The Walking Dead Season Two: Ep 3 – In Harm’s Way

8.5 Overall Score
Story: 10/10
Graphics: 9/10
Performance: 6/10

Best episode of the season so far | Intense final scene

Worse performance of the season so far | Choices don't seem to mean as much

Game Info

GAME NAME: The Walking Dead Season Two: Episode 3 – In Harm’s Way

DEVELOPER(S): Telltale Games

PUBLISHER(S): Telltale Games

PLATFORM(S): PlayStation Vita

RELEASE DATE(S): June 03, 2014

We’ve reached the juicy middle of TellTale’s The Walking Dead Season Two on the PlayStation Vita.  And by juicy I mean bloody.  Very very bloody.

(The review below will contain story spoilers, though attempts were made to keep them vague.)

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Episode Three: In Harm’s Way has arrived to continue our adventure just as Carver has captured Clementine and her group.  This episode wastes no time in reminding you how much you want to push something sharp into Carver’s eyeballs.  If you didn’t hate him before, you definitely will after this episode.  Especially after an action he forces another character to do that had me quietly raging inside.  I’m really glad they created a central bad guy for this season.  People come for the zombies, but they ultimately stay for the people.  And having a person to root against with the zombies makes everything more intense.  Season 1 never had anything like this and that’s refreshing.  Sure there was the grumpy old man and his crazy daughter, but an actual really bad bad guy didn’t really appear until the last episode.

twd_203_captured

As far as the gameplay, unfortunately there’s not a whole lot here.  There are still lots of dialog choices to pick from as you make your way through, but most seemed inconsequential.  There’s also not much exploration and actual moving around.  Sure you do a couple of sneaking sequences, but I only really felt like I could actually get caught once, and even then the game play made it so that I wouldn’t anyway.  The pattern holds with action sequences only being available twice during the episode.  However, the last one is pretty intense so that makes up for it a little.  So while you might not actually play much of this episode, the story and action that you get to watch is my favorite so far this season.  It felt like a real actual TV episode.  New characters are introduced, comic relief is sprinkled in, and a nice conclusion is offered.  By the end, I was exhausted.  It has the makings of a season finale, but as we know, there are still two more episodes to go.

twd_203_carver

The technical problems we’ve seen in the previous episodes are still present here, but even more so.  It still takes a while to transition in and out of scenes.  There are still times that you’ll think your game has locked up, only to roar back to life.  I even had a fun time watching the words come out of sync with the character’s lips as the video struggled to keep up.  The game is not unplayable by any means, it just gets annoying and frustrating having to deal with the slowdown every once in a while.

THE RECOMMENDATION

Episode Three: In Harm’s Way is definitely my favorite so far of the second season.  Lots of great story action.  Great humor from new characters.  Great stakes.  Great finish.  Just don’t expect to actually get involved in a whole lot of it.  I’m anxious to see how they wrap up the season, as this episode could easily have been used as a season finale.

 

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Author: Shaun Zimmerman View all posts by
Still waiting for the Commodore 128... Find me on Twitter @Zimm108

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