The Walking Dead: A New Frontier Ep. 1& 2 Review

The Walking Dead over the past several years has been a phenomenal game for fans of the comic. With the First season of the Walking introducing the strongest bond between Lee and Clementine to the second season having Clem learn how to survive on her own and ultimately trust no one, years have gone by and the question arise, how does she manage now as a teenager?

In A New Frontier Clem has evolved becoming more of a woman in her early teens. This installment however has you play as a new character Javier, a once big-time professional gambler. Javier does everything possible to get home to his dying father no little luck. But when his father wakes up as the undead, same time as the widespread reincarnation, things go from bad to worse.

Years go by and Javier finds himself protector of his niece (Mariana), nephew (Gabriel) and brother’s wife Kate. As for Javi’s brother it’s unknown what’s happened, only that they’ve moved on in hopes of finding something better abroad.

Javier’s run in with Clem changes the entire spectrum in terms to gameplay. Playing as Clementine for so many years I found myself allowing her to take lead and I follow quite a bit rather than allowing my character to be more independent and lead. Part of me knew that Clem’s decisions would be pretty strong and precise, until they weren’t.

For the first time in the entire Walking Dead series I found myself with tougher decisions causing me to pause gameplay to thoroughly strategize my decisions and accept the consequences.   I appreciated the story remaining well balanced  rather than a tie-over similar to parts of season two that unnecessarily had moments to slow-drag in efforts of creating five chapters.

A New Frontier has so far played somewhat close to the AMC series as you manage to find you way into a blocked off community away from walkers and even meet Jesus who actually is a bit of a savior in his own way.

Controls are still simplistic and straightforward, utilizing a point and click method for interactions.  The Walking Dead visually maintains its high detail comic look which is just as dark, yet stunning at the same time.

I did run into one issue in the first two episodes where the game locked up for over a few minutes before continuing the story. Personally not wanting to restart from the checkpoint I waited it out.