The post The Walking Dead seasons 2 and 3 are now available on Switch appeared first on Game News.
]]>The surprise drop is certainly a welcome one, as the release window for the series has been, well, a bit of a mess. The first season launched on Switch in August 2018, but Telltale Games ran into trouble shortly after that (read: mass layoffs, followed by a full studio closure), and Skybound Games inherited the rights to the IP. When Skybound took over, it completed the last two episodes of The Walking Dead’s Final Season with the help of former Telltale employees, but put the other Switch ports on hold – until now.
As of today, Season 2 and Season 3: A New Frontier are available on Switch for $15 / £13 each. There’s no word on whether or not the standalone installment The Walking Dead: Michonne will come to Switch. But for the first time ever, the complete game series will be available on the Steam Store – Skybound is re-releasing the first two seasons and adding the last two to round out the collection. The Walking Dead series will drop on Steam later this week.
It’s nice to see The Walking Dead series finally get its chance to shine on the Switch, and to see it on Steam. It’s a great series that didn’t deserve to be split up in such a disjointed manner, so I’m glad Skybound was able to help complete the ports.
If you’re looking for another Walking Dead game, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners VEr is dropping Thursday, January 20. Check out our The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners preview (opens in new tab) and see if it’s up your dark, creepy alley.
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]]>The post Co-op is making a comeback in 2018, but is there a place for games that rely so heavily on working with friends? appeared first on Game News.
]]>Last year, Star Trek: Bridge Crew (opens in new tab)’s playability banks on four friends each owning a PS4 or high end PC, a VR headset, and their own separate copy of the game, and that’s before having to find a good time to play together when every person is available for at least an hour or more. 1-2 Switch (opens in new tab) brandished a AAA price tag for an experience that can only really be enjoyed at social gatherings or parties tame enough to bring your new Ninty console (opens in new tab) out without fear of it getting trampled or splattered with alcohol.
In 2018, too, games are getting more ambitious and socially oriented with their multiplayer components, and while that’s great in theory, it’s easy to wonder whether there’s a sufficient audience for experiences that require certain criteria to be fulfilled before they can be enjoyed as intended.
In March, Sea of Thieves (opens in new tab) and A Way Out (opens in new tab) release within just a few days of each other. The first is a game that emphasises playing as pirate crews of (ideally) five or more people, together manning a single ship and progressing in the online world through communication, coordination, and extended co-operation.
Players can jump into Sea of Thieves solo, but Rare itself has admitted that the game is best enjoyed with friends, since much of it has been designed specifically with this kind of collective play in mind, while lone pirating actually limits how far you can progress in your swashbuckling career.
“Games are getting more ambitious and socially oriented with their multiplayer components”
I played a demo at E3 (opens in new tab) a few years ago and, when everything came together, as my team battled two other ships each controlled by another crew of real players, Sea of Thieves was momentarily magical, but it’s hard to picture that kind of experience sustaining itself once the game releases. Not only will you need to gather together a group of committed friends online to build your own crew, but the staying power of Sea of Thieves’ social world is dependent on it being populated by hundreds of similarly player-controlled crews.
The question is whether Rare has overestimated the size of its target audience; that audience being groups of friends who are all willing to commit to each buying the same game and playing together on a regular basis with shared in-game agendas. I hope my doubts about Sea of Thieves are proved wrong come March.
It takes two
Then there’s A Way Out; a game which can only be played as a split-screen co-op experience, either online or through local play. That immediately sounds like both a creative and professional risk, but a recent announcement from Hazelight demonstrates how developers are attempting to circumvent the practical limitations of their co-op focused titles.
Creative Director Josef Fares (opens in new tab) infamously took to the stage at last year’s Video Game Awards (opens in new tab) to announce a “friends pass free trial” for A Way Out, allowing those who buy the game to invite another friend to play with them online for free. Essentially, you’re getting two copies for the price of one, and a skeptic might look at that as EA potentially halving the sales of its latest game.
