When I play games with significant moral choice elements, I do my best to make the choice that my version of the character wants to make (even when it’s a choice that I really don’t want them to make…); so my review comes with that angle in mind.
NOTE: This review contains no significant episode two spoilers, but if you haven’t played episode one yet, you might want to go do that and then come back…
Image Credit: TellTale Games
Finally, the wait is over for the latest installment in Telltale’s Walking Dead series. Originally set for a May release, fans of the first episode have been thirsting for some fresh Walker action.
At the time of writing, episode one has reached over a million sales (in fact, Telltale have just announced that there has already been enough interest for a second season to be commissioned), and so the expectations on this latest release are all the higher.
Like many other fans of the comics and the TV series, I was excited to see what Telltale had in store for their game incarnation of The Walking Dead. Anyone who’s played Back To The Future knows that Telltale have some serious game (pardon the pun) when it comes to designing a point and click; but with The Walking Dead they have gone in a different direction, focusing less on puzzles, and more on moral choices. Any decision a player makes in the first chapter (who to save, who to side with) carries over to each of the later episodes. Obviously this has the potential to leave Telltale with some hard work on their hands, as each chapter has to be larger than the last, as each storyline branches off of the one before. The worry going into episode two is that Telltale would choose to tie up any loose ends from episode one early on to ensure that the player’s decisions didn’t affect the storyline too much.
In some ways this is true. At the end of the first episode I (and 86% of other players at the time) chose to save Carly and leave Doug to his grisly end. Carly is in episode two, but more as a supporting character, so regardless of your choice, you spend a big chunk of the game with the other characters. That said, regardless of the sometimes limited impact of your decisions; in the moment, they always seem life changing.
From a technical view, you can’t help but notice the game was rushed out the door. The Xbox 360 version is let down by a really poor frame rate. There are regular pauses of a second or so when the camera switches between characters having a conversation. It doesn’t completely ruin the game, but it does break the atmosphere.
At the end of the day, when all was said and done, I was glued to episode two even more than to episode one. If you haven’t played it yet, go buy it now.
As for “the big twist” towards the end of the episode, I’ve seen a lot of people slating Telltale for writing a predictable plot twist. I Loved the twist being obvious, because I was screaming out for Lee to look behind the door, but he just didn’t want to…
Platform: PC, Mac, PS3, Xbox 360(Version Reviewed), iOS
Developer: Telltale Games
The Hudsucker 
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