Last Tuesday, Telltale Games decided to secretly release the third episode in their successful video game rendition of The Walking Dead. With the success of the previous two installments, there was speculation on whether or not Episode 3: Long Road Ahead would be a proper set-up for what's to come. Hopefully, this review will shed some light on the subject.
The episode opens up with a look back on what happened in the previous episode, then drops us to our main character a week after the events of Episode 2. Without spoiling too much, our cast reaches a climax that has them finally leaving the hotel and taking a journey to find a boat (and possibly what happened to Clementine's parents).
While the first episode was an introduction and the second an intense, crazy experience, Long Road Ahead is immensely tragic in many different ways. Some of our cast of characters get murdered and some commit suicide; it's an all-out, gut wrenching experience that nobody should ever have to go through, but under the circumstances, it's the universe they live in. While we lose some characters, there are some additions to our little band. While they don't quite fill the hole left, they will at least be enough going into the fourth episode.
With that said, Long Road Ahead does a lot to help give us a unique and tragic story that many games wouldn't dare tell.
When it comes to graphics and mechanics, there's nothing really to add that's differ
ent from the previous two episodes. It's still dark and gritty in terms of color. Telltale adds a lot more quick-time events, but makes them more fast paced, so being able to be quick is a definite requirement at times.
However, the one poor mechanic added would be the gun mechanics added in this episode. They're extremely sluggish and horribly inaccurate. While they might be needed in certain situations to help move the story ahead, they really don't work well and could've used more work (or been turned into a quick-time event of some kind).
The same features from other episodes are in Episode 3. You have stats after your play-through to compare your decisions to the decisions other people made. There are also achievements, which really don't add anything other than more points to your profile.
One feature that's becoming more and more mainstream is the player's decision making. Every decision you've made through every episode really comes out in this one, which makes everything you do from here to the finale something special.
This episode feels a little longer than the previous installments. Be ready to put about 4-5 hours into this episode, with replay value to see how every scene plays out depending on Lee's responses.
Overall Verdict- 7/10
While the story is really good and the replay value is a plus, some newly added mechanics drag the game down a bit. Hopefully, what we see in the last two episodes will be a bit more polished in terms of mechanics, but only time will tell. Episode 3: Long Road Ahead is starting to really pick up steam toward our story's climax, which should be really, really good.
Rating: 
This review is based off of a review copy of the PC version of The Walking Dead by Telltale Games
