The Walking Dead: The Final Season

This is definitely the weakest season The Walking Dead games. Apparently, halfway through development Telltale went out of business and the game had to be taken over by a new company (made up of many of the same crew).

On the plus side, we are back to focusing on Clementine’s story by directly controlling her and her choices. One the minus side, most of the characters are dopey teenagers that are all, for the most part, kinda friendly with each other. There isn’t that slow boil conflict between survivors that was in the last game.

Your job throughout has shifted from survival to focusing on influencing the development of young A.J. At one point in the game he makes an unbelievably stupid choice and there’s no getting around it. It’s just a means of adding conflict between the main characters without any grounding in how real people behave.

Despite this annoyance, the story moves forward and we get some nostalgic scenes with characters from Clem’s past. It all leads up to an ending that feels about right and manages to pull the heartstrings (and the zombie guts). They’ve also added a “collectibles” aspect to each episode and the quick-time event sequences are as jarring as ever. All-in-all flawed but worthy conclusion to this excellent series.