I’ve waited a long time to write this review on a game series that has become one of my all-time favorite stories…ever!
The Walking Dead: The Final Season makes a farewell to Clementine in a very spectacular way honestly. For the last seven years, Clementine has been protecting her little companion A.J. just like Lee had done for her in the first season of the game. What Lee did for her in the first season created a survival instinct within Clementine that is unrivaled by almost no one. This survival instinct is what has kept her and A.J. alive all these years.
The Final Season is one of the most focused arc’s if not the most in the series since its debut back in 2012. The adopted mother/son dynamic between Clementine and A.J. create one of the best story dynamics the series has seen to date. This story also offers us something new with a different perspective about the walkers, which is weird to think about but after so many years of this game, the story attempts to show us that the walkers were once human before the outbreak. To me, the game is really trying to point at something new that we haven’t seen yet and that is one of breaking a cycle, one of possibly breaking old habits and living in this world differently.
On an episode by episode basis, I think the Final Season brings a good close to a great series and the studio that started it all. We get to see a mix of moments between dull and dragging, to cringe-worthy and exciting but the final destination of this game is well worth the time put in to get there. Each episode has at least two or three pivotal moments that made me feel like reloading my save and making the other choice, only to realize that either way would leave me with mixed emotions. When a story-based game can create hard decisions personally for you as the player then the developers have done an amazing job in my opinion! After knowing these characters in-game for so long it’s hard to make different choices aka break those cycles like we talked about earlier, but change is necessary for this game and the characters have a chance to change their ways and so do you as the player.
There were some big mechanical changes from previous seasons mainly around camera control which was an interesting feature. Basically, the camera now allows you some third-person views and giving you full control of the camera during combat. This feature definitely brings a new level of dynamic fighting and hectic moments. Even though this system does allow full camera control, and brings some new action to the game when encountering the Walkers, it is not without its flaws! For one the playable area for each scene is confined which makes running into those invisible walls a very frustrating common thing in the game, and another is the noticeable framerate drops when encountering big herds of Walkers. Overall, the third-person action sequences work well, but more often than not the free-roaming camera sequence has a negative effect on the game experience.
With all this said I think The Walking Dead: The Final Season does a fantastic job bringing you on a journey and discovering more about the relationship between Clementine and A.J. – Which honestly produced some of the craziest situations, and hardest decisions/choices ever in the game series to date. At times, the story gets clogged up with this new free-roaming gameplay feature, and the onslaught of new characters introduced that never get fully developed. Each episode though did have a very satisfying conclusion and wrap up that set up an amazing end to the final game. We ended the game on a bittersweet note especially since this was the last game TellTale worked on before shutting down, which really hit home in how they did the ending for Clem and this amazing story that’s unfolded over the last seven years.
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