On the contrary, I think this is EA playing the long game. By dropping the ‘one copy per player’ barrier for entry, Hazelight has only opened up the appeal of A Way Out to a wider audience, as those who were put off by the need to persuade another friend to buy the game are now far more likely to pick it up, confident that they’ll be able to enjoy the experience with another companion now that they have a free copy to give away.
Sure, this is still a co-op game which requires two dedicated players to see the journey through from beginning to end, but a major concern people had for A Way Out has now been remedied by this smart business initiative, and the game will be all the better for it.
Later on in the year, you have games like Anthem (opens in new tab), State of Decay 2 (opens in new tab), and Overkill’s The Walking Dead, all of which are also primarily pitched as co-op centric games, though all of these can be played solo. But where are all these cooperative, socially oriented games coming from? Like many trends in the industry at present, the answer lies at the doorstep of Destiny (opens in new tab).
Shared world, persistent multiplayer, public gameplay… these are buzzwords increasingly being ripped straight from Bungie’s playbook, acting as conceptual springboards for developers to iterate upon popular trends.
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The best upcoming games of 2018 (opens in new tab)
The crucial difference is that Destiny 2’s infrastructure has made the game a viable (if uneven) experience for solo players as much as fireteams, with Guided Games, Clans, and revamped storytelling all part of Bungie’s efforts to cater to the lone wolf as much as the pack. It remains to be seen whether the same can be said of 2018’s upcoming roster of co-op titles.
If Sea of Thieves is attempting to simulate the experience of belonging to a pirate crew, what kind of game will that be for a solitary skipper? When Overkill’s website (opens in new tab) specifically states that “teamwork is paramount” for its “four player co-op action FPS” The Walking Dead, can solo play really be that fulfilling when fighting alongside three other strangers or non-human bots? And does BioWare really believe that the idealistic cooperation dramatised in Anthem’s reveal trailer (opens in new tab), with that simulated in-game chat performed very clearly by trained actors, is truly indicative of how people are going to play its game?
As a co-op fan, I couldn’t be happier that these kind of experiences are finding new life through a variety of different genres and formats. But as someone more than familiar with the discrepancies between the promise of co-op game’s ambition and the realities of its impact (*COUGH* Evolve *COUGH*), I couldn’t be more nervous about their chances of success.
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]]>The post Can we all agree that gamings evil post-apocalyptic cannibal trope has to stop? appeared first on Game News.
]]>Too often cannibalism is used as a cheap reveal, like the game has yanked back a velvet curtain with a practically audible “a-HA!”. Post-apocalyptic games simply don’t spend enough time exploring why they turned to cannibalism. Yes, if people had got a taste for humans in a game about a normally-functioning society that hadn’t suffered a cataclysmic event, things would be different. Those weirdos have chosen to eat people when there are supermarkets nearby selling perfectly good steak. Yet here’s the thing: post-apocalyptic games are all about survival. They’re about scraping together what’s left of civilisation and using it to last until tomorrow. And the day after that. And so on. In these kind of games, cannibals take a step that wouldn’t be hard to understand – if they were given the remake treatment.
The reality of cannibalism
Usually cannibals are despicable, and it’s no surprise. Their eating habits mean you don’t have any trouble assuming that they lack humanity. Treating humans like cattle to be slaughtered and eaten goes against most of our instincts, because no matter how you spin it, everyone sees themselves as an individual. Everyone has their own hopes, dreams, fears, desires, and for all of that to be chucked away for the sake of a meal is, well, disgusting. So what could make that suddenly ok during an apocalypse? A number of things, actually.
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Resorting to cannibalism is a difficult decision. Back in 1972 the Andes Flight Disaster made it apparent just how hard it is to take the ultimate step towards survival. When Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 took off from Montevideo, none of its passengers or crew could predict what was going to happen. The airplane crashed in the Andes, killing 12 of the 45 on board. Six more died in the next two weeks, and once their rations had run out the remaining survivors resorted to eating the cotton from the plane seats and leather. When they started to fall ill from ingesting things so plainly not meant for human consumption, there was only one other option left if they wanted to survive.
