The Walking Dead: Season Two Episode 4 - Amid the Ruins Reviews
Telltale once again hits its typical fourth-episode slump, but we're still hopeful for a strong season 2 finale.
[Q]uite a lot of 'Amid the Ruins' feels like a breather from the series' relentless onslaught of unhappiness.
Among the Ruins is The Walking Dead doing what The Walking Dead does well, but it's spinning its wheels when it should be racing towards the finale. As far as Clem's story goes, it's hard to fight the feeling that what began as an exciting opportunity for the writers has now become something of a millstone when it comes to plotting. Can the final episode recapture the power and drive of her brutal first episode, as well as plot its way to a send-off as beautifully appropriate as Lee's at the end of the first season? We'll find out in a couple of months, when The Walking Dead: Season Two concludes in "No Going Back".
The plot remains solid, and Telltale does a great job at exploring different mental states during the apocalypse
Clementine is no longer a spectator in Amid the Ruins, the action-packed latest episode in season two of The Walking Dead.
Episode 4 is a step back for the season and the series
Amid the Ruins is an exhilarating adventure and the best episode thus far. It gives players drastic choices to partake in, not to mention building on the relationships between Clementine and her party.
Like many penultimate television episodes, Episode 4: Amid the Ruins serves to set up the series' finale by applying pressure to The Walking Dead's characters and upping the stakes. Clementine's group has never been more desperate. Where they go from here is anyone's guess.
In the first season of The Walking Dead, you really had to worry about each and every choice, whereas here there seems to be a tragic inevitability about everything. It's hard to say whether that is actually an issue, or a reflection of the harsh world Clementine finds herself in. Maybe by making it seem like everything will go wrong, despite your best efforts, Telltale are trying to show just how hopeless the situation has become. This might be a stretch of the imagination, but if it is intended to make us feel numb to the horrors of the world, then they have played a master stroke. Time will tell on that front.
Aside from some slight tonal inconsistencies and story deviations, "Amid the Ruins" does still maintain the great quality of The Walking Dead with a number of tense scenes and overall building toward the final outcomes of the season. With some action setpieces that put the group into peril in the face of looming threats like the imminent snow, and leading up to a conclusion with an enormous and devastating cliffhanger, it still manages to put many pieces into play, despite some noticeable shortcomings in terms of its character development.
Regardless, "Amid the Ruins" clearly demonstrates what Telltale is capable of. There's a level of purpose and confidence here that the studio has rarely matched. If you've been keeping up with the season, you have one hell of an episode to look forward to.
This season has been extremely consistent, and did a great job of hooking you in from the get-go. Clem has taken everything she's learned from Lee and applied it tenfold, to the point where these new connections she's made this year trump anything she's experienced personally with her former father-figure. Although Amid the Ruins doesn't really go for many jump scares and is clearly a table-setting episode for the explosive finale, it's very much worth playing through multiple times over.
Starting off with one of the best openings in the series thus far, The Walking Dead: Season 2 Episode 4 - Amid The Ruins features high paced action while also pushing the main story forward well.
The second-to-last instalment of the series' sophomore season focuses on a character who suggests our young heroine put herself before anyone else.
Of course, fans of the series still need to pick this episode up, and from looking back at the entire season, this is still a decent addiction to an already great series. Just keep in mind, you can't save everybody, and even if you try, don't be surprised if someone dies anyway. This is The Walking Dead after all.
Ultimately, it feels as if they've stuck a whole bunch of subplots into one episode and nothing really gets us too invested.
So much of The Walking Dead has been about the strong males pushing the narrative in one direction or another, for better of for worse. It's refreshing to see an episode from a female-led perspective.
Amid the Ruins may be the most hard-hitting episode of The Walking Dead: Season Two yet, but it ends up all the better as a result.
It's a rare misstep, however, and despite it, Amid the Ruins is another phenomenal episode, building up to a finale where I can honestly say I don't have a clue what's going to happen. All I do know is that it can't be good. I hadn't noticed it until now, but Clem's journey has been mirroring Lee's from Season 1. And like her adoptive father, she may very well find herself being judged come the finale. I'm not looking forward to it.
If you liked Season 1, give Telltale more of your money.