First off, as I did with the rest of the Telltale seasonal games I played, I will mention this - this is more of an interactive book than a game, its gameplay is limited to some QTE minigames, a couple "point-and-click" adventure scenes and some dialog scenes. This alone means it will not be interesting or enjoyable for a lot of people.
Second thing I always mention in these, is thatFirst off, as I did with the rest of the Telltale seasonal games I played, I will mention this - this is more of an interactive book than a game, its gameplay is limited to some QTE minigames, a couple "point-and-click" adventure scenes and some dialog scenes. This alone means it will not be interesting or enjoyable for a lot of people.
Second thing I always mention in these, is that the impact of player choices is very small in regards to the overall story and the marketing and in-game information regarding the impact of choices being misleading. The story is very linear, it will take you to the same locations under the same circumstances most of the time, and the end-point is pretty specific and you will arrive to it no matter what you do. That being said, the choices you make do impact characters and their relationship with your character considerably.
Third disclaimer, which I did not use with the other games - I generally avoid writing reviews for games I did not complete (or played for significant amount of time in case of sandbox games), both here on Metacritic and on other pages and forums I visit / used to visit. That is because in most cases, I do not finish them because they simply are not to my liking, not because they would be simply so bad I refuse to complete them. However, there are a couple games which do fall into the category of "so bad I can't play more of it", and this season of TWD falls into this category, or rather, the second half of it does, and so review it I shall, although even the first half lags behind in overall quality.
Graphics are much better than previous two seasons, the characters are modeled much better, animations are smoother, more human, facial expressions are great, the world is detailed - the game remains true to its comics style of visuals, but brings them to a completely new level. There were points in the game where I wanted to just stand and admire the locations and the details in them, but I did not, which brings us to the first major issue - the optimization is terrible. The game freezes on some scene changes just like in Season 2, but the micro-stutter is now nearly constant and there are semi-common frame drops into what looks like 10-15 FPS area, which does not impact the gameplay that much, considering the gameplay loop of the game, but it can still be jarring, as some of these drops come suddenly and last 10-30 seconds.
Sound design is overall average again, nothing special, but sound engineering is quite bad. Ambient sounds and background music have a tendency to stutter, sound-tear and loop short sections during scene changes (when the game freezes), but it also happens when scenes are on-going and in times when there aren't framedrops, so it is not necessarily tied to that.
Voice acting is still top notch, though, so there's that, at least.
Story and characters - this is where the largest drop of quality is. The character you get to play is not one from the initial group you start out with in Season 1 and in Season 2, and it immediately feels like all of the progress and choices you made have had 0 consequences so far, which is really bad. They did call it A New Frontier and implied it is a different story (hence not Season 3), but it's a full fledged game, unlike the Michonne spin-off or the 400-days DLC for first season, and the story of the first group - or what is left of it, is not really resolved in the first and second season. ANF does this, in a very lackluster, off hand way - subverting expectations like The Last Jedi, before it was cool to be The Last Jedi - and it does contain a member of the initial group as a side character (playable in some short sections with memory flashbacks) - and the fact that this character which you are emotionally invested in and essentially helped to build into what they are now kills off almost all interest in playing the character you are given.
The story also returns the pacing and character interaction issues (out of character behavior) from season 1 and combines them with underdeveloped relationships of season 2. The side-characters are also less compelling. The story also, in the second half, switches focus from survival and relationships and behavior of humans in life-or-death situations into a very shallow and badly written political intrigue story, which is more like a bad re-enactment of kindergarten spat than a story of political conflict between politically powerful adults. The antagonists also change from a mix of regular people and broken people into literal 60s Spiderman cartoon villains in 4th episode, at which point I just quit and just lost all interest finishing this mess and in playing the last season.
Conclusion: Still technically disappointing and broken in both optimization and sound design and engineering, same misleading marketing regarding impact of choices on the story, this time with terrible plot and cartoonish antagonist.… Expand
The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New FrontierYour Score0 out of 10User Score
