The Walking Dead: Season Two Episode 1 - All That Remains

Cliffhanger endings are fine when the next episode of a TV show is days away, but less so when the wait is likely to last a couple of months. Yet Telltale has already achieved something remarkable, proving – to both Clem and to you – that there’s life after Lee.

It was perhaps too much to ask of Telltale that they blow our minds in the very first episode, but I still feel a little let-down with how “setty-uppy” All That Remains felt, with a mostly predictable storyline and few really significant or interesting choices to make.

The second season started slowly, and out of its nature The Walking Dead franchise is not able to repeat its huge craze in the past year. Starring the young Clementine is like a promise of brand-new experience, but otherwise it's all the same as before, and with the same problems rolling in. In any case, the most important thing remains - it has a great story.

It’s far too early to crown this season as a successful follow-up to Telltale’s first foray with The Walking Dead, but there are enough threads of character intrigue to suggest that Clementine and her new crew have a promising (that is to say, heartbreaking and terrible) future.

If you liked and enjoyed the first season and you don't mind repeating, play the second one, because, as for now, it's exactly more of the same.

As of right now, all on its own, "All That Remains" is an entertaining piece of interactive fiction that will have to do a lot of heavy lifting to live up to its forebear.

For a game that is almost devoid of gameplay by concept, a boring story is a like a death sentence. Three hours of Clementine’s misadventures boil down to ‘Well, try not to die, okay?”

A script that is not as elegant as the first season and one fears that, through hubris or complacency, Telltale has lost sight of what made The Walking Dead so good in the first place.

Ultimately, the only real sin committed by All That Remains is that it's a first episode to the second season rather than a sixth episode to the first season.

The story is too loose and doesn’t display a proper direction just yet. It’s not all bad as there is a rather striking moment halfway through the story, but if this is truly all that remains, then we’re in for a rough season.

Not a bad start to the second season but not a great one either, with a formless plot and unusually weak characterisation.