The Walking Dead: Season Two Episode 1 - All That Remains Reviews
Never a huge fan of the episodic give you bits and pieces of the game over months and months is almost too excruciating. TellTale Games is just lucky that they do the source material proud. The wait is worth it, just not easy.
It was perhaps too much to ask of Telltale that they blow our minds in the very first episode, but I still feel a little let-down with how "setty-uppy" All That Remains felt, with a mostly predictable storyline and few really significant or interesting choices to make. It's also short of course, taking me a straight 98 minutes to finish. Nevertheless there were surprises, plenty of tragic moments and at least one section that nearly made me pass out, so overall I consider this first episode of The Walking Dead's second season a success. Now that the setting up is done however I demand nothing less than excellence from the next episode, A House Divided. No pressure, guys.
While perhaps lacking the impact of the end of Season 1, I can wholeheartedly recommend Season 2 to fans of the series. Perhaps more importantly, I recommend the game to anyone who enjoys a dramatic story – both gamers and non-gamers deserve to enjoy this shining example of interactive media.
As great as the characters are, as absorbing as the choices and moral directions continue to be, the series is in danger of becoming formulaic.
The second season of 2012 game of the year builds a strong basis for success, but there are fears it may have lost sight of what made The Walking Dead so good to begin with
How long do I have to wait for Episode 2?
The focus on action for the first half of the episode takes away from what makes this series great, but the exceptional tone, and excellent storytelling still deliver. Clementine promises to be a unique and compelling protagonist, and Telltale has the potential here to make the most important game in the zombie sub-genre. [THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS]
And talking of superior versions, once again the PC reins supreme. The stuttering and freezing issues that have always plagued the console versions are entirely absent from the Steam game, and the game looks gorgeous at a crisp 1080p – its expressive faces and soft colours doing wonders to mask a presumably modest budget. What more can be said? The benchmark narrative game of the last generation has come back just as strong and just as skilfully as before. You should already be playing it.
'All That Remains' is either the start to a great second season or the beginning of the end for a once great series. I simply don't know, and I won't know until getting into the rest of the season. The potential and the set-up is there, which is the baseline for a jumping off point. It could just be so-so, but then that would be a disappointment.
The Walking Dead Season 2 rectifies this situation. Not only the loading times and random stutters are reduced, the touch and physical controls now seamlessly switch places on the fly. There is no need to manually select them. If you want to use touch, just touch the screen, similarly, if you want to use the physical controls, just press any button. It is really a neat feature and TellTale Games have done a great job integrating it for the PS Vita in Season 2. This definitely makes the PS Vita version of The Walking Dead Season 2, the definitive version of the game.
Overall, the game is a solid example of the genre, and fans of the series certainly won't be disappointed.