The Walking Dead: A New Frontier (2016)

TL;DR - Clementine takes a backseat role this time around, and the game instead focuses on an all-new character, Javier Garcia. And although I found the overall cast and plot to be weaker compared to previous seasons, I still enjoyed the central narrative element of brotherhood and family.

INTERACTIVE DRAMA - Javier Garcia fights to protect his family during the zombie apocalypse and teams up with Clementine as they face the New Frontier.

PROS:

++ Javier & David Garcia. Javier Garcia offers us a fresh protagonist. I grew to really love his character, and even saw many things that reminded me of myself which is probably why I connected with him so much. He may not match Lee, Clem, or Kenny, but that's because those characters are all-time favorites of mine. And I really liked the game's focus on him and his brother's relationship. Not only am I sucker for stories that center around brothers, but Javi and David really reminded me of my relationship with my brother so obviously it hit closer to home.

++ Improved visuals. Retained the series' visual identity, but just polished and improved it. I will always be a fan of this series' comic-book art style.

++ Clementine's development. Loved seeing Clem become a hardened survivor and incredible fighter, while still retaining empathy and compassion just like Lee and Kenny had taught her.

++ Flashbacks. First time they added flashbacks in the series, and I especially liked the flashbacks involving the Garcias since it acted as a great form of character development.

CONS:

-- Lack of Clementine. I don't know if it was the best choice to remove Clementine from the spotlight. Don't get me wrong, I really liked Javier and Clem gets plenty of time on-screen. But nevertheless, I wish she had an even greater role within the story, instead of often feeling like a glorified side character.

-- Weaker cast. Besides Javier and David, I wasn't too interested in any of the new characters. It was great seeing Paul "Jesus" Monroe make an appearance (he's one of my favorite characters from the comics) , but as a whole, none of the new characters were that compelling. Gabe and Kate receive decent characterization, but Tripp, Conrad, Eleanor, Ava, and even the antagonist (Joan) weren't all that memorable. My guess is because there was less opportunities to walk around and talk with the characters. It was go, go, go throughout the length of the game.

-- Certain deaths. There were a couple deaths (Ava, Kenny, and David specifically) that I felt were unnecessary, a waste of a character, or poorly executed.

-- Anticlimactic finale. Seasons 1 & 2 had unforgettable and sad endings. But this third season just ends. It was a happy ending, but it wasn't impactful like past seasons.

If you look at my reviews on this website, you can tell I am normally very generous when it comes to rating games. If I find something to appreciate in them I’m going to value that above the downsides, because I can’t even imagine how hard game development is and I’m just an idiot on the internet. Besides, the only games I tend to play are the ones I have a genuine interest in and have heard at least decent things about, so chances are I’m going to end up enjoying them anyway. But every now and then I play something that feels so mediocre that I’m left scratching my head as to how they managed to do such a poor job. This is even more puzzling when talking about franchises previously known for their quality, which was what happened here.

I had my expectations checked due to what I had read about the 3rd season of The Walking Dead, but damn if I didn’t still feel disappointed after finishing it. How did it go so wrong? The drop in quality from the first 2 seasons is so big, especially when it comes to narrative and dialogue, that I can only assume it was written by completely different people. From the get go I noticed they were trying to make A New Frontier’s world more expansive from a storytelling point of view, which immediately made the game feel less claustrophobic, intimate and intense, and resulted in a complete departure from the tight narrative the first two instalments offered. In other words, my whole experience with the game felt more boring and less engaging. There’s a fair bit I wasn’t happy about when it comes to it, so rather than writing in my usual style I’ll just go through my gripes in bullet points:

• the lead character, which had been one of the absolute stellar features in seasons 1 and 2, is as charismatic as a hole in the ground and felt borderline unrelatable to me. In fact, almost all characters felt poorly written and believable in comparison;

• for the most part, the voice acting is nowhere near at the level of what came before it;

• mediocre storytelling and dialogue, something that sadly persisted from start to finish. It was incredibly inconsistent and a lot of it seemed to be there simply for the sake of it rather than to coherently link its set pieces, resulting in little to no emotional attachment;

