The Walking Dead: A New Frontier

I enjoyed The Walking Dead: A New Frontier and not only because Telltale seems to have fixed the laggy animation issues or the fact that Garrus, er, I mean... Brandon Keener is one of the voice actors; the game is packed with plot twists, family drama, a multitude of epilogues and it's a joy seeing Clementine mature into an independent and capable survivor. The only thing I could criticise about the game is that the episodes seem to be slightly shorter than previous The Walking Dead games and despite fixing some animation issues, others remain.

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For the third installment of The Walking Dead, we follow the story of Javier and his family, and the bonds that tie them together. Clementine is still one of the main characters and appears quite often throughout the game. While I'm sure me and many players wanted to follow her as the main character, a change of pace isn't necessarily a bad thing. The story of Javier it's quite enjoyable for the most part... until you get to the end of episode 4. Then the quality of the writing takes a massive dive, and you just want it to be over. Some characters start acting inconsistently and change their minds every 2 conversations, or make a full 180 respect the rest of the game. Coincidentally, the end of chapter 4 also features one of the biggest examples of why your choices have no real impact in the story. You are forced to make a huge decision, only to find out in episode 5 it didn't really matter at all. That it's not to say your other choices impact anything meaningful. Either the characters forget by the next episode at the latest, or they only add to your struggles. "Gameplay" wise, it can be summed up as: choices, some QTEs, more choices, and repeat, with maybe one or two point-and-click parts thrown into the mix. Not that anyone buys Telltale games for the gameplay, but at this point why not just make a full VN, leave the choices in and remove anything else. There are way too many QTEs this time around, and it all gets quite tedious by the end. On the technical aspect, I suffered various perfomance issues. The graphics have improved, but I had to turn them to medium to get the game to run properly (and my PC should run a game like this easily), and it still crashed once in a while. Not the best level of polish there. Music was nice, though. Overall, I would only recommend buying the game if you liked the approach of Season 2 (the days of Season 1 are long gone) and want to know what happens next. Preferably on a sale. Otherwise, I would skip it.

You played already previous chapters so you know what to expect. You will get it more or less

If you like glitches: bugs, lags, sound getting not synced with video, performance problems, characters getting stuck and just looking at each other until game starts scripts, unwieldy controls and all of the sins of the recent Telltale games - that is: meaningless choices and total lack of consequences... ...it will be for you. Otherwise stay clear. Unfinished game that is trying to be sold at full price. It's a good game if you are willing to look past those things. But it's just shameful when a developer sells buggy, unfished and rushed titles again and again. Don't buy, judge with your wallet.