The Walking Dead was developed and published by Telltale Games. It was released August 29, 2012 for 400 MSP. A copy was provided for review purposes.

Episode 3 of The Walking Dead is not fun, you will not enjoy the experience. You’ll walk away from it with a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, and possibly tears in your eyes. It is a harrowing, depressing and almost hopeless tale, even more so than the two episodes preceding it.

The worst part of all that? It is an experience you absolute must take part in, this is a game that will make you feel and think things you’d never have considered a game could. In three short episodes Telltale Games have become masters of the zombie apocalypse, telling horribly believable, shocking stories through an interactive medium.

Here’s what we liked:

Time investment put to good use – By now if you’ve played through each episode at least once, you’ve spent a good five or six hours with this group of characters. It might not sound like much but you’ll be surprised how attached you are. Telltale knows exactly what to do with that information, they’re going to use it to hurt you. Those characters you care about? They’re going to suffer, it makes for a difficult game to sit through but the sheer power of the emotions you’ll experience make it worth playing.

Technical issues ironed out – If you’ve read our reviews of the last two episodes, you’ll recall one of the main complaints was that the Telltale engine struggles under the pressure. We’re happy to see that with this iteration those issues are all but gone. There’s still a slight, but noticeable, pause when transitioning between some scenes but unlike the past two episodes it’s never in a place that effects the pacing of a tense sequence.

Puzzling – The other episodes of Walking Dead were fairly light on puzzles and adventure game tropes. Long Road Ahead brings in some simple puzzles to engage in, they come at a pretty perfect time too. Just when you and the characters need to distract themselves from the horrible events that take place throughout this episode.

Here’s what we didn’t like:

Uneven pacing – Long Road Ahead is packed with huge, game-changing events. The landscape of Lee’s world completely changes from the start of this episode to the end. With so many significant events packed into a small time frame (though this is the longest episode so far), it’s not surprising the pacing takes a hit. Unfortunately the flow of the game suffers a bit for it, there is a point about three quarters of the way through which feels like an ending point. It isn’t though, and the game continues on for a while still. The last section does seem necessary of course, setting up events in the next episode but we feel it could’ve been handled better.

As we get further into the season it becomes clear that some decisions matter more than others. Ultimately it’s not so much about how much your decisions shape the story but rather how they shape you and the characters around you.

Telltale use The Walking Dead‘s zombie backdrop perfectly, bringing the human element to the forefront in ever more tragic ways. While it may make for a very hard to stomach experience, there is no doubt that everyone should play this game.

Score: Buy It