Vector- Posted May 19, 2020 Posted May 19, 2020 Game Informations : Developer: Telltale Games Publishers: Telltale Games, Skybound Games Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Andriod, IOS, MAC Initial release date: Dec 17, 2013 Hope " is one quality that you will find quite little of in Robert Kirkman's graphic novel series, and the same goes for the TV show and now game series that it inspired. Dire circumstances and consequential choices continue to hang heavy on Season 2 of Telltale's The Walking Dead game series. Whereas the first game at least gave players two protagonists who could rely on each other as they faced the bitter reality of a walker-overrun world, Season 2 focuses on young Clementine and her desperate, lonely battle for survival. Though she will meet other living souls along her journey, her life ultimately depends on the choices and actions that she makes ... the choices that you, the player, will make. All That Remains: Clementine is damaged. Emotional scarring is starting to wear on The Walking Dead’s young heroine. She deals with loss, loneliness, and violence in different ways, and Season 2’s premiere, “All That Remains,” makes it abundantly clear that her innocence is lost.How you play determines whether or not it’s forgotten, allowing you to forge an incredible new version of someone you thought you understood. The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 1 - “All That Remains” centers on how you, as Clementine, survive the savagery of humanity and the ceaseless danger of the undead. More than this, “All That Remains” examines how a strong, independent Clementine survives the sorrow of losing everything. Developer Telltale Games describes The Walking Dead an “interactive adventure,” as it prioritizes cinematic storytelling while deemphasizing gameplay. It handles its point-and-click formula here similarly to last time, adapting minimal visual elements from the developer’s other series, The Wolf Among Us, to clean up its interface. Walking Dead also brings back its typically unstable frame rate and camera transitions, particularly on iOS devices and PlayStation Vita, as well as awkward animations and a handful of minor visual bugs. The mobile and Vita versions also feature a distracting brown border at the edge of the screen, which fades in and out during conversation. It obscures the scene and draws attention away from the characters -- a cardinal sin in a game of this nature. I still enjoy the frantic button-prompt-powered battles with zombies, exploring environments at my own pace, interacting with mundane objects, and engaging in human conversations as Clementine. Everything I’m doing feels important. I just don’t know where it’s going. The overarching story here is empty and vague, and your decisions from last season don't appear to matter much two years later. Clementine ends up in the company of an untrusting new group that finds her stranded and alone, but because everyone exists to question Clementine, we’re left not knowing what anybody but Clementine wants. Pete, the group’s sympathetic leader, has potential as an interesting father-figure type, but we’ve seen that story before. Clementine gravitates toward Luke, a young man she can confide in about Lee, but he’s never presented as anything more than a nice guy. The most interesting opportunity for potential is another young girl, oblivious to the brutality beyond her bedroom door, who wants to pal around with Clementine. This new group of survivors — whose fascinating, strained relationships will inevitably lead to surprising conflict — don’t explain much about themselves or their motivation. The main plot thread of the season is clearly a threatening character to come, but they keep their fears fairly secret right up until the abrupt ending. Whether by design or indecision, the grand scheme of where this story is going seems as lost and confused as Clementine. It’s her story, though, that defines Season 2. The Walking Dead’s limited objectives and light puzzle elements -- collecting supplies to treat a wound, or scavenging for food, for example -- intelligently correlate to Clementine’s motivations. It affects how she handles a situation, what this group of survivors thinks of her, and which of them she’ll trust. Your decisions dictate the direction of Clementine’s story, and the kind of young woman she’s become in Everett’s absence. From scene to scene, as Clementine’s pushed farther from safety and those she trusts, “All That Remains” often reaches the same impressive levels of tension and stress as any Season 1 highlight. Season 2 has already created emotionally resonant, haunting scenes powered by disturbing imagery. Brace yourself if you have a sensitive stomach. At times, the violence and gore around her borders on exploitative. The displeasure of a throat-cutting mercy kill, and seeing the detail of a screaming child’s bleeding injury, are some of the most appalling moments in any of The Walking Dead’s many forms. Certain scenes strike a difficult balance of effectiveness and excess, but they’re eventually justifiable. The consequences of Clementine’s harrowing experiences rank among the series’ most remarkable, engaging character moments. It’s tempting to treat Clementine as a hardened badass in moments of distress. She’s growing up in a world that’s wrong. She’s alone, stewing in her own angst and anguish.cThis leads to many irresistible dialogue decisions. Some of her most satisfying conversation choices are arrogant or flat-out mean. She can also appeal to a person’s humanity. It’s difficult not to give someone the sad eyes to get what you want when given the option — but it begs the ethical question about which form of emotional mani[CENSORED]tion makes you feel the least bad. Not enough games are willing to pose provocative, contemplative questions like this, and it remains what makes The Walking Dead special. Lee Everett choosing