• poor dialogue choice indicators. There was sometimes a visible disparity between dialogue choices and what your character ended up saying, which was often annoying and took away from the game. It reminded me a bit of Fallout 4, except in this case it’s much worse because dialogue choices are basically all telltale that games offer in terms of agency;

• surprisingly quite buggy, especially compared to the 2nd season. I encountered a few visual glitches that turned the whole screen into a twitchy mess and made it impossible to see animations for a couple minutes. I also didn’t think the animations were an improvement in any way;

• not exactly a critique but just something I noticed - the 3rd episode, which had been my favourite in the last two seasons, was actually the worst one here, and consequently the worst in the entire series. Terrible writing;

• one of the things I loved at the end of each episode in the past seasons was to be able to look at the stats of my choices and see how they compared to the rest of the community. That I was now forced to create an account to have access to that - which I didn’t - felt absurd to me.

I could perhaps carry on, but these were my issues with the game. I would say Clementine as a character and a couple of good, tense moments throughout were the only saving graces of this game, but they aren’t enough to redeem what was otherwise a truly disappointing experience that lacked soul and quality. Even after everything I had read, A New Frontier still felt very underwhelming. 4.5/10

Why Telltale? This game flat out isn't good, but allow me to state positives for a second. The visuals are good like always, the voice acting is good like always (one character sucks) and the grand idea is solid.... I guess? Javier is a good enough protagonist if we didn't already have CLEM who is a fantastic that fans already love! Get ready, this review will be all over the place! I'm sorry to whoever had to act as Gabe but wow, suck any harder, holy crap! It's not even entirely his fault, he was handed a terrible hand, whoever wrote this character should be fired. WHY DOES THIS GAME MAKE ME CHOOSE BETWEEN KATE AND JAVIER'S BROTHER, and even when I choose Javier's brother and never even KISSED Kate, Javier's brother tries to beat me up. I CANNOT WIN HERE. I can't even remember Javier's brother's name he was such a forgetful "villain". The Walking Dead has only had two good villains, Zombies and the pedo from the first game. If you like this game don't talk to me (Unless you'd like to have a respectful conversation) and I hope to never play this again. When I get to S4 it better be more impactful and make me feel SOMETHING except Anger.

TLDR- Not good, nothing of value here except Clementine and Javier. 0.5/10

While I didn't enjoy this season as much as the other two, I still had fun watching it play out. There were some decisions that felt like I ultimately had little control over, and at times I felt I was being forced in directions that didn't align with the dialogue.

The family themes were interesting but not captivating enough to keep me playing for long periods of time.

Played on PC

Just finished Episode 2 and I gotta say this is the glitchiest, worst voice acted game of the bunch. They tried hard to improve certain things, especially when it came to the consequences of decisions, and it seems like the writing suffered instead.

Update: I finished the game, and although I do admit to sort of liking the main character, I can't say the same for any of the other chars. Of course I love Clem, but that is hardly thanks to Season 3. Most decisions this season offers don't really change anything (you decide to save someone and they die anyway...), and the moments where I would have liked a say in the matter, were not up for debate (in one of the episodes you get the choice to lie to your friends in 3 different ways, but you don't get the option to simply tell them the truth...).

All in all this is far away from the quality of seasons 1 and 2.

Quantomeno per i primi due episodi, deciso ritorno di forma, con buona scrittura, personaggi intriganti, scelte e situazioni strazianti e un'evoluzione riuscita per il personaggio di Clem. Ottimo anche il rinnovato motore grafico e bene per l'aggiunta di opzioni legate ai salvataggi. Vediamo come va avanti.

Aggiornamento: il terzo episodio ha buoni spunti ma li tratta in maniera impacciata ed è sostanzialmente un mezzo tonfo. La solita Telltale altalenante, insomma.

Altro aggiornamento: il quarto episodio è una discreta mosciata che funziona solo in alcuni passaggi con Clementine e si riprende nel macello finale, quando fa le cose che i giochi Telltale sanno fare bene.

Ultimo aggiornamento: il quinto capitolo si riprende abbastanza e, pur con tutti i suoi limiti, tipo le parti drammatiche scritte coi guanti da forno, porta a casa il risultato con una conclusione che funziona e mi ha sorprendentemente messo addosso una certa voglia di andare avanti.