The Walking Dead Season 2: A House Divided Review
The game mechanics of Telltale’s game have largely remained the same, so from this point on I won’t really be discussing those aspects. If you want a breakdown of how I thought the game played, you can be sure to visit my first review which covers that topic. If something new is added, I’ll be sure to address it in future reviews. Instead, these next few chapter reviews will mostly be reviews of the story. Don’t worry, there won’t be major spoilers in these reviews. But if you’d rather not have any indication of where the story is going, I’d encourage you not to keep reading. Alright? Cool, here we go.
The second chapter picks up immediately after the events of “All That Remains.” And while the tension runs high in this segment, the game does allow you to get to know some of your new companion. Strangely, the beginning of this episode is very similar to last weeks episode of “The Walking Dead” on AMC. You wind up in a makeshift distillery and a character gets drunk off their ass. Weird how that managed to synch up.
This chapter is all about adding new characters to the fold and setting up the conflict for this season. There’s some mild development of the characters we met in the first episode, but largely “A House Divided” is about introducing new faces and reuniting with old ones. Yes, that’s right, a familiar character returns this season. I won’t give you the details, but its great to see Telltale weaving a narrative that still connects with the last season, including the 400 Days DLC.
During all this set-up, we get to meet the man who appears to be the main antagonist of the season. During the last chapter he was briefly alluded to as man named Carver. This chapter fully introduces him and goes a long way to make him a menacing figure. He’s also voiced by Michael Madsen, which just adds that extra spice of malice to his identity.
There are a lot of tough choices to be made in this chapter and many situations don’t seem to have clear cut options. For the first time ever I opted to pick the “…” option because I had no idea what to say! That’s never happened to me in the entire series. Congratulations, Telltale, you finally made me speechless. I can only imagine the scenarios will get even murkier from here.
On the performance side of things, I played this version on the PS3 and the game seemed to really struggle at points with the frame rate. Some cut scenes seemed to stutter and skip as the camera would pan across the screen. Its an unfortunate problem that has really plagued the series. Thankfully, it doesn’t ruin the experience, but it can pull you out briefly.
I should also mention the rewind feature which allows you to replay a pivotal moment in the game. It’s not incredibly vital to the series, but for those that like to explore alternate paths and pick different choices, it streamlines the process. What it does is it throws you back into the game during a key moment and it creates a new save file so you can make a different choice and save it for the next chapter.
So if you don’t like how things turn out next chapter because of a choice you made in this one, it’ll be easy to rectify your decisions and start down a different path. Its a nice feature that improves how these sort of games usually play out.
There’s a lot of talk that this chapter is one of the best to be offered in the series thus far and I’m inclined to agree. There are incredibly powerful and dynamic moments in the game that’ll quickly remind you why you fell in love with the series in the first place. If I could fault this chapter for anything, it would be for being too short. I felt a bit of anguish when the game suddenly cut to black during a particularly tense situation. At this point, I’m pretty fearful of what the next chapter will bring our heroes.
The game is currently available on North American PS3s and Steam for 4.99. XBox owners will get theirs on March 5th and and iOS users will get it on March 6th. PS3 Europe will get theirs on a yet-to-be-announced date.
