The Walking Dead Michonne

Geoffrey Wright | July 5, 2016 | Review | No Comments

The Walking Dead: Michonne is the latest instalment in the hugely popular Telltale Games series The Walking Dead. Marketed as a “mini-series”, Michonne only has three episodes that last about 5 hours in total. The first thing to note is that this does not follow the TV series. This mini-series picks up from issue 126 of the comic when Michonne leaves Rick Grimes’ group and explains what brought her back by issue 139.

The story is one that you would expect from the Walking Dead world; there is always one group of survivors that will always take advantage of the post-apocalyptic world that they live in. The beginning of the story involves Michonne and a small group just doing what they need to do to survive. During the events of the first episode the boat in which Michonne’s group live upon is in need of repair, so Michonne and another member of the group (Pete) are forced to go in search for the required part on a grounded Ferry. Events happen, zombies attack and soon enough they find themselves prisoners of Monna and her band of survivors. As with all Tell Tale Games, the story is key so I will not divulge any further. The overall plot and outcome of the story is not as strong as previous entries but it does well with what little time it has. It is obvious now that every Telltale Game has a structure and it is very apparent here. As this was a planned three episode mini series, you can see a strong structure to the story. There is a defining start, middle and end present with very little filler in between. The finale is a lot shorter than other episodes but it is purely there to tie the story off. The final scenes play out like a classic Telltale story but do not expect any great twists at the end. You will get closer on the story and that is about it. You can achieve a couple of different endings but this nothing that will effect the overall narrative of The Walking Dead (remember, this is the in-told story)

The game play, just like the story structure, is everything you would expect from Telltale; you interact with other characters, you walk around, look at things and respond to quick time events. Everything is all very familiar, which can be good but I feel that it is time to change things up. The good news is that the Batman game that is being released later this year is using a new engine so hopefully change is coming.

Historically Tell Tale Games have always been know for a lot of technically issue whether they are lag caused by dropped frames and general graphical errors. This is actually the first Walking Dead game I have played on the current generation of consoles and you can feel straight from go the improvement the new systems have upon the engine. They is very little lag between scenes and quick time events making it feel like a really smooth experience. I have played Tales From The Borderlands on the PS4 but I really had nothing to compare that against. I have recently played a Tell Tales Game on my Vita and the performance was just diabolically as it had all the issues mentioned above!

The Walking Dead: Michonne is an enjoyable mini-series and for any fan of The Walking Dead comics it is a must to play as you finally discover Michonne’s untold story. The whole game is nothing that will keep you on the edge of your seat as the tone of the story is a lot different than that of the other entries in the series. Everyone has a story before the un-dead took over the world but what you learn here is that some survivor’s are more tragic than others – could you live with that past?