Played the first episode. Only 4 eps this time. Weirdly, I had to tell it what decisions I'd made in the first two seasons - isn't that supposed to be this series' whole thing, remembering my choices? I could barely recall them, why am I having to do it? Anyway, it's pretty much the same thing as always. It picks up a while after the ending of S3 - I can understand why they didn't want to pick up with Clem collecting baby AJ from a ranch, though it was a little odd to have that thread dropped - and you find yourself in a community of kids holed up at their old school. I quite liked this idea, it's got scope for things to be a little different with Clem surrounded by peers and perhaps even being the most grown-up one there. The game also lets you pick up collectibles and decorate your room with them, which I instinctively rolled my eyes at but realised later is quite a clever way to use game mechanics to signal to the player 'this is somewhere Clem is thinking about settling down, at least for a while'. So I was a little disappointed that by the end of the first episode we were already hitting the old 'there's a gang of troublemakers outside the walls, the community has dark secrets, the leader turns out to be an arsehole' standards. I was actually kind of hoping for a while that they were going to do a bit of a sandbox thing, let me tend to the greenhouse, shore up defences, that kind of thing.
All the glitchy, clunky stuff is still in there too, but still at a low enough level that I can just about ignore it. Still bewilders me that some of this got past QA and playtesting, though, especially in the first episode when theoretically they're at their least rushed.
Played the second episode, and my overwhelming feeling is anger at the devs for fucking the whole thing up so badly with their stupid QTEs and action sequences. There are now these rubbish over-the-shoulder bits where you have to 'use tactics' by kicking zombies in the knee and backing away until they're spread out enough that you have time to kill each one, and also some bow and arrow bits, along with the usual abysmal QTEs. The camera is shit, the controls are unresponsive, it's often unclear whether you've got control, and prompt graphics blend in with the background. Why is it that in the menus and dialogue select UI I can whip my mouse across the whole screen with one swipe, but in life or death action sequences it takes four swipes to get the camera to look behind Clem? The most infuriating moment was when someone got killed because I was trying to be smart and shoot out a sniper but it turned out all the game wanted me to do was move the cursor into the target like a good little monkey. This is a siege, I want to be deciding when to set bombs off and where to focus the archers, not basing everything on whether I can scrape the cursor across the screen in 0.3 seconds. Also, Clem keeps on making stupid fucking decisions on her own, which is particularly irritating when this is a game that constantly harps on about how I shape the narrative. It's been a long time since I've been so annoyed at devs for ruining all the good stuff in their own game with a bunch of brain-meltingly bad decisions (possibly Fate Of Atlantis?). How have they got worse and worse at this as the series has gone on?!
Also really annoying is when I google it to see if there are ways to get through it all a bit easier, and there's a bunch of threads of people saying how shit these QTEs are but there's always at least one 'git gud' dickhead in there. Yet again, I find myself losing all sympathy for Telltale going under.
Also, the 'here's how characters feel about you' summary (which is always weirdly unreflective of my actions and the characters' responses) said that the dog was sad I ignored her WHICH I DIDN'T, SHE NEVER EVEN APPROACHED ME, so fuck you Telltale. Clem very bravely made friends with that dog last episode :'(
Finished. Not much more to say. It was a nice ending. Shame they were fucking up their game with bullshit QTEs and action gameplay right to the last moment. I can't remember if they had introduced 'shift+Q' and 'shift+E' prompts previous to this season, but they're an awful idea that exacerbate the whole thing. It's like an executive decided that because Arkham Asylum was popular they should put that combat system in this game, oh and also the kids all love archery now because of The Hunger Games so put that in too, and the dev team just had to struggle to cram all this shit in there. Though I suspect it was just the dev team making bad decisions all on their own. Hilariously, minutes before the end of the game, the old 'you have to hold down W to walk forward but you're at a slightly different angle to the path so you have to do a little strafe every few seconds' problem showed up again, it was like they wanted to make us nostalgic for season 1's bad design decisions! Amazing that no one said 'you know what, this is one of the most important moments of the entire four seasons, and this is killing the mood, let's move the path a little bit'.
Oh well. Overall, I'd probably recommend people play seasons 1 and 2 and then just head-canon a happy ending.
Rating: more of the same, which is fine but a shame, and the QTEs and action scenes are at their most infuriating.
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