(No spoilers in this review.) Great game for any Walking Dead fans. It hits you really hard right up front and doesn't let up for the entire journey. It faithfully recreates that sense of moral ambiguity present in the show, which might be off-putting for people that haven't seen the show, but forces you to gauge how much faith you have in humanity. You are constantly forced to balance vulnerability against stability and every relationship is a battle between loyalty and survival. The characters don't fall into simple archetypes, and where lesser games would settle for simple and predictable categories, TWD manages to create portrayals of realistic people, complete with indecision, perspective, selfishness, insecurity, and compassion.

If I had one complaint, it would be that sometimes it seems like the child you play as controls a group of adults. They mask it somewhat as subtle manipulation (you rarely make outright demands), but there are a few points where you wonder why the group's survival is so readily swayed by a kid. But, like I said, the writers do a good job of hiding it. For example, if you want someone to rejoin the group, you don't just say, "Hey, come back to the group." Instead you use vulnerabilities you discovered to persuade them over the course of several dialogue choices.

If you've never seen the show and never played the first season, this season stands on its own well. I had forgotten much of the first season and didn't have the save files on the computer I played Season 2 on, and it felt perfectly natural. There is some minor crossover between the game and the TV show in Season 1, but the games do a great job of being self contained within TWD universe.

I'm wondering how long Telltale can keep this series going, though. There are multiple endings - about 4 significantly different outcomes - which means multiple start points for Season 3. That means either those different endings converge, which leaves the player feeling like their choices had no real consequence, or they diverge, which quadruples the amount of writing and animating. Either way, I think the game will either end with Season 3 or 4. The only ways around it would be to introduce another entire set of characters, in which case they should really make it a separate game, or to put in ten times the amount of resources for a game that the average player will see 1/20th of. I just hope they end it before the story becomes stale or they're forced to resort to cheap tricks. A reboot, like the game did compared to the TV show, would be fine, but I have a feeling we are going to see Clementine's story come to a close soon.

(No spoilers in this review.) Great game for any Walking Dead fans. It hits you really hard right up front and doesn't let up for the entire journey. It faithfully recreates that sense of moral ambiguity present in the show, which might be off-putting for people that haven't seen the show, but forces you to gauge how much faith you have in humanity. You are constantly forced to balance vulnerability against stability and every relationship is a battle between loyalty and survival. The characters don't fall into simple archetypes, and where lesser games would settle for simple and predictable categories, TWD manages to create portrayals of realistic people, complete with indecision, perspective, selfishness, insecurity, and compassion. If I had one complaint, it would be that sometimes it seems like the child you play as controls a group of adults. They mask it somewhat as subtle manipulation (you rarely make outright demands), but there are a few points where you wonder why the group's survival is so readily swayed by a kid. But, like I said, the writers do a good job of hiding it. For example, if you want someone to rejoin the group, you don't just say, "Hey, come back to the group." Instead you use vulnerabilities you discovered to persuade them over the course of several dialogue choices. If you've never seen the show and never played the first season, this season stands on its own well. I had forgotten much of the first season and didn't have the save files on the computer I played Season 2 on, and it felt perfectly natural. There is some minor crossover between the game and the TV show in Season 1, but the games do a great job of being self contained within TWD universe. I'm wondering how long Telltale can keep this series going, though. There are multiple endings - about 4 significantly different outcomes - which means multiple start points for Season 3. That means either those different endings converge, which leaves the player feeling like their choices had no real consequence, or they diverge, which quadruples the amount of writing and animating. Either way, I think the game will either end with Season 3 or 4. The only ways around it would be to introduce another entire set of characters, in which case they should really make it a separate game, or to put in ten times the amount of resources for a game that the average player will see 1/20th of. I just hope they end it before the story becomes stale or they're forced to resort to cheap tricks. A reboot, like the game did compared to the TV show, would be fine, but I have a feeling we are going to see Clementine's story come to a close soon.