The Walking Dead The Final Season PS4 Review

The time has finally come to say goodbye to Clementine. Though this is a premature finish, The Walking Dead: The Final Season Episode Two – Suffer the Children has dropped, for those among us who had already purchased the season pass. This current season has been pulled from shelves (digital or otherwise), and it is not available for new purchases as of this writing. Telltale Games drama aside, how does Clementine’s latest adventure fare? Time to find out in our Suffer the Children review.

The Burden

The last episode ended on a massive cliffhanger, as most good episodic games tend to do. AJ, the boy whom Clementine is nurturing and protecting like her own little brother, left everyone speechless with his actions, and now it’s up to Clementine to pick up the pieces. The time has come for people to take sides, while new external threats add pressure to a burgeoning community run by teenagers and kids inside an abandoned schoolhouse. There’s plenty of drama to be found, oftentimes reminding us that even during an apocalypse, it’s the living people you need to watch out for.

Suffer the Children runs at approximately 2-3 hours, depending upon your play style. There’s not too much in the way of action sequences this time around, because as a middle episode there is more time spent building up the exposition. Characters whom we don’t really know too well are able to stretch out just a little bit, as we get to learn more about where they came from or what is worrying them. The events of the first episode weigh heavily on everyone, perhaps most of all on the young AJ. Clementine has come full circle, and she has grown into a caretaker much like Lee before her.

Going out in Style

It wasn’t supposed to end like this, though. Suffer the Children ends with so many loose ends, because of course when it was written it was assumed that the series would be allowed to finish its four-episode length. Then again, maybe that wasn’t the assumption at all. Whatever the case, it seems we’ll all have to be content with imagining the end of this series. Maybe Clementine actually fares better than Lee, and she manages to eke out a living until she’s reached old age. Or perhaps there is an end to the zombie age, and everyone lives happily ever after. Things could also just continue in a vicious cycle of constant death, until eventually all of humanity is wiped out, while the rest of Earth’s life goes on regardless. It’s not like there’s zombies in the oceans, right?! There is a slight hope that the series will still see a proper finish, but with so many unknowns it’s anyone’s guess as to when, or if, that might be the case.

The Telltale Tool continues to run quite well, finally, on current hardware. Telltale Games evidently felt confident enough to expand the tasks Clementine could do this time around. At certain portions towards the end of this episode, a bow is used, and for a moment, The Walking Dead becomes a slow-paced third-person shooter. While earlier sections had players lining up a reticle into a large target icon, during these shooting sections there are no such targets. Clementine’s aim must be very accurate, or else enemies will not get hit. It’s a bit jarring to suddenly require precise accuracy where previously hardly any was needed, but these sections are short and will be conquered by most players in no time.

It’s too bad we may never see the intended ending of The Walking Dead: The Final Season. While the series may not reach the same critical heights it did as with the inaugural season, things were finally starting to get interesting again. The Telltale Tool engine runs well, the art style is unique and fun to look at, and the writing has improved. If this is how things must end, it could have been much worse.

The Walking Dead: The Final Season – Suffer the Children review code provided by publisher. Version 1.00 reviewed on a PS4 Pro. For more information on scoring please see our Review Policy here.