One of the editors at Middle of Nowhere Gaming played Episode 4 of The Walking Dead Season 2 for review. Check out his thoughts here! What did you think of this episode?
It's an exciting day for fans of The Walking Dead. Today, Next Games and AMC debuted a teaser trailer for their upcoming mobile game, The Walking Dead: No Man's Land.
While the video doesn't detail what to expect in terms of gameplay, it does give fans a glimpse of the usual chaos - and the desperate partnerships that form as a result - that they've come to love about The Walking Dead universe....
After taking the grim death march that is season two of The Walking Dead to its moral nadir last time out with the option of gawking at every little detail of what a crowbar can do to a cranium, Telltale Games really goes all out with Amid the Ruins. This fourth and penultimate episode of the current season hit a sweet spot for me, sticking with the same doom-laden atmosphere but moving away from the pensive moments that made me feel somewhat like a spectator at times during its predecessors. Tighter plotting, constant zombie attacks, and the introduction of mysterious new human adversaries led to more action sequences and stark dialogue choices that put me right in the middle of this increasingly bleak apocalyptic world.
Glimmers of hope are as hard to find here as shafts of light in a coal mine. The story continues precisely where episode three, In Harm's Way, left off, with the increasingly mature Clementine and the surviving members of her band of buddies using zombie-guts camouflage to sneak through an undead herd besieging the box-store empire of villain Bill Carver. A brief, if brutal, moment of optimism at the end of the last episode turns horrific in short order, and that sets the tone for the rest of the unrelentingly depressing two hours or so needed to play through to (another) cliff-hanger conclusion.
Will Jane save Sarah? Does Sarah want to be saved?
Reactions to these deaths (which are unavoidable no matter which dialogue choices you select, according to Telltale) are also becoming increasingly muted. The chowdown referred to above would have been a defining moment just last episode. Now it takes place and everyone moves on almost instantly. Granted, the gang is a little preoccupied with the birth of Rebecca's baby, and this death is one that has been telegraphed for a good long time now. But it's incredible how the group watches this horrifying scene and adopts a "Well, that happened" (a fitting line that Mike uses to describe an incident with a zombie earlier in the game) attitude, and then the next scene you see is Clementine and the others taking a nap.
With Amid the Ruins, there is no more room to be a spectator. While Clementine could often sit back and observe everything during the first episodes of this season as still something of a little kid, now she is an almost-grown-up soldier on the front lines of every zombie attack and every life-and-death situation determining the fates of her friends. Given a last-second surprise death and the fade-to-black gunfight, those fates are not likely to be good ones. Still, Telltale's masterful storytelling keeps us hoping for the best even as that optimism is continually shattered by what is proving to be one of the most memorable tragedies ever told in gaming.
After taking the grim death march that is season two of The Walking Dead to its moral nadir last time out with the option of gawking at every little detail of what a crowbar can do to a cranium, Telltale Games really goes all out with Amid the Ruins. This fourth and penultimate episode of the current season hit a sweet spot for me, sticking with the same doom-laden atmosphere but moving away from the pensive moments that made me feel somewhat like a spectator at times during its predecessors. Tighter plotting, constant zombie attacks, and the introduction of mysterious new human adversaries led to more action sequences and stark dialogue choices that put me right in the middle of this increasingly bleak apocalyptic world.
Glimmers of hope are as hard to find here as shafts of light in a coal mine. The story continues precisely where episode three, In Harm's Way, left off, with the increasingly mature Clementine and the surviving members of her band of buddies using zombie-guts camouflage to sneak through an undead herd besieging the box-store empire of villain Bill Carver. A brief, if brutal, moment of optimism at the end of the last episode turns horrific in short order, and that sets the tone for the rest of the unrelentingly depressing two hours or so needed to play through to (another) cliff-hanger conclusion.
Will Jane save Sarah? Does Sarah want to be saved?
Reactions to these deaths (which are unavoidable no matter which dialogue choices you select, according to Telltale) are also becoming increasingly muted. The chowdown referred to above would have been a defining moment just last episode. Now it takes place and everyone moves on almost instantly. Granted, the gang is a little preoccupied with the birth of Rebecca's baby, and this death is one that has been telegraphed for a good long time now. But it's incredible how the group watches this horrifying scene and adopts a "Well, that happened" (a fitting line that Mike uses to describe an incident with a zombie earlier in the game) attitude, and then the next scene you see is Clementine and the others taking a nap.
With Amid the Ruins, there is no more room to be a spectator. While Clementine could often sit back and observe everything during the first episodes of this season as still something of a little kid, now she is an almost-grown-up soldier on the front lines of every zombie attack and every life-and-death situation determining the fates of her friends. Given a last-second surprise death and the fade-to-black gunfight, those fates are not likely to be good ones. Still, Telltale's masterful storytelling keeps us hoping for the best even as that optimism is continually shattered by what is proving to be one of the most memorable tragedies ever told in gaming.
It's an exciting day for fans of The Walking Dead. Today, Next Games and AMC debuted a teaser trailer for their upcoming mobile game, The Walking Dead: No Man's Land.
While the video doesn't detail what to expect in terms of gameplay, it does give fans a glimpse of the usual chaos - and the desperate partnerships that form as a result - that they've come to love about The Walking Dead universe....
