The Walking Dead: A New Frontier – Episode 2 Review

After a promising start despite some cringe-worthy dialogue from the first episode, I was very much looking forward to seeing if this The Walking Dead: A New Frontier – Episode 2 would match or even surpass the quality of the first episode of the series. I gave The Walking Dead: A New Frontier – Episode 1 9/10 as the story left me wanting more, but there was one technical glitch which put me off a little bit. While this next episode had a good story, the technical glitches were more common and were worse than the item that didn’t spawn in the first episode. Despite this it did pique my curiosity, much like the first episode; and it still made me want to play more! (Unfortunately I’ll have to wait for this next episode as the first two were released together).

Some may know, the main gameplay appeal for Telltale games is choices; and boy are there some hard ones in this episodes. In the previous installments I followed a system when it came to decisions, which was to be honest but also be kind. Whereas in this season, I’ve found that my formula no longer works. Each decision you make is bound to piss someone off, and it’s not as easy to side with someone as it used to be. Each party has a good point, and each of them can help you in the future; I’m not sure why but the choices in this game actually seem to carry a lot of weight.

As mentioned in my review of Episode 1, there are two sets of flashbacks running while you play the story (one for Javier and one for Clem). These little extra bits continue in this episode, and you slowly start to see why. Your choices back then, although you may not realize at the time, start to matter quite a bit. When in a flashback a choice will seem obvious if there’s a confrontation between two characters, but you start to worry when someone remembers what you did donkey’s years ago and therefore doesn’t particularly trust you. Then you feel like you should go back and play the game perfectly to avoid any confrontation all together; this is what I meant about the choices being difficult to make, but this also makes you invested in the game.

Unfortunately in this episode there were more frequent and worse glitches in this game. There were a few cases with items not being there or being offset from where they were meant to be. The worst part was when there was an interesting bit happening and the game just stopped, it just froze for like 2 minutes. I wouldn’t take any of my inputs and I almost quit out to restart. Luckily I made a note of the glitch for this review and by the time I had finished it started back up; this really wasn’t good. I’d be more accepting to a mild pause as the game logged my choice but this was pretty poor.

The story itself was good and started to be more exciting as the episode went on, that’s usually the case with Telltale games. One thing I thought was really cool was the integration of characters from the comic as your main partner for one bit, he’s also in the TV show and you will most probably recognize him from what he wears. I know this has been done before, but it was cool to see it brought up again; as well as ask the question, will there be any more recognizable characters in the game from the comics or even the previous games.

Overall, I’m going to give The Walking Dead: A New Frontier – Episode 2 an 8 out of 10. The story was gripping for the most part and the classic cliffhanger at the end was pretty damn cool, while possibly expected if you’re Sherlock. I didn’t see as much cringe-worthy dialogue in this one which is always a bonus, and it did the job of getting me curious about the next episode. It was just a shame about the glitches and how bad they were, but hopefully they can avoid that in the next episode.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.