The Walking Dead: A New Frontier Review (The Zone)
Don't buy this version.
Ignore my playtime as I played episode 1 about 3 or 4 times and the second episode 2 times.
Now, for the actual review.
Technical issues: Let's get the worst out of the way first.
The game WOULD NOT save ANY of my PROGRESS.
Not my choices and not even my settings.
Which means that as I played through each episode, instead of having my choices saved, the game would auto generate my choices for each episode. Which can lead to situations where I chose to kill a character only for them to be perfectly fine in the next episode as the game decided to spare them in the previous episode despite me choosing to kill them.
The progress saving indicator wouldn't disappear once it shows up. Once it shows up it will stay there for the duration of the episode damaging the immersion further.
Stuttering, capping the frame rate to 60 in the nvidia control panel seems to have fixed most of it but my frame rate would still dip less than 60 in some moments despite my computer having the specs that should absolutely crush this game.
Story:
As of writing this review I only played Season 1 and 2 and this game is definitely the weakest among the rest of them. Most main characters could be summarised in just 1 word and it doesn't help the fact that since episode 1 I wanted 2 character to die despite the game trying to make me like them. Having characters be assholes for 90% the game doesn't make me like them at those 10% when they're feeling sad.
Illusion of choice: In previous seasons there were things such as the story or characters that were so good that they were able to mask the fact that choices don't really matter. This might be because of my choices being auto generated each episode, but this game did a really poor job at masking the futility of my choices. Compared to other Telltale TWD games, this one felt the most railroaded.
Conclusion:
Look, I got this dirt cheap on a sale and the story was mostly entertaining despite it combing 2 of the most cliche dramas ever.
But, even on a sale, I cannot recommend this version at all.
I am not sure if the version of New Frontier is fixed in the Definitive Edition but if it is then play it through that.
I'm not even going to give it a numbered rating, just don't waste your time or money on this version.