whether or not to amputate his infected arm, execute Larry, or let Ben die stand out as some of Season 1’s strongest scenes. When Season 2 finishes, it’s possible we’ll look back on “All That Remains” and remember Clementine delivering cold, callous threats to a pregnant woman she’s blackmailing. As a character study, “All That Remains” is an exceptional exploration of a young woman’s struggle to stay strong in unforgiving circumstances. I’m more invested in Clementine now than I’ve ever been, and I admire her believable independence and resolve. A House Divided: Seeds sown in The Walking Dead: Season 2’s premiere don’t sprout in Episode 2, “A House Divided” -- they explode like a bomb.While the first episode focuses more on character development than plot, the second finds its direction, puts everything in context, and delivers a brutal, violent story that fractures the relationships established last time. It’s one of the best episodes of the series to date. Clementine’s fascinating character arc continues down a dark hole, but this episode truly belongs to actor Michael Madsen and his character Carver, a villain with a quiet, terrifying menace. Like Negan and The Governor in The Walking Dead comics, he will have major, memorable ramifications on Clementine and her crew. Madsen is an actor who’s been known to chew through scenery, but in “A House Divided” his subdued performance as Carver is superb. He’s calm, calculated, and equally terrifying whether he’s talking to a little girl or torturing a man. Control is his endgame, not just power, and he sets the stage for a bleak future for Clementine and her group – one that should prove to be full of violent revenge and no-win decisions in the coming episodes. Likewise, Clementine is establishing a bit of control herself. If Episode 1’s goal was to make us uncomfortable with her character growth, Episode 2 is a reminder that there’s always someone out there worse than than the worst person you know. Over this episode’s two-and-a-half-hours she makes many big decisions about her group’s fate, especially during the stressful and bloody 30-minute finale, while reconciling (and damaging) relationships along the way. Short of Lee Everett, nothing has changed Clem in quite the same way as the catastrophic events Carver puts into motion during this episode’s lengthy climax. Its dilemmas are devastating, and the urgency of important decisions proved as stressful as any of Season 1’s most important scenes. Better than ever before, developer Telltale’s writing humanizes characters new and old, which makes interacting with them (and potentially hurting them) all the more heartwrenching. “A House Divided” may be the biggest episode of The Walking Dead yet, both in terms of the ground covered and the variables you’ll encounter along the way. Conversations make up the majority of the interactive story, and they splinter off in wildly different directions depending on who’s alive to have them and how you treat others. You may not see certain settings, have entire conversations, or interact with certain people depending on where you take Clementine by the end of the episode’s five-day stretch. On her journey north to find safety and a missing friend, Clementine also ends up in frantic fights that are among the best action sequences Telltale has ever created. I felt my heart furiously punching against my chest after searching for a weapon, killing a zombie, and trying to save someone from falling off a bridge. Tension during button-mashy fight scenes is rare, and nobody’s better at it than this team. It's still concerning to see sudden frame rate drops and animation stutters during these sorts of sequences on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 though. PC remains the ideal platform for The Walking Dead. The majority of scenes throughout “A House Divided” feel definitive, like they’ll each have lasting consequences on Clementine, Luke’s family, or a new group of trustworthy survivors. Telltale completely changes the playing field based on those decisions, too. Depending on whether Clementine gives herself up or tries to sneak away to find backup, she’ll have entirely different gameplay options, conversations, and choices in separate locations. It’s great to see immediate, important shifts like this instead of wondering when that one specific dialogue choice will come back to help or hurt me. For the first time playing The Walking Dead, I absolutely had to rewind and see how else a scene played out. I did this four times, and each time I came out the other side hurting from the hard-hitting results of my actions. Amid the significant, scarring events, the writing here is exceptionally human. A chilling and introspective speech about regret, family, and letting go stands out as one of the franchise’s strongest character moments. “A House Divided” also achieves a great deal in what it doesn’t say. It implies and hints at many things that pay off in surprising ways. Some moments made me smile, others broke my heart. It also touches on religion, homosexuality, and tolerance with grace, once more lending credible weight to The Walking Dead’s growing cast of complex, endearing characters In Harm's Way: In Harm’s Way writer Pierre Shorette forces many of The Walking Dead’s characters to their physical and mental breaking points. The scenes in which they’re each tested are memorable, excellent, and effectively unpleasant, in a way that is uniquely Walking Dead -- to acknowledge you have enjoyed them is to submit to your own sadistic sensibilities. Yet there is no glee during the unpredictable story told during In Harm’s Way. Clementine’s new family is imprisoned by Bill Carver, the quiet maniac who debuted in Episode 2: A House Divided. Clementine and company’s overnight escape plans put everyone at risk, and the way In Harm’s Way builds to its devastating climax had me anxious and uncomfortable in all the right