Roberto Canessa, one of the survivors and a medical student at the time, spoke about (opens in new tab) what happened when they realised they’d have to eat the dead. “The bodies of our friends and team-mates, preserved outside in the snow and ice, contained vital, life-giving protein that could help us survive. But could we do it? We wondered whether we were going mad even to contemplate such a thing. Had we turned into brute savages? Or was this the only sane thing to do?”. In the end, it was the only thing they could do. Small strips of flesh were laid out to dry in the sun, and it was up to each individual survivor to choose whether to eat their piece or not.
You’ll understand why seeing games use cannibalism as a cheap bit of sensationalism doesn’t seem fair. Helpfully The Last of Us (opens in new tab) and The Walking Dead (opens in new tab) have already given us two types of post-apocalyptic cannibals who break the mould by making their meat-loving groups a bit more sympathetic. It results in some characters who are as unsettling as they are progressive. It’s a good thing, I promise.
The Last of Us and safety in numbers
Oh, David. You seemed so normal at first. The Last of Us’ chief antagonist in the winter chapter is a cannibal, but not the kind that brandishes a buzz saw like that guy who microwaves someone’s head in Outlast (opens in new tab). David is calm. Intelligent. Easy-going. Even though he talks to Ellie in front of a butchered corpse, he somehow comes across as reasonable. Neil Druckmann even told Nolan North not to play a bad guy, as David had to be charismatic enough for people to trust him. Damn, North does a good job. First pointing out that she and Joel have killed dozens of men, he laughs when she said they didn’t have a choice. According to him, they both kill to survive. He just makes sure to take care of his flock by any means necessary. You’d almost forget that David’s talking about chopping up humans. Almost. Survival is at the centre of his cannibalism, but that word is the closest thing we get to an explanation. Ellie doesn’t confront him about the fact that his group eats their kills once they’re dead, or ask how he rationalises killing the innocent travellers they find.
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Although David isn’t the only one at fault. His group is composed of men, women, and children who have all decided that hunting their own kind is the only way to survive. A pang of guilt might even hit you when one of them attacks Joel with a shotgun, hollering about Joel killing his friends. They all obviously care about each other, yet that’s not the only thing that makes these kind of cannibals a step in the right direction. When you’re sneaking through the snow-strewn camp as Ellie, you can hear other members of the group talking about putting David’s leadership to a vote. The people he leads are resolutely human: not vicious, thoughtless killers but people who debate who should lead them, and perhaps even more disturbing – people who are part of a democracy, and have agreed to eat human meat by consensus.
Everyone often thinks that cannibals are lone deviants, like Red Dead Redemption (opens in new tab)’s Randall Forrester, who lives in the hills away from civilisation. You’d assume they couldn’t operate in groups (especially not ones with something as reasonable as democracy). Surely they wouldn’t be able to find more people who don’t mind eating human flesh? Wrong. Naughty Dog knows that anyone can become a cannibal, if the circumstances are right. However, in The Last of Us you never see any of the children and only one woman. It’s a shame, as showing us the entire group would make you think twice about killing everyone in sight, and certainly prove that anyone can become a cannibal.
Telltale’s The Walking Dead and cannibal logic
Whereas David has an entire group who have decided eating human meat is a-okay, Telltale’s The Walking Dead does something altogether different. In its Starved to Death episode, Lee’s group comes across the St John Dairy Farm. Owned by the charmingly wholesome St Johns, at first it seems like a paradise. It’s not. The St John family is made up of only three people: Brenda, the matriarch, and her two sons Danny and Andrew. They’re a tight-knit family who have realised that if you eat human meat from a corpse, it’ll be tainted with the zombie virus – but cutting it from someone who’s alive and then eating it is a-okay. Of course.
