“No Coming Back” is a brilliantly crafted episode; it does have a slow beginning, but it serves as a red herring to the chaos that ensues throughout, which once again gives credit to the craft Telltale Games employs in its storytelling.
“No Coming Back” is a brilliantly crafted episode; it does have a slow beginning, but it serves as a red herring to the chaos that ensues throughout, which once again gives credit to the craft Telltale Games employs in its storytelling.
It remains a shame that Clementine never quite became the truly different kind of lead that the first episode promised, but in the final analysis, what The Walking Dead offers still more than makes up for its occasional stumbles. It's definitely a road trip worth taking - as long as you don't mind its highs being its most devastating lows, its good endings being little but the trap where optimism goes to die.
Note: As with all episodic game reviews, this review contains spoilers for previous episodes and, to some extent, for the episode in question. Proceed with caution!You know things are bad when zombies showing up comes as a relief. Zombies are easy. You...
I think about that little girl I found at the treehouse back in season one. She wanted to believe people were inherently good and that her parents were still alive. She didn't even know how to hold a gun. Now I look at Clementine as someone who can fend for herself.
No Going Back is the perfect title for the fifth episode of The Walking Dead Season 2 as it captures the emotional scenarios Clementine has had to overcome. At the same time, it’s difficult to see how the series will move forward, especially with the determinative conclusions that contains multiple outcomes.
The ending, and therefore the episode, may please many players. However, from a storytelling standpoint, No Going Back falls flat. The narrative is obvious and less genuine than the series has demonstrated, and all of these bad decisions are heightened by a disappointing Lee moment.
The differences are staggering in retrospect. Telltale's first season of The Walking Dead felt like a desperately needed breath of fresh air. The Walking Dead Season 2 Finale treads tepid, zombie-infested water. Even in its most meaningful moments, it's a mere approximation of what Telltale has proven itself capable of.
Telltale Games crafted brilliant no-win scenarios for Clementine, and the outcome of each is a result of what your Clementine is willing to say, lose, or do for herself or her family. Sometimes, those two can’t be reconciled, which leads to devastating conclusions. This is perhaps the most heartbreaking and tense episode of anything Telltale has ever made. How Clementine braces for the impact of everything in front of her is up to you -- and where that takes her left me in awe.
Good: A solid game that definitely has an audience. Might lack replay value, could be too short or there are some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun....
In my mind, Kenny’s still out there somewhere, mending the pieces of himself that broke along the way. I’d be happy if season three let me keep that image and moved on to something new.