ways. The Walking Dead explores what that means to players while putting them on a hopeless road for Episode 4. In Harm’s Way is about as bleak as this franchise has ever been, and what little optimism exists is only here to remind you how easily it can be used against you. Sociopaths in video games usually exist to motivate the player’s violence. Their mental instability absolves you of any uncertainty or guilt when you do something terrible to them. They’re “crazy” -- just kill them. Bill Carver is a different kind of sociopath. He made me play Clementine differently than I had been, but in quite the opposite way of most games. My cold, bitter Clementine warmed to those around her, even those she didn’t fully trust, because of Carver. Yes, I wanted him dead -- he is likely the first person Clementine has ever truly hated -- but that was secondary to protecting those who suffered because of him. Empathy is the greatest success of In Harm’s Way. It focuses on people, features very little environmental exploration, and doesn’t bother with puzzles. Contextually, this is a human episode, so there’s little room for the more involved “play” aspects of this adventure game. Despite having less interactive portions than previous episodes, In Harms Way has tension, discomfort, and character development that’s among the best of them. I have no idea what Clementine’s future holds. That’s unnerving. But, like Clementine, I’m focusing on getting these people to a better place than the people I left behind. Amid The Ruins: Telltale Games Has a hard time building up to its endings. Ending something isn’t easy, but this is a storytelling team that’s proved it knows how to stick the landing. Yet -- like The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead’s first season -- Episode 4 is an odd lull in a story that’s built phenomenal momentum until now. Amid the Ruins, like many of The Walking Dead’s point-and-click adventure game episodes, focuses on the calmer, quieter side of surviving the zombie apocalypse. Its bursts of unexpected violence force main character Clementine to make difficult decisions that leave her, a young orphan, responsible for the safety of the people she cares about. In Amid the Ruins, that ever-growing number of characters starts to dwindle.People in Clementine’s life seem to exist solely so their departure can hurt her. Often, this makes for meaningful moments that define her as a character -- specifically the version of her that you create by responding to terrible situations and potentially worse people. Loss, specifically how Clementine processes and proceeds with it, remains the focus of The Walking Dead: Season 2. Amid the Ruins features plenty of loss, and some of the heavy decisions connected to them wield the same gut-punching power Telltale Games has become known for. Much of Amid the Ruins, however, felt like loss with little meaning, as though characters are being cut because the cast is too big, or they don’t fit where the finale is going.Characters vanish so rapidly and unexpectedly that it robs The Walking Dead of certain emotional value. Some exits are cheap, while others are unjustified, feel forced, or are forgotten as quickly as they happened. Worse, some of those unsatisfyingly departed characters are replaced by new villains -- introduced out of nowhere, with no clear motivation -- who feel out of place, inappropriate, and somewhat cartoonish. In playing Amid the Ruins, I enjoyed discovering more about people we’ve spent little time getting to know. This episode spends a lot of time with Jane, the woman who helped Clem and her friends in Episode 3, as our young heroine learns about her past and takes lessons in killing zombies. You’ll also see new conflicts arise between old friends and new. Resolving these problems is tense and satisfying as it always is, but most of it appears to be inconsequential by the end. Characters disregard unforgivable and unforgettable past events to focus on new problems, which lessened the impact of previous decisions I’d made. One fantastic scene in particular shows a grieving, despondent character clearly contemplating suicide. The performance is genuine, and it creates a heavy air that made me as uncomfortable as the concerned friends around him. In the scenes that follow a new tension snaps them out of it, but this person never revisits their own trauma, and never resolves the serious personal problem with Clementine that I created previously. For the first time in this season, I don’t believe in what certain people are doing fits with their character and their history. Meanwhile, although The Walking Dead: Season 2 has been building to something bigger for Clementine, it fizzles here by the end of Episode 4, the complex political drama that’s been brewing between feuding sides all but evaporates. Bickering elders don’t seem to weigh on Clementine as much as the grim things she has to do on her own. She’s starting to feel small, despite the big things she’s doing. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing yet. Maybe that’s the point. Perhaps the desperation and hopelessness of The Walking Dead’s bleak world is starting to overwhelm Clementine’s story -- one where a little girl begins to break, to give in, and give up on what little she has left. This could be where The Walking Dead is headed. Where it’s at, like the first episode of Season 2, is in an interesting place for one person, and spinning its wheels for most everyone else. No Going Back: When pushed to their absolute limits, human beings show their true colors. The Walking Dead: Season 2 -- Episode 5: No Going Back tempts its remaining cast members to cross lines and endure unbearable personal trials.How they respond to main character Clementine, and each other, forces us to make some of the most difficult decisions of the season -- some of which make it painfully clear where you stand with people you once