Random Video Game Review - The Walking Dead: The Final Season

Many of us will remember the video game publisher and developer TellTale as one of the many great video game companies out there. Although most of their games were point and click and episodic adventures, one thing everyone knew that they could do very well (for the most part at least) is live up to their name to tell a story. Player choice games are one of my personal favourite types of games as it lets us the players have a more personal experience which is good unlike many companies who make games with everything already set in place which leads to the world of modding. So after what feels like forever, here we are with the final season of TellTale's The Walking Dead as well as their last game overall following the closure of the company. And because the company closed midway through the release of the episodes, Skybound (the parent company who produce much of the franchise's media) took over with the same staff and bought the game to its conclusion. And also its been said that we may see more games in the future. So let's go fight some walkers yet again:

Set three years after the last game A New Frontier, series protagonist Clementine (reprised by Melissa Hutchison) who is now a full grown teenager, continues to raise AJ (voiced by Tayla Parx) as well as fighting to survive the walker infested world they find themselves in. They soon join a grouo of other teenagers at the Ericson Boarding School for Troubled Youth where they make new friends and come across some old and new foes too as Clem will once again have to make some tough decisons to survive. As with TellTale's other games, the game plays out as a point and click game where players can find things to help with certain situations as well as to make a lot of conversation choices and plenty of key decisions to help shape the storyline and the relationships that are made. TellTale and later on Skybound have both made it possible for players to use their saves from previous games to feed into this game or use some kind of online tool to make a mock save for the game. This of course addresses the issue players have had when it came to console transitions (though this hasn't been a problem for PC gamers as all the games have been released on that platform) which is great. Quick time events are also back, but with more open ended free reign to enhance and improve the experience when compared to previous games.

Although it does introduce what would have been a new game engine for future games by TellTale, the game feels like a satisfactory ending to what has been a great series of games. It probably will continue on without Clem in the limelight, but overall its a great end to the series and provides a promising future for Skybound's game division who at the time of acquiring the rights were relatively new. No innovation though, but still a good ending nonetheless. 9/10