What makes the St Johns brilliant is that they explain why they decided to start eating people. Their reasoning goes far deeper than David’s survival argument. Once their secret is out, Brenda explains to Lee that growing up in rural Georgia meant that she was taught to waste food. Seeing zombies shamble around eating people, eating perfectly good meat, was too much for her. Her and her boys simply thought they could put that meat to better use…even if it was very much alive when they first found it. When I spoke to the St John’s creator Mark Darin, he said that for them, seeing the meat go to waste “is a greater tragedy than surviving on the meat of human beings”. And you’d never guess at their source of meat, as unlike The White Glove Society in Fallout: New Vegas, the St Johns look completely normal.
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The 20 best horror games of all time (opens in new tab)
So whereas there’s a reasonable (well, as reasonable as you can get when it comes to eating innocent people) explanation for the St John’s cannibalism, like in The Last of Us they’re not all entirely sympathetic. Even though this wasn’t mentioned in the game, Darin revealed that Danny St John was a serial killer before everything went haywire. “It’s his mentality, his sociopath-ness that he’s able to bring his family around to what it takes to survive […] He can add that perspective because he’s been outside of society and outside of these constraints for most of his life”.
In both The Walking Dead and The Last of Us there’s at least one character who’s a straight-up creep. David is implied to be a hebephile (look it up: it’s not good), and Danny is a serial killer. Both of them are distanced from normal behaviour, which then makes it easier to transition to cannibalism. Yet this feature is what’s holding cannibals back from being sympathetic. After all, the Andes Flight Disaster proves anyone can turn into a cannibal.
Can cannibals be sympathetic?
The Last of Us and The Walking Dead have got us off to a good start. That is, except for the whole eating-innocent-people thing. Like The Family in Fallout 3 (opens in new tab), what if the next post-apocalyptic cannibals we see only kill people who had done wrong? Bandits. Murderers. Or they could just eat people who were already dead. To sympathise with cannibals there has to be a balance between understanding the need to survive and why they’d make certain choices. If they only targeted people who were threatening others, making that final choice to get out your knife and fork in a game could be that bit easier. You could argue that they had it coming. Could you see things from a cannibal’s point of view? You might want the answer to be no, but be careful. Post-apocalyptic games could make it easier than ever to tell the other side of the story.
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]]>The post New The Walking Dead season 7 image reveals Sasha’s fate (SPOILERS) appeared first on Game News.
]]>No spoilers yet, just sad Rick face. Final warning.
Sasha’s still alive. For now. Bad news? She’s been caught and by the looks of things and is under lock and key in Negan’s fortress in the preview shot for Something They Need.
How she’ll get out alive (if at all) is still up in the air, but Sasha was adamant about doubling down on this being her final stand. We’re reaching season 7 endgame territory so there’s bound to be a big death sooner or later, right? That’s without mentioning Sasha actress Sonequa Martin-Green has been beamed up as the lead on Star Trek: Discovery (opens in new tab).
The Walking Dead season 7 airs on Sundays on AMC in the US and the following Monday night on Sky Atlantic in the UK.
Image: AMC
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]]>The post The Walking Deads upcoming episode details tease bad things before the mid-season finale appeared first on Game News.
]]>The AMC hit looks to be hurtling towards a dramatic climax before the traditional mid-season break.
Episode 6: Swear
This sounds like a doozy. “Someone stumbles upon a brand new society, and this society is unlike anything they’ve seen before”.
This ‘new society’ is unlikely to be The Whisperers (opens in new tab) as the zombie skin-wearers only turned up after a two year post-Negan gap in the comics. It could be Oceanside, which sounds far more realistic in this timeframe and opens up a new set of supporting characters for the gang to interact with.
Episode 7: Sing Me A Song
No, not a Buffy-style musical episode. Episode 7 promises “a deeper look at the Sanctuary and the world of the Saviors”. The synopsis is vague but the title is far more revealing.
If you’re a fan of the comics then you may remember Carl killing a handful of Saviors at the Hilltop and then Negan making Carl cry and then asking him to ‘sing me a song’. It’s creepy, powerful stuff and it could be a season-defining moment.