loved, hated, trusted, or doubted.The hook of Telltale’s excellent point-and-click adventure series is engaging with these events -- either through dialogue choices or actions -- based on the kind of person your Clementine has become. Where Episode 4: Amid the Ruins rapidly and repeatedly wrote off characters, No Going Back spends a significant amount of time exploring who Clementine has left and what they mean to her. While Amid the Ruins is still a problematic episode, No Going Back capitalizes on its setup and pays it off with grace. The slow, contemplative first hour sees these worn survivors reflecting on their lives, cracking jokes with each other, and trying their best to behave like things are normal again. It can’t last. Small problems spiral quickly out of control, and the calm is crushed by weighty, gut-wrenching dilemmas that place an enormous amount of pressure on Clementine’s group. Memorable moments cut to the bone in every scene. Bad situations test Clem’s resolve and her companions’ trust. Best-case scenario, someone earns their redemption -- but not before they’ve salted the earth. Worst case? That’s up to you. It’s oddly fascinating to watch these people’s relationships deteriorate, crumble, or implode. The Walking Dead’s phenomenal, convincing character performances have never been better than this. Raging arguments made me genuinely uncomfortable, in the same way watching loved ones bicker might. I felt uneasy about numerous escalating tensions because I didn’t know who was in the right, whose side to take, or even if I should make Clementine speak up. I grew to fear, pity, hate, and forgive characters based on the horrors we endured together -- or because of each other. I love this series for its ability to evoke such a wide range of emotions, and No Going Back is the pinnacle of Season 2’s provocative, painful, and unforgettable story. Season 1 of The Walking Dead ends on a much different note than this, and it has significantly different goals. The conversations about how your Clementine’s story ended, and how you got there, will share comparable enthusiasm to that of Lee Everett’s story. Trading stories with others means learning of entirely different ways scenes could play out. Different decisions can take you to entirely different locations, with separate people. No Going Back is ambitious as a finale, and it’s clearly executed with confidence. Even loose ends you may wish to see wrapped up serve a purpose. Not everyone’s story gets bow-tied closure -- sometimes, things are entirely out of your hands, and the not knowing hurts just as bad as the truth might have. The Walking Dead is a strange beast in that the more miserable it makes its audience, the better it is. In comics, television, and video games, one of the greatest measures of success is if it can make you feel how horrible it feels to be part of its world. In that respect, Season 2 of Telltale Games’ series is in the upper echelon of all Walking Dead fiction. Clementine is a strong lead, stronger and steeled than most in my story than most, I’d wager. But having seen all the options laid out as I played, this doesn’t have to be the case, and knowing that is a powerful feeling. It may make for an even better finale than the superb conclusion I built for my Clementine -- a person whose true colors have finally been laid bare. It is surprising how much The Walking Dead: Season 2’s finale accomplishes in just two hours. Each scene studies a set of characters, analyzing their goals, their nature, and what they’ve become in the two years since the undead started roaming. No Going Back poses challenging questions about people you love, people you might be using, and those you might loathe. It is, ultimately, a test of these characters’ wills, and a look at each of their limits. Telltale Games crafted brilliant no-win scenarios for Clementine, and the outcome of each is a result of what your Clementine is willing to say, lose, or do for herself or her family. Sometimes, those two can’t be reconciled, which leads to devastating conclusions. This is perhaps the most heartbreaking and tense episode of anything Telltale has ever made. How Clementine braces for the impact of everything in front of her is up to you -- and where that takes her left me in awe. Verdict: It is surprising how much The Walking Dead: Season 2’s finale accomplishes in just two hours. Each scene studies a set of characters, analyzing their goals, their nature, and what they’ve become in the two years since the undead started roaming. No Going Back poses challenging questions about people you love, people you might be using, and those you might loathe. It is, ultimately, a test of these characters’ wills, and a look at each of their limits. Telltale Games crafted brilliant no-win scenarios for Clementine, and the outcome of each is a result of what your Clementine is willing to say, lose, or do for herself or her family. Sometimes, those two can’t be reconciled, which leads to devastating conclusions. This is perhaps the most heartbreaking and tense episode of anything Telltale has ever made. How Clementine braces for the impact of everything in front of her is up to you -- and where that takes her left me in awe. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements: Minimum: OS: Win Xp 32 Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz / AMD Athlon XP 1700+ Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 4200 or NVIDIA GeForce 205 VRAM: 512MB System Memory: 3 GB RAM Storage: 2 GB Hard drive space DirectX 9 Compatible Graphics Card Recommended: OS: Win 7 32 Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4GHz / AMD Athlon 5050e Dual Core Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 4650 1GB or NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 VRAM: 1GB System Memory: 3 GB RAM Storage: 2 GB Hard drive space Quote Official Trailer 1
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