The Walking Dead: A New Frontier

Good things first: the story around Javier who tries to protect his family, meets Clementine and gets in trouble with "The New Frontier" is packed with drama, some interesting characters and generally worth being told. Also the graphics are improved quite a bit. There are graphical glitches though. Like black bars appearing somewhere on the screen or a gray column reaching from Javier's backpack into the room and hiding parts of the scenery. Besides, the better the models and textures look, the more annoying the black strokes become to emphasize the comic book look. The 3rd seasons is also a step back regarding interaction. There are only a couple of small scenes where the player is allowed to move around a bit (fixed cameras) and nothing you could really call a puzzle. So 90% of the playtime is a movie with some quicktime events and some (timed) dialogs now and then. Again, most of your decisions have only minor impact or none at all. You are still told that people will remember your decisions at points where this doesn't make sense. In one case, your choice is even reversed. Also the quicktime events are deliberately inconsistent. Like 3x "E" for a headshot, then 3x "Q" but suddenly the game expects mouse aiming with the cursor appearing one second before the event at the other side of the screen. As far a I can tell, the savegame handling was completely removed: you can only restart an episode. Actually you can't even import savegames from Episode 2. If you want to, you have to create a Telltale account and somehow import your savegame there first. If you don't, the game displays nag screens at every possibility to make you to. And if they don't nag you about your Telltale account, they nag you about playing other Telltale games (weirdly also Season 1 and 2). All of this is pointing in the wrong direction. I hoped Telltale games would evolve towards something like "Life is Strange" but instead the interaction is reduced. Well, and the nagging is annyoing.

This Telltale's The Walking Dead season three is a good video game in itself for those who like (easy) graphic adventures or games with good story (not too original this time, though...) and characters. However, the general quality, story and the characters are pretty inferior than season one and even season two... The episodes even are much shorter. Clem is there and she is lovely and badass as always, although sometimes I wish they would've focused more on her and not on Javi, David, Kate and the genuinely annoying Gabe, since Clem is the pure heart of the series. Maybe too badass sometimes, even a little crazy, and that's not good, because we don't care so much about her as in S1 or S2, and she has lost a great deal of her innocence and benevolence, which all those things made her so special and cute in the first place... I recommend purchasing it only for a fair price, if you loved S1 and even S2. The bad: They turned Clem into a sociopath... And Clem is the heart of the series! Serious graphical glitches at a couple of moments, which seem to be longstanding. QTE, although they are well used and I think Telltale games are the only ones where I don't genuinely hate them. Kind of short. As usual, your choices actually don't matter much. The good: Clem. Good old telltale-style storytelling. Zombies. Story and characters? In the well-being of some of the characters, your choices actually kind of matter, a bit more than they did in S1 and S2. We'll see how it all ends in the next season...

Keeping the review short and sweet, the story, writing and acting in this game was mostly good, at times even very good. Having said that, there was almost zero gameplay, and most of that was limited to quick-time events too. In the previous seasons there was at least some amount of gameplay involved, but the new one felt like a six or so hours long cutscene with interactive bits here and there, which is seriously disappointing. Even The Walking Dead Season 2 felt light on gameplay, but this one takes the cake. I really hope Telltale takes a few steps back and starts including some actual gameplay to their upcoming games,

The 3rd Walking Dead installment is a mixed bag, the graphics are still crisp and clean, the action very graphic and the voice acting superb. What brings down this season are the myriad QTE scripted moments and their subsequent confusion. Add in many moments where in the midst of supreme action the characters stop and begin a conversation about feelings, right smack dab in the middle of crap happening. Obtrusive ads and online buying options are ramped up till every break in the episodes are full of pulsating click bait. lol The devs bring in many ways to do their quick time events, which is a problem. Is it going to be a rapidly pressed Q with final smash of E, directional arrows, one stab at Q, or E, or even press shift and E. Add in aiming reticule with huge lag often leads to death and reload. No idea why they thought having so many ways to wade thru timed QTEs were a good idea. The story is good though, not as grim as season 2. More touchy feely which is problematic. They are years in survival mode and we are pressed into making stupid decisions that dont reflect a survivor environment. Often script choices end up in crazy unplanned responses which leads to frustration. No way to rewind without having to redo the whole episode. All that said, its still a decent game, buy on deep bundle sale like I did and you wont regret it.