the walking dead season two episode 4 amid the ruins

#The walking dead season two episode 4 amid the ruins movie#

Where it’s at, like the first episode of Season 2, is in an interesting place for one person, and spinning its wheels for most everyone else. This could be where The Walking Dead is headed. Perhaps the desperation and hopelessness of The Walking Dead’s bleak world is starting to overwhelm Clementine’s story - one where a little girl begins to break, to give in, and give up on what little she has left. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing yet. She’s starting to feel small, despite the big things she’s doing. Bickering elders don’t seem to weigh on Clementine as much as the grim things she has to do on her own. Meanwhile, although The Walking Dead: Season 2 has been building to something bigger for Clementine, it fizzles here by the end of Episode 4, the complex political drama that’s been brewing between feuding sides all but evaporates. For the first time in this season, I don’t believe in what certain people are doing fits with their character and their history. In the scenes that follow a new tension snaps them out of it, but this person never revisits their own trauma, and never resolves the serious personal problem with Clementine that I created previously.

The performance is genuine, and it creates a heavy air that made me as uncomfortable as the concerned friends around him. One fantastic scene in particular shows a grieving, despondent character clearly contemplating suicide.

Characters disregard unforgivable and unforgettable past events to focus on new problems, which lessened the impact of previous decisions I’d made. Resolving these problems is tense and satisfying as it always is, but most of it appears to be inconsequential by the end. You’ll also see new conflicts arise between old friends and new. This episode spends a lot of time with Jane, the woman who helped Clem and her friends in Episode 3, as our young heroine learns about her past and takes lessons in killing zombies. In playing Amid the Ruins, I enjoyed discovering more about people we’ve spent little time getting to know. Worse, some of those unsatisfyingly departed characters are replaced by new villains - introduced out of nowhere, with no clear motivation - who feel out of place, inappropriate, and somewhat cartoonish. Some exits are cheap, while others are unjustified, feel forced, or are forgotten as quickly as they happened. There is yet another cliffhanger at the end of this episode that still left me wanting to play the next, so it did its job there.Characters vanish so rapidly and unexpectedly that it robs The Walking Dead of certain emotional value. Then again, maybe this is the somewhat “calm before the storm” that is leading into episode five. Yes, this is The Walking Dead and a decent amount of revelations occur even in this episode, but I’m starting to feel like the game has lost its oomph a bit. With it being only about an hour and fifteen minutes long, it is one of the shorter episodes so far. It felt like the game was running on auto-pilot.

I actually controlled Clem maybe three times throughout my play through of episode four. I’ve mentioned it before, but season two feels like they are taking a large step back from actual adventure formulas. Don’t get me wrong, The Walking Dead does a good job of making players feel like no one is safe, but after nine episodes of that, seeing a crucial part of the story die really doesn’t phase me anymore.

#The walking dead season two episode 4 amid the ruins movie#

If a person is going to die no matter what I decide to do, it really feels like I’m just watching a movie and hitting a button to go to the next scene. On top of that, I’m starting to see even more how much my choices don’t really matter.