Line: The first episode of the second season of The Walking Dead is a great set up of what to expect in the future. The story is just fantastic and extremely powerful, thing you would expect from Telltale. Clementine is a badass and I cannot wait to see what happens next!
Thanks for reading!
