It’s the loneliest road I know…
Bloody hell…I don’t know where to begin. Everyone has their own epic plan on how they’d deal with a zombie outbreak, and the idea is tossed around so much you’d think an undead invasion will roll about any day now. I had a pretty fool-proof plan involving crossbows, Pop Tarts and Zooey Deschanel. If I had to put up with half the stuff Lee has to go through in Long Road Ahead though, I’d give myself about 2 weeks before giving into despair, setting up camp in the attic and Reddit on the laptop in the vain hope kitty cat pictures brighten my final days. God help me if the internet is cut off. Anyway, prep yourself for a dark, depressing, dreary couple of hours as the third episode of The Walking Dead-The Game rolls into town. Macon has been gutted of supplies, ravaged thanks to bandits and is turning into such a desolate hell even the undead aren’t sticking around. With the area drained of all hope, Kenny’s idea of jumping on the RV and getting the hell out of town is getting more and more tempting by the day. Lilly’s blind optimism has kept the team at utter unrest, and everyone is at breaking point. A violent eviction tips the groups’ opinions Kenny’s way, but as the team hit the road in a bid to evacuate the state, they realise that their greatest threats aren’t in the form of the living dead or the humanity stripped bandits. The end of the world has finally taken its toll on everyone, and that makes your formers pals a rather unpredictable bunch indeed…. 
Whereas Starved For Help was a slow burning 5 mile fuse leading to an absurdly large pile of dynamite, Long Road Ahead is a paranoia induced nightmare where tension teeters on mountain-tops before being stuffed into a canon and being fired into a second precipice, cracking the necks of a few cast members on the way. Every time your brain enters an uneasy sense of relief, the episode finds new ways of tightening a wrench around your heart until every sap of joy is drained and pooling on the floor. It’s a good thing. The constant reminders that everything you did prior to this episode also starts to linger in your own mind, and this was the first time where I was left completely and utterly paralysed with turmoil. That luxurious split second you had to make a tough decision last time is stretched out, finally giving you precious time to deliberate over choices. However, in Long Road’s most compelling moments millions of options and doubts are racking through your mind, and in its more sombre moments…you just can’t find the ‘right’ thing to say. If anyone out there is playing the bad guy, it’s a wonder that everyone isn’t dangling from trees by now due to some horrid social faux pas every time someone needs a shoulder to cry on.
A phenomenally hard-hitting 2 hour chill-ride
Long Road Ahead feels like something of a landmark episode, and that’s not simply down to the change of location or a nigh on suicidal change of tone. Decisions made in the first episode strongly affected the brewing Civil War between Kenny and Lilly, but here, it feels every move you made in the past is crushing everyone’s morale and there’s nothing you can do about it but attempt to limit the emotional damage. Even if you’re not bothered about social etiquette when it comes to making hard decisions, you’ll be left pondering what to say as a few misplaced words may form a corpse in a few months’ time. If there’s one chirpy constant that’s uplifting, it’s Clementine. Despite everything that occurs in this hellish road-trip, her innocence is somewhat uplifting and Lee’s relationship is growing nicely with her. Not naïve enough to be deemed stupid and not mentally scarred enough to become an unlikeable emotional mess, it’s somewhat enlightening how both Lee and Clem are bonding throughout the series, and Long Road Ahead is-when it’s not kicking you in the tear ducts-is a somewhat heart-warming tale of trust. 
Unfortunately, production values this time around have been left in disarray. Key moments are directed sublimely, but those that haven’t got the emotional edge are left to dwindle somewhat. A heated argument at the beginning was fought between cast members with the most opaque of faces I thought the wallpaper was trying to talk, and there were far too many awkward silences that couldn’t be excused as dramatic effect. In-game, this is the first episode that really introduces true action, allowing you to don a firearm in one key moment. Unfortunately, the game just crumbles due to the apparent stress it’s put under, with crosshairs disappearing and cinematics blocked by in-game HUD’S. As soon as you hit the road the narrative picks up and these technical aspects are cleared up enough to be ignored, but it’s a remarkably shoddy beginning in terms of presentation. Long Road Ahead is a mentally exhausting journey that takes advantage of everything that has come before it, all the while setting up a bleak future that’s begging for exploration. If the occasionally sketchy tech errors were polished to perfection, this would have certainly been the strongest episode yet. Narratively, however, the third episode is a phenomenally hard-hitting 2 hour chill-ride, a remarkable milestone for the series and a testament to video game story-telling. It won’t have you jumping out of your skin, but will have you quivering in stress, questioning apocalyptic optimism and unashamedly wallowing in sadness. So yeah, have some kitten pictures on hand.
The Bad: Odd glitches at the beginning forced me to re-load checkpoints
Silver Y Award