Game Review: The Walking Dead: Michonne Full Season (PC)
While the rest of the world waits for Season Three of The Walking Dead game series, Telltale Games wanted to do an experiment with a three episode mini-series featuring Michonne from the comic series. The end result tries to give the player insight to this character, but its does very little with the limited amount of time it has to do so. This ultimately makes for a weaker experience.
The story with the game focuses on Michonne joining a group that sails to different places in search for a better life, all while occasionally stopping for supplies in various places. During one of these stops, they get caught in a conflict with a group from a violent and territorial boating settlement. In the midst of this, she escapes but now has to find a way to help and get back to her crew, all while helping someone else out who also fled with her. And that's all I can really say of the story without spoiling the rest of the game, for it's an incredibly short experience.
Michonne herself has a backstory involving dealing with her past, and having PTSD episodes and the hallucinations that it produces. While we do get to see that she has some baggage to deal with, the time spent in every episode is so brief, the players won't get a good slice of her background. By the end, she will still have layers to learn about, but unfortunately it will need a follow up series to explore, as it's not revealed here. And the supporting cast is such that they don't get much of a backstory either. The time that's spent on them is even less, and it's hard to care about them as well.
Overall the game is pretty weak. The most annoying parts of the QTE's in Michonne are the button mashing sequences which only succeed in wearing my buttons down. At least the artwork and voice talent are still high quality. But if you want a meaty The Walking Dead experience, you'd be better off playing the first two seasons. Or waiting for season three, if you already played those.
The Bottom Line: This little experiment spends far too little time with Michonne to really give you a feel for Michonne and her story, let alone any of the other characters.
Acquisition method: Digital code provided by Telltale Games.
The story with the game focuses on Michonne joining a group that sails to different places in search for a better life, all while occasionally stopping for supplies in various places. During one of these stops, they get caught in a conflict with a group from a violent and territorial boating settlement. In the midst of this, she escapes but now has to find a way to help and get back to her crew, all while helping someone else out who also fled with her. And that's all I can really say of the story without spoiling the rest of the game, for it's an incredibly short experience.
Michonne herself has a backstory involving dealing with her past, and having PTSD episodes and the hallucinations that it produces. While we do get to see that she has some baggage to deal with, the time spent in every episode is so brief, the players won't get a good slice of her background. By the end, she will still have layers to learn about, but unfortunately it will need a follow up series to explore, as it's not revealed here. And the supporting cast is such that they don't get much of a backstory either. The time that's spent on them is even less, and it's hard to care about them as well.
Overall the game is pretty weak. The most annoying parts of the QTE's in Michonne are the button mashing sequences which only succeed in wearing my buttons down. At least the artwork and voice talent are still high quality. But if you want a meaty The Walking Dead experience, you'd be better off playing the first two seasons. Or waiting for season three, if you already played those.
The Bottom Line: This little experiment spends far too little time with Michonne to really give you a feel for Michonne and her story, let alone any of the other characters.
Acquisition method: Digital code provided by Telltale Games.
Our Grade:
C
The Good:
- The visuals still look good despite the engine's age.
- Voice acting's good too.
The Bad:
- Too short to really care too much about the story.
- I'm getting annoyed at all of the button mashing parts.
Eric is one of the co-hosts of the RPGrinders podcast, as well as a freelance video game writer. You can follow him on Twitter @EricRPG .
