The Therapist Gamer

This is the sequel to the Walking Dead: Season 1 (obviously), a game I played on the PS Vita and wrote about here.  Spoiler alert: I loved the first game and cried big manly tears.  So I had pretty high hopes for the sequel.  The second game was pretty great but not as good as the first one.  I think that part of the reason for this was simply part of the story dynamics (more on this later), and also that the decisions in the sequel just don't feel as meaningful.  In the first game your decisions felt truly open and varied with tons of outcomes available, whereas it felt like Season 2 was more or less going in a certain direction whether I wanted to go there or not.  

 

I said that the story dynamics impacted this game when compared to the first game.  What I mean is that I think there was something very powerful about playing as an adult tasked with protecting a young child, which is what you are doing in Season One.  There is a sense of parenthood and responsibility that was very engaging.  Not to mention that protecting a ten year old child tends to bring out a lot of our own emotional issues that we developed at that age, and thus we feel more emotionally attached to protecting a child like that.  You'll want to protect her not only physically, but also psychologically and emotionally from the harsh new zombie-ridden world.  In Season Two you play as a young child, and while as a player I wanted her to be protected, it just wasn't the same as playing as someone in that universe trying to protect her.

 

Like in Season One, The Walking Dead features making a variety of decisions that impact the direction of the game and the lives of those around you.  These are well thought-out decisions and are (usually) much more complex than "Do you kill this person or give him food?" Since the game was released in five separate episodes, the game designers were forced to include strong plot points and decisions in each episode, so the game moves at a good pace.  Even though I didn't like the story as much as in Season One, I'd say that it is probably better than a lot of the seasons of the TV show (I liked season one, thought two was slow and a bit lame, thought three was excellent, and with the exception of a few episodes I think the rest of the seasons have not been as good as three). I think that even if you're not a Walking Dead fan there is still a lot in this game series for you, especially if you start with Episode One.