The Walking Dead: Season Two Review by: Sewaddle - 8.5/10
Currently, on The Walking Dead...Last month on the PlayStation Network, season 2 of The Walking Dead was free to download. Having played through the first season on my trusty Xbox 360, I naturally felt like I had to give it a try to see how the story that the first season set up would continue. Yeah, I know, season 2 starts tailored on the choices you made throughout season 1, so I knew I wouldn’t get the most out of this game like some would, but nevertheless I decided to give it a try. Season 1 was solid, so the temptation was just too big to let season 2 pass up.
A year has passed. You play as Clementine, the little girl you took with you through the zombie apocalypse in season 1. She has grown tough and bitter through the many things she’s seen and gone through. After something went horrible wrong in a public bathroom with a familiar face, Clementine got separated with her only friend in the woods while on her way to Wellington, a well-known safe haven. Throughout your adventure, you’ll meet many new faces and converse with them. The choices of dialogue are up to you. It’s up to you who you’ll befriend, who you’ll let down, and what kind of person Clementine will ultimately turn out to be…
“TellTale Games took these critiques to heart, to an extent”
…But that’s pretty much where your options stop. After finishing season 1, many players complained about the lack of actual influence their choices had leading up to the season finale. Fortunately, TellTale Games took these critiques to heart, and now your choices have more dire consequences, to an extent. This time, you will get a choice at the very end of the season finale, but you’ll still be powerless to actually save most of the characters you come across on the way, even if you get the choice to be willing to go to hell and back for them. The game tricks you into getting a false sense of empowerment that you’re the one in control of how the story plays out. I get that the zombie apocalypse doesn’t revolve around you, the player, but the game even says that the entire story plays out depending on the choices that you make; not just the ending of it. Plus, with all these adults counting so much on the decisions and abilities of a little girl, it feels cheap when the game decides to still take the story on another way than you intended.
However, you will feel more emotionally invested in all the characters you meet. Season 2 has more likable characters, which get more fleshed out through season 2 than the characters in season 1. This makes the choices you make much more involving and as a result it gets much more immersive, and the need to finish the season will be much stronger. With the multiple dialogue options and this time different endings, season 2 does well enough to captivate the player and provide great replay value.
“a more polished version of season 1”
As a TellTale Games standard, the graphics are stylish and neatly cel-shaded. The first season already looked amazing, but they did a good job improving the look of the game even further with more diverse scenery, more visual clues, a more slick choice wheel, etc. There are less silly bugs and glitches that were present in season 1, such as when character were supposed to be holding a rifle, but the game ‘forgot’ to load the rifle, so the character was holding an invisible gun. Silly stuff like that. It’s more polished than season 1, which is a good thing. It’s still not perfect, with minor hiccups here and there, but they’re not nearly as abundant as they were in season 1.
Props to the team in charge of the sound design as well. Once again the characters are brought to life by amazing voice acting. After finishing an episode, the credits are accompanied by a solid licenced soundtrack, which I definitely recommend everyone to give a listen to. Of course the game’s original score is great too, and it all adds to the grim atmosphere of each scene. Don’t let that make you think this entire game is a downer, though; every character is unique, and have their own sense of humour as well.
The verdict
Story-wise, The Walking Dead season 2 is a welcome continuation of season 1, and it’s a technical improvement as a bonus. Even if I didn’t get to make the most out of it because I couldn’t use my save file of season 1, I still had a blast like no other story-driven game could give me. Now that season 2 is over for me, I am so psyched for what’s gonna happen in season 3!
Graphics
7 Sound
8 Addictive
7 Depth
8 Story
9 Difficulty
3
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