Because I pre-ordered The Walking Dead: The Final Season, I got this game for free. At first I was going to skip it because I played all of these games a bunch of times and have done multiple reviews on them. The platinum trophy for this game though was just too easy to pass up on and I decided to play this game making it the fourth time that I’ve played The Walking Dead Season 1 and 2 and the second time that I played The Walking Dead: A New Frontier and The Walking Dead: Michonne. Anyway, I played all of these games again, and got the platinum trophy so it’s time for a review.
The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series Collection, combines all of The Walking Dead games that Telltale has released into one convenient little collection that allows you to download and play all the games that they have available. Just a warning, this is going to be a long review as I basically recap all four games that have been put into one. Unfortunately there will be some spoilers that are unavoidable so I apologize ahead of time if you haven’t played any of these games.
In The Walking Dead, Season 1, you’ll play as Lee. Lee is on his way to jail when the zombie apocalypse hits and he meets up with Clementine. Clementine is hidden in her tree house hoping that her parents will come and get her. Knowing that’s not going to happen, Lee takes charge of her. They’ll adventure through new territory together as they learn the ways of this new world. They’ll make both friends and enemies and just try to survive in this epic five episode adventure.
In The Walking Dead, Season 2, you’ll play as Clementine. Left alone after the events of Season 1, she’ll have to learn to survive on her own or trust the people that she meets along the way. Still a little girl as this takes place not to long after the first season, this is probably one of the toughest seasons to play as Clementine. She will be used by the people around her, tested, and try to grow up in this new world. Along the way she’ll meet some people from her past and see if she could truly ever trust people or if she’ll forever be alone.
In The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, you’ll take on a new direction as you play once famous baseball player Javier. Javier was banned from the game because of his gambling and is now trying to reconnect with his family as his father dies. Too bad this is the same tie the zombie apocalypse hits and he’ll be left in charge of his niece and nephew along with his sister-in-law. They’ll have to learn to survive on their own and will eventually run into Clementine, who you get to play in small sections as you see what she’s been up to since the events of The Walking Dead Season 2, who will basically get them into all kinds of trouble by leading them to The New Frontier. This supposed safe haven isn’t so safe as it once was as Javier will run into someone from his past and will have to make decisions that not only effect his family, but Clementine as well.
In The Walking Dead: Michonne, you get to play as one of the most popular Walking Dead characters, Michonne. This is a small three part episodic game that will take place in a short period of Michonne’s life when she is separated from her group, which I’m assuming is Rick and Company. Anyway, you’ll take a little journey of her that will really make no difference in any of the other games or the actual game as the whole point of the game is for Michonne to face her past.
I really didn’t mind playing this game and replaying all of these games over again, but like always there was something that ruined it. We’ll get into that a little later, but I have to say that the remasters of the first two games played out pretty well on this collection and it was fun to jump back into season one and see how things first started. It was also fun to go back into the newer games and see what other decisions could be made as I prepared to play the final season. That being said I did regret actually playing this game because I think that It was just too much for me. Playing the same thing over and over again is just a little much and not that many things changed as I tried to make different decisions, but they all lead to the same conclusion. It really wasn’t all that great afterwards and after episode one of the second season, I just decided to not care anymore. It’s sad because this is a really great collection of games, but this one is totally on me as I just was into it and then lost interest because of the amount of times that I’ve already played. At a certain point it was just about finishing the game and getting it over with to get the platinum trophy.
Oh Telltale, your playability when it comes to these games just suck. Some times were improved upon like the crashing, but other things like wonky quick time events and long loading screens were just not fixed for this collection and it felt like they just gave up. This I could live with as I had to replay section after section of game that just did not sync right with the Quicktime events, but what I couldn’t live with and what made me not care about this game was the collections obvious disregard for the decisions that I made in previous episodes. This happened after the first episode of season two where all of my choices from the previous episode were ignored upon starting episode 2 and this just royally pissed me off. For a game that’s supposed to be based on the decisions that you make, apparently your decision’s don’t matter and this is a major glitch that ruined this game for me and made me go into not care mode. This wasn’t the only time this happened as time after time again, decisions that were made in previous seasons were lost and turned into something that wasn’t even chosen. This was a real downer as I felt like Clementine’s story, my story, wasn’t being told the way that I played it. The whole, “This game is based on the decisions that you make. The story is tailored by how you play,” warning that comes up before each episode is just bullshit.
The graphics for this game were spot on like they usually are and they were really enjoyable. The first two games transferred over well and the last two games, A New Frontier and Michonne, had the same graphics that they did on release day. I really like the graphics for this series as it emulates a graphic novel, which is what it’s trying to represent. I find this refreshing for this series as its new and the art style is just one of those things that I absolutely love about this game series as a whole.
There were a total of 52 trophies for this game and you can get all of them by just playing the game. Some might see this as an easy task, but really it’s not. After all of the mistakes with decisions and stuff, this game gets annoying to play and you’ll get to the point where you just want to finish and you really don’t care. This is sad because it’s a really good series but this game goes and messes everything up making getting these trophies a real hassel.
None of these games have multiplayer and that was just fine with me because the multiplayer for this could have been a real hassle. I think that Telltale needs to just stick with the single player games since they already seem too hard to handle as it is.
Overall I give this game a 2 out of 5.
What’s Great:
+ This has all of the The Walking Dead games wrapped up into a nice little package of a collection and you can play them all at once without having to switch games.
+ The graphics from the port overs for the PS3 and the games that were made for the PS4 are just amazing and really bring this game and the series to life.
What’s Not So Great:
– While some game breaking glitches are fixed, new glitches emerge and are more frustrating than ever. In a game where your choices matter, your choices for this game do not matter as you’ll see later on in the game when all of your decisions from previous games and episodes are changed to whatever the hell Telltale wants them to be. This ruins the whole game and makes you just not care anymore.
I gave this game a really low score because of the whole decisions thing. That being said, I really do love this series and it will always hold a special place in this little gamers heart, but there are some things that just can’t be forgiven and the whole decisions this is one of them. Playing these games alone is one thing, but paying them as a collection is just not worth it since your proper decisions don’t carry over and you’ll be left having to recreate your decisions in later seasons and you’ll have to do so in the final season as well making playing all of these games over again pointless. If you want to do it for the easy platinum, that’s one thing, but if you’re playing this game for the first time I kind of feel bad as you won’t really get to experience how great this collection of games is. I would say that if you’ve played these games before in their original settings, then just leave it at that. If you’re new to The Walking Dead franchise, then just be prepared to be disappointed when the choices you made are written over by whatever system error is going on. You can go back and correct them or just live with them as you move forward.
1 Broke Gamer Girl 