The Walking Dead (2012) - Episode 2

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

After a long wait for some, the second episode of The Walking Dead game is finally here, released with surprisingly little build-up or fanfare. Entitled 'Starved for help', it centres around the group's growing need to find food. When I wrote about the first episode, I didn't really mention the story much, but with the mechanics of the game set in place, now seems like a good point to focus on it more. What stood out to me about the first episode was that like Day Z, it seemed to capture the feeling of being in a zombie film very well. Whereas Day Z is more focused around your interactions with real people, and whether you can trust them, here it seemed to be about making the tough decisions that you might be yelling at the screen for people to make in a movie. Ironically, I found that the decisions became tougher and less black and white in episode 2, with my own character starting to become the unsure person who couldn't always make the tough decisions.

The episode opens with the knowledge that three months have passed, which made me chuckle a little as it means there has been roughly the right amount of time between episodes. It did make the whole situation a little confusing though, as it immediately introduces a new character and a new threat: the lack of food. I had been wondering how they were going to get into this situation given that the threat at the end of the first episode was a sudden loss of electricity, which I suppose was just a bit of dark humour really. I feel like this could have been handled better as it pretty much diffuses any tension that there was and leaves you confused as to what exactly is going on, where the new character has come from and whether you should care about them.

You don't have too long to wonder about this though as the game kicks into action with some more new characters and a grim decision to make. I messed up this sequence by taking too long to look for a perfect way to deal with it, which I don't think exists. This was a great way of getting you back into the feel of the game and remind you that bad things are going to happen regardless of the choices you make. It's also another example where you have to repeatedly perform actions to follow through your choice, which makes it all the more harrowing.

Tensions are running high among the rest of the group after this introduction and it seems that trying to remain a mediator and not take sides isn't going to cut it much longer. You are eventually tasked with dividing up the limited food supplies for the day - again no right or wrong decisions, just down to what you feel. Beyond making sure that the kids got something I thought it was quite difficult to choose who else to help and whether others would consider it favouritism.

Any bickering comes to a sudden end via an unexpected zombie attack, which eventually leads to the discovery that zombies are not only created through people being bitten. This is actually something I haven't seen for a while, with more modern zombie films usually explaining the situation through some kind of virus. Though there is still the possibility that a virus could be the cause, it seems less likely to be the case and leads to more of a focus on survival than the search for a cure. It also adds an additional element of danger to the death of any character, which is an important issue later on.

The majority of the episode is focussed on yet another new group of people, who offer to help out with the group's food situation. I thought that this offer was a little suspect early on and I was slightly disappointed that there didn't seem to be enough dialogue choices to fully express that. It's one of those situations where obviously something had to happen to push the story forward but forcing the player to make bad decisions is frustrating. The same kind of situation can obviously work in a non-interactive story but it's something that I think games should shy away from unless you're absolutely certain you can pull the wool over the player's eyes.

I won't say too much more about what happens but I can say that despite my suspicions it was still intriguing to find out what was going on. What follows is certainly gripping and the gradual revelation of what's been happening is pretty disturbing. I mentioned in my previous piece that I would be looking out for a way to get rid of one character but when the opportunity finally arose it didn't feel as cut and dried as that. In fact the only decision that felt quite easy to me was at the end of the episode, though the final report on other player's choices surprisingly showed that it was nearly a 50/50 split.

Putting aside the story, it seemed that puzzles were a little thin on the ground this episode, with most items having pretty simple uses. The first episode wasn't that different but even in a section that was mostly about combat, there was something cool about figuring out how to take down a group of zombies silently. This wasn't something that I specifically missed while playing, more something that came to mind afterwards but I would still like to see more complex problems in future episodes.

My only other technical complaint is that it seemed to suffer from a lot of stuttering that I don't remember happening in the previous episode. Some of the pauses I saw were so long that I thought the game had crashed and I was just about to reach for the power button before it kicked into life again. While a relatively minor issue, I hope this is something that can be resolved in the next episode. Here's hoping that it won't take as long to appear this time.