Point and click adventure games definitely aren’t anything new in the gaming world, but it’s easy to forget how much of a shot in the arm it got in 2012 with Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead. Here we had an engaging post-apocalyptic zombie story where your choices would ultimately decide the fate of major characters and certain story beats. Next year marks the end of this wild series, and The Walking Dead Collection is a great way to prepare for it.
What we’re getting here is the three main seasons that all revolve around the character Clementine, as well as the 400 Days and Michonne spin-offs. This is a wealth of content to sift through, though the quality certainly varies overall. There’s no questioning that the main series following Clementine is the real draw here, with season one in particular being worth the price of admission alone if you’ve never played it before. The rest of the content here isn’t terrible, but simply doesn’t reach the heights that the main series does.
Playing through all of the games in a row like this is a great way to see how the series has evolved over the years, with the more puzzle-heavy season one giving way to a less-involved framework in the following seasons. However, this new collection also brings some big graphical upgrades to the earlier seasons, with the most notable one being for season one. Considering that is easily the best season here as we have fan-favorite Lee as he fills the father role for the young and inexperienced Clementine, playing it with the updated visuals was great. Everything is much more colorful and detailed, with better lighting increasing the game’s grim atmosphere.
Seeing as we need to cover the entire collection here, getting through the whole thing can be a little bit of a slog considering the dip in quality following season one. Season two and three are still pretty good all things considered, and watching Clementine grow as a character in this horrendous world remains engaging. However, the 400 Days and Michonne spin-offs are very forgettable, with very few noteworthy moments to make them worth playing through for anyone other than completionists.
Another nice new perk that this collection brings to the table is a revamped subtitle system. The more recent installments in the series have had an option that allows for players to select from subtitle fonts of various sizes, and now this capability is available in all of the seasons. Considering how text heavy all of this is, it’s great to be able to have a little more customization in this area.
However, this really marks the end of where the big changes to the games come, as this is otherwise a pretty standard re-release of everything that has come before. There’s no additional content for fans to check out that gives more insight into the game or its characters, and this may be a major turnoff for some fans considering that this could be a double dip for them. This won’t be an issue for complete newcomers or even those who previously only checked out the first season or so, but series veterans should proceed with caution.
Ultimately, if you have any interest in Telltale’s The Walking