The Walking Dead: Season Two Review (Greens)
Being released around a year after the first season, this game picks up the story months after the events of the first game. The game follows Clementine, now having to survive mostly alone, but ends up being taken in by a new group of survivors. Season two is known to have a large amount of content that was either cut or changed during development. This caused some parts of the story to come off a bit underdeveloped in some areas.
-Great voice acting.
-Great atmosphere.
-Good soundtrack.
-Good graphics and art style.
-The Kenny ending is really great.
-Michael Madsen playing one of the villains is pretty cool.
-The story feels like a mixed bag. Some of it is good, and other parts don't feel fully thought out. It suffers from a lot of cut/changed content during development. The Russian gang being one example of this.
-The game is more dark and depressing than the first season, but almost a bit too much at times. In the first episode alone: Omid gets killed, Christa's baby dies, she gets jumped by bandits and possibly dies, Clementine befriends a dog which then viciously bites her, she then fights off the dog causing it to be impaled on a spike, she then has to choose to put it down or not, she's then found by a group who think she's bitten by a walker, the doctor in their group somehow can't tell a dog bite from a human bite (seriously?), she's then locked in a shed where she has to do her own stitches in a pretty graphic scene. All of this stuff would be fine if it was more spaced out, but all of these things happening right after each other feels pretty forced and over the top. This whole game feels like it's lacking in some of the more cozy moments in Season 1, as bleak as that game was, it still had moments of stability and comfort.
-Like Season 1, choices don't affect the core story, only affecting smaller details.
-Some characters are hard to connect with and feel like they were underutilized in the story. Many of the characters are so stupid/useless that Clementine, a literal 11 year old girl, carries the group at times.
-The plot twist that Kenny didn't die in season 1 felt like questionable fan service and undermines some of his prior character development.
-Christa and Omid being killed/written off so early was disappointing.
-The 400 Days tie-in is massively underwhelming.
-The final decision between Kenny or Jane feels poorly executed. Whether you support Kenny or not, Jane has to make up a fake scenario and put AJ at risk in order to purposely provoke Kenny and expose him as 'the bad guy'. Even though Kenny has major issues, he's justified in being angry when Jane lies to him about AJ being dead. There really isn't much reason to side with Jane unless you really hate Kenny. This choice would've been much harder to decide if it was based on an actual real scenario where Jane wasn't just being manipulative.
The Walking Dead: Season Two, while decent, is an ultimately disappointing sequel. It lacks a lot of the charm and writing that made the original game so beloved. I really want to like this one, but it's issues hold back what could've been a much better game. Only recommended if you really want to see where the story goes after Season 1.
6.5/10