The second season of the Walking Dead series by Tell Tale in some ways improved over the original but in some ways was a step back. Overall it was not worse and is worth playing. On the positive side I really liked how there was room to make a much more hardened version of Clementine than I thought we would be allowed. Usually I would have been put off having to play as a kid but she was no damsel that’s for sure. I also really liked the character of Jane and was glad she got a decent amount of screen time. The voice acting overall was good but I want to signal out Michael Madsen who did a really good job voicing Carver. Once again I really liked some of the darker choices you could make that was riding the line between good and evil. On the negative side I would say that this season basically made the DLC episode of 400 Days from season one pointless. It introduced characters you would meet at Carver’s camp but then, aside from one, did nothing with them outside of a minute or two screen time each. I would also say that near the end of the season it seemed to lack direction a bit, almost feeling like the writers were struggling to figure out where they wanted to go with things and were just throwing out random ideas. The music was very well done. The graphics were the usual Tell tale fare which I enjoy and if you do as well then you know what to expect.
I played Season Two on Linux using Wine and DXVK. It never crashed. There was an issue where some of the shadows would flicker and when they weren’t flickering they looked kind of boxy and lacking detail. I’m not sure if this was an issue Windows users faced as well or if it was a Wine issue. There was one graphics setting; an AA toggle and your resolution selection. Alt-Tab worked. The game saves at checkpoints which are usually not too poorly spaced out but a manual save system would have been preferred. You can pause cut scenes but not skip them.
Game Engine: Telltale Tool
Input Used: Keyboard and Mouse
Game Version Played: 3.0.0
Graphics Settings Used: High; 1920x1080; AA on
GPU Usage: 11-61 %
VRAM Usage: 705-1575 MB
CPU Usage: 10-22 %
RAM Usage: 2.3-2.5 GB
If you enjoyed the first season of the Walking Dead then I think you should give the second season a try. There are some character additions and I really liked where they allowed you to go with Clementine. The story could have been tighter near the end but overall I enjoyed myself. I finished the season in seven hours and fifty nine minutes. It is worth it’s current price tag of $19.99 CAD.
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 22.1.0 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Garuda Soaring White-tailed-eagle | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 5.18.0-zen1-1-zen | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz | Wine 7.7 | DXVK 1.10L