The Walking Dead Episode 4: Around Every Corner (PS3) Review

After the crazy and emotional events of the last episode, TellTale Games’ Walking Dead series is now at the fourth episode of its first season. Titled Around Every Corner, Lee Everett, Clementine, Kenny, and the rest of their group have finally reached Savannah, Georgia in hopes of escaping the Walker apocalypse by finding a boat. While new characters were introduced at the end of the third episode, more new ones enter the fray at the city. Arriving at a whole new city also means new arcs with these new characters and emotional moments.

Each character of the group entering this episode has their own motives at Savannah. Playing as Lee, you’ll encounter more tough decisions regarding the group while he tries to do what is best for them and Clementine. Speaking of Clementine, she still wants to find her parents now that they arrived at the city. Kenny is obsessively set on finding a boat to escape the Walker apocalypse especially after what happened to him last episode. Omid, who was introduced near the end of Episode 3 with Christa, has an injured leg and Christa will do whatever it takes to find meds to heal his injuries. Ben is hoping to redeem himself after the events of the last episode. Chuck is the only exception to having a real motive at the start of Episode 4 since he is just sticking around with the group because he had nowhere to go when he was introduced last time.



As mentioned earlier, more characters are introduced as the group continues to find a boat at Savannah. Molly is a lonely and acrobatic girl, but able to fight off Walkers easily with the weapons she has. Lee randomly runs into a shelter full of survivors after escaping Walkers at the sewers. He meets Vernon, a doctor at this shelter, as he explains the major arc of this episode, which is Crawford. Crawford in a nutshell is a portion of Savannah where only the fittest can live and others like diseased folks, the elderly, and children are liabilities in their land. In other words, it is a strict area to live in where certain rules have to be followed. This is also where supplies necessary for survival such fuel, car batteries, and meds are kept. It is up to Lee and the rest of the group to gather whatever they need to keep going at Crawford before they get caught.

TellTale continues to maintain a good balance of action, storytelling, and puzzles in Around Every Corner. There are Walker encounters Lee has to shoot through to stay alive along with figuring out distractions for groups of Walkers he can’t take on alone. The puzzles are also more of the same of finding certain items to unlock doors and other things proceeding to the next part of the episode. Episode 3: Long Road Ahead was filled with crazy moments that had fans talking about for days and weeks as it was going to be tough for Episode 4 to top that. That was indeed the case since there wasn’t really any moments I didn’t see coming, but the ending of this episode does a great job setting up the events for the last episode of this current season.



What remains to be the most disappointing parts in these Walking Dead episodes are the technical issues as this fourth episode is no exception. While the comic-book art style still looks great for the characters and environments, the frame drops and loading issues when transitioning from one scene to the next keep getting worse. Most of these times, I get worried that the game crashed and I had to reload from my last save. Then the worst thing happened as a result of the game froze on me during my second playthrough of Around Every Corner. My save data got corrupted and had to be recreated. This means both of my files are done for and I had to start over from the beginning of the first episode. Hopefully, others don’t run into this specific issue when playing this episode, but at the end of the day, issues like these are so unfortunate for such an amazing series like this.

Besides the continuing technical issues that have been occurring since the first episode, The Walking Dead Episode 4: Around Every Corner is still a great episode that sets up the events for the season finale extraordinarily well. While it's the weakest episode of the four released so far in terms of not having a crazy and emotional moment other episodes had that kept people talking, it still does enough to satisfy fans as they impatiently wait for the fifth episode. The attachment to these characters are still at an all-time high for me and I look forward to what happens to them at the end of this season. The frame drops, loading issues, and game crashes are still a problem, but the save corrupting issue that I personally ran into is the most disappointing of them all. This latest episode of TellTale’s Walking Dead game is definitely worth playing for fans to continue Lee and Clementine’s story, but be aware of the numerous issues these episodes still have.