Episode 8: Hearts Still Beating
Last but definitely not least, the mid-season finale sees Negan returning to Alexandria but “things quickly spin out of control”. What could that mean for the residents of Alexandria? Has Negan had enough of Rick and the town? Or will the traumatised citizens up arms and fight the Saviors? Either way, expect a death or two to tide fans over during the mid-season break.
There’s a whole lot to look forward to. The next three episodes could knock it out of the park, Negan-style, and leave us crying on the floor in a puddle of tears just like poor old Rick. Sad face.
The Walking Dead season 7 airs every Sunday at 9pm on AMC in the US, and every Monday at 9pm on Fox in the UK.
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]]>The post New Walking Dead season 7 footage teases King Ezekiels Kingdom appeared first on Game News.
]]>Check it out below…
There’s certainly plenty of intrigue stuffed into the 30 second footage drop, which features glimpses of a rooftop fall, bloodied pigs, and a few walkers escaping from a sand pile.
There’s no denying what the main attraction of the Walking Dead’s season 7 premiere is though, and everything we’ve heard from those involved suggests that it will be well worth the wait. Here’s hoping it delivers.
AMC have also debuted some new poster art for the upcoming season that has Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s villain in a familiar pose. Check it out below…
Season 7 of The Walking Dead will debut on AMC on October 23, 2016.
Images: AMC
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]]>The post The Walking Deads Norman Reedus says theres a “complete change of power” in season 7 appeared first on Game News.
]]>“I mean, it’s a brand new world right now. It’s a complete change of power. Our whole world has been turned upside down, and that group of people have been fighting to have their feet firmly on the ground and have some sort of direction to live in and some sort of code to live by and moral compass, and they thought they were doing it okay, you know? It was hard, and they had to go through things all the time, but they were on a path, and now that path has been ripped from their feet, and things that they believe in are completely different now. The world is completely turned upside down”.
“[This death] affects the group completely differently”, Reedus continued. “You know, everyone, it affects them differently. Some relinquish power. Some accept it. Some fight it. There are people questioning it. There are people pointing their fingers. There are people blaming themselves. Other things happen that completely destroy people. Negan has come in and completely shaken up everything. Loyalties are broken, belief in one another, belief in ourselves. Each individual is completely broken, and they don’t all handle it the exact same way”.
Although times are almost always tough for our Walking Dead characters, Negan’s arrival means things will be bleaker than ever on the show. It will be interesting to see which loyalties do and don’t survive the adversity ahead.
The Walking Dead returns to AMC with its season 7 premiere on October 23, 2016.
Images: AMC
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]]>The post The Walking Dead S6.05 is totally skippable appeared first on Game News.
]]>Do you like the Alexandrians? What’s that – you feel entirely ambivalent about them? Well, here’s an entire episode dedicated to helping you get to know them better! Witness such exciting scenes as Denise the doctor having a crisis of confidence, some douchey guys stealing food and Carl getting into a punch-up with Ron. Yay?
You get the picture. It’s not just that “Now” doesn’t really move the main story forward, it’s that it focuses almost entirely on people we don’t care about at the beginning and still don’t care about at the end. Sure, Jessie finally gets some more screen time, but it’s counter-balanced by Deanna doing little more than pulling her best crazy-face and Ron moaning on about Enid. Denise is probably going to grow into a likeable character, and there’s the first hints of a romance between her with Tara, but at the moment she’s just another miserable face in a sea of miserable faces. This is an episode that really needed an injection of either Carol’s snark, Eugene’s dry wit or Daryl’s sass (I’m sure there are plenty of viewers who think that every episode should feature an injection of Daryl…) to liven it up.
