The Walking
Dead Season 2: Episode 2 – A House Divided
Telltale Games
Starting where we left off,
things take a while to get going in this house, some early zombie
evading notwithstanding. We get to know more about the group that
Clementine is with, developing likes and dislikes as we do. I still
don’t have the same commitment to any of them, but I do have a grudging
admiration for a few, and have identified at least one I could probably
sacrifice if it came to that.
The actual house (as opposed to
the metaphorical one) is a ski lodge, and things start to ramp up when
we get there. They go into overdrive just after the storm hits, and then
into meltdown as we near the end of the episode. How many move on to
episode three will have a bit to do with the choices you make in the
last climactic scenario.
I thought this was the strength
of episode two. Maybe the choices I made had, or will have, little
impact, but on the only part I replayed I did manage to keep one extra
person alive. It did feel like a lot of what I did, or said, will make a
difference, which is one of the intriguing aspects of these games.
There wasn’t a lot of gameplay
going on, and certainly nothing you could call a puzzle, but that has
never been the main strength. It’s the story and characterisation that
drive these episodes.
The name of episode two says a
lot about where the plot is at. In none of the episodes are you ever
comfortable, but here there is a constant unsettling mood that has
nothing to do with the dead. They are there, front and centre at times,
but it’s what’s going on between the living that provides the edge.
In the middle of it all is
Clementine. One moment baseball capped warrior, the next vulnerable
little girl, she will make a lot of choices. One got someone killed
until I replayed that bit, so they aren’t all benign. The episode ebbs
and flows but is never quiet.
Perhaps it overdid the emotional
flip flop – moment of kindness, horrible event etc – and the link
between those two things lessened the impact the next time it occurred.
But like those movies where you know right from the start that things
aren’t going to end well for these people, so it is here, and so in that
regard the continuing blows are nothing less than what you expect.
This House Divided does what
part 2 of a 5 part product should – the bits and pieces sown in the
first are starting to be pulled together and pushed into shape, one that
I definitely felt responsible for. The Walking Dead continues to be
intriguing and among the best things out there.
I played on:
OS: Windows 7
Processor: Intel i7-3820 4GHz
RAM: 12GB Ripjaw DDR3 2133 Mhz
