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Season two of Telltale Games' The Walking Dead adventures ends with more whimper than bang. No Going Back caps the latest five-episode series with a surprisingly muted installment that eases up on the pedal that was once pushed right to the floor. Dialogue drives the proceedings and zombies are relegated to mere cameo appearances, and though I would have preferred a little more action and a lot more zombies, the atmosphere was so laced with an undercurrent of doom that I was constantly on the edge of my chair. Heartbreaking moments that underlined the quiet desperation driving each character, and the way that choices had a huge impact on the final resolution of the story, pushed the episode past its flaws toward a moving and fitting conclusion to a journey I was utterly invested in.

Still, color me conflicted. A number of aspects of No Going Back bothered me while playing, and they continue to bother me hours later. Plotting featured a number of moments that defied logic. The opening Mexican standoff with the Russians, for instance, was intense but also vaguely nonsensical, with everyone blasting away at each other from close distances like the trash-can-alley gunfights made famous by Police Squad. Fortunately, the entire scene was nicely rescued by a fittingly brutal ending accompanied by a summarily brutal gunshot execution. All the nihilism of the entire Walking Dead series was summed up in a few bleak seconds.



Walking Dead's whimpers are more satisfying than other game's bangs, and No Going Back remains quite satisfying despite some miscues. This messy ending is an appropriate way to wrap a season that evolved into a morality play loaded with grim, philosophical musings about what it means to be a human being, whether you're struggling to survive in a zombie apocalypse or simply learning how to get by in the real world.

Source: http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/the-walking-dead-season-two-episode-five-no-going-/1900-6415856/