All that said, Aaron and Maggie setting out to find Glenn was a welcome development, even if it did end inconclusively. They’ve both been underused of late, and Ross Marquand is one of the more appealing of the newer cast members. The revelation that Maggie is pregnant fell a little flat – it was hinted at earlier in the season – but they’re both good actors and the sequence with the water-logged walkers was fantastic. All credit to Greg Nicotero and his team for continuing to find ways to make the zombies on this show so excitingly repellant. As for Glenn, well they’re clearly planning to drag this one out…
Last week’s episode “Here’s Not Here” proved divisive. I’m still not convinced it was a work of genius, as others have suggested, but it did at least have style and something to say. “Now” is shorter and has more going on, but felt longer. For the first time in a while The Walking Dead was skippable this week.
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Rick’s hand
Well, he didn’t run into camp screaming for his hand to be amputated, so I guess that injury a couple of episodes back didn’t infect him after all…
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Boo!
The zombie that Jessie found in the house provided a classic jump scare – and a chance for her to step up and fight back.
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The name game
<em>The Walking Dead</em>’s episode titles really are the most generic on television. “Now” follows in the tradition of “Remember”, “Us” and “After”. I’d say that they’re drifting close to just running single letter titles, but they already did that with “A” back in season four.
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Best line
“I want to live. I want this place to stay standing.” Deanna, in a nice callback to “Try”.
Corey Reed
Avi Youabian
the Alexandrians are having a rough time dealing with the fallout from the Wolves attack. Meanwhile, Maggie and Aaron go searching for Glenn.
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]]>The dilemma of how to mete out justice in a post-apocalyptic society is a juicy one (see the 1975 Survivors episode “Law And Order” for another brutal example). Rick wants to kill Pete because he’s a danger to the community, while Deanna is willing to turn a blind eye to domestic abuse because the Safe Zone needs a surgeon. Both of them are convinced that they’re in the right and neither of them are.
It’s certainly easy to sympathise with Rick’s statement that exiling Pete would only lead to reprisals (especially with the alarming happenings beyond the wall), but his brutal attitude to law enforcement is only a few steps away from another Ricktatorship. There’s also the little matter of his feelings for Jessie. This isn’t justice – it’s too steeped in his own desires for that.
Likewise, simply ignoring the problem is not the answer and it reveals a weakness in Deanna’s leadership. There are no easy answers at the end of the episode, though I hope the show finds an interesting way to deal with Pete, rather than simply having him killed by a zombie.
But what to do about Rick? After his maniacal, blood-soaked breakdown at the end (nice one, Michonne), he surely faces exile himself. Perhaps a conveniently timed attack by the Wolves (or whoever they are) will prove that the new world does need Grimes after all. Though for what, I’m not quite sure – all the fight really proved is that he’s terrible at controlling his anger issues.
Elsewhere, that was a great scene between Glenn and cowardly Nicholas. For one of the original survivors (and a fan favourite from the comic), Glenn doesn’t often get strong material like this. Admittedly, you can’t help but think that it might backfire on him next week, but for now let’s just enjoy him dropping a few truth bombs.
Some respite from all of the nastiness came with Carl and Enid’s moment in the tree. It looks like they’re going to kiss, but don’t, because of teen awkwardness. Surrounded by flesh-eating walkers, Carl is far more afraid of doing the wrong thing with the girl that he likes. A lovely, human moment.
Next week: the season finale. Yes, already. But at least it’s a feature-length offering. After an inauspicious start, this has turned into a terrific back half to this year’s run. The finale’s titled “Conquer”, and there’s a butt-load of sinister connotations to that word…
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W Is For
Darryl and Aaron’s trip beyond the walls of the Safe Zone revealed more mutilated walkers, and a dead woman tied to a tree. It’s pretty much a shoe-in at this point that whoever is doing all this is going to show up in either the final half hour of the season, or the first episode of the next run…
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Hey You, What’s That Sound?
“Try” featured one of The Walking Dead’s best ever pre-titles sequences – a montage of the characters set to Nine Inch Nails’ “Somewhat Damaged”, courtesy of Aiden’s “RUN MIX” CDR. I’m no NIN fan, but this was a superb juxtaposition, the angry industrial clatter reflecting the building rage in many of the characters.
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Walking Dead Bingo
Next week is the feature-length season finale. That usually means at least one character being carried out feet first. We’ve lost quite a few regulars recently, but there’s always room for more on this show. My money is on Sasha, Pete and Nicholas buying the farm, but creepy Gabriel surviving and being shamed by his actions. There’s also the outside chance that Nicholas might shoot Glenn, but they wouldn’t do that… would they?
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Best Line
<strong>Rosita, to Michonne:</strong> “You didn’t bring your sword with you. That’s not nothing.”
The Walking Dead airs on AMC in the US on Sundays and Fox in the UK on Mondays.
For more on top sci-fi TV shows like The Walking Dead, subscribe to SFX (opens in new tab)
Angela Kang
Michael E. Satrazemis
Pete and Rick come to blows, Sasha breaks down and Daryl and Aaron find something disturbing in the woods.
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]]>The sense of catharsis, of having weathered a (literal) storm at the end of last week’s instalment, continues into this one. It’s far from a comedy episode, but there’s a lightness of touch and some genuinely snappy, funny dialogue.
It cuts straight to the chase. The group have captured Aaron and interrogate him about his plans. The interesting thing here is how the tension comes not from the new guy, but from Rick. His paranoia is understandable, but all consuming. He’s ready to give up the chance of a new life for his friends and family because he doesn’t want to risk being disappointed again.
That Michonne is the voice of reason here is a brilliant development (and, side note, the filthy look she gives Glenn when he comes on all soldier boy is hysterical). She’s rational and intuitive and makes much better choices than Rick. I know who I’d be listening to in this situation.
That said, Aaron doesn’t really help himself. Ross Marquand does a fine job of selling the character’s trustworthiness, but the apple sauce scene is ludicrous. Judith is hungry and crying. Aaron suggests that Rick feeds her some of the said comestible, but then refuses to taste it himself (thus proving that it’s not poisoned). Why? Er, because he doesn’t like the taste. Seriously, when dealing with someone as trigger-happy as Rick, that’s a really dumb decision. It feels like an artificial attempt to add tension to a scene that was already plenty dramatic.
With the decision to visit Aaron’s base made, the gang hit the road again – cue a terrific set piece as they drive through a swarm of zombies. The show gets to flex its rarely-used horror muscles here. It’s a safe assumption that everyone is going to make it out OK, as they’ve just offed two regulars, but Larysa Kondracki’s direction makes for a genuinely tense, scary scene.
Thankfully, everyone did make it through OK and we met Eric – Aaron’s partner in both love and hunting new recruits. It’s a touching reunion and the moment that we know for sure that Aaron is on the up and up. As Rick sits, waiting and listening, he hears the sound of happy children. They’ve found a peaceful community where he can start a new life with his family. We know it won’t last – everything eventually crumbles to shit in this show – but for now, life is good.
That’s good. It feels like the show has been on the road for a very long time now, so a new regular location brings with it the promise of new types of story. What sort of people are already living there? How will Killer Rick cope in a peaceful environment (if that’s what it turns out to be)? Will he finally tame that beast of a beard? I guess we’ll find out next week in what looks like The Adventures Of Rick Grimes In Stepford…
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Hot Shots Part Trois?
As soon as that flare gun appeared, you just knew it would be put to inventive zombie-killing use…
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“You Lost The Plates?”
Aaron collecting licence plates for each of the states is a lovely detail. Completely pointless in regards to the rest of the show, but very believable.
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Twice Bitten…
Even at the end, Rick still can’t quite trust Aaron – the detail of him hiding a gun outside of the base is a smart touch. I wonder when we’ll next see that?
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Best Line
<strong>Michonne:</strong> “So we’re clear, that look wasn’t a ‘let’s attack that man look’ it was a ‘he seems like an OK guy to me’ look.”
The Walking Dead airs on AMC in the US on Sundays and Fox in the UK on Mondays.
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Seth Hoffman
Larysa Kondracki
We get to know Aaron and Rick acts like a massive arse.
The post The Walking Dead S5.11 “The Distance” review appeared first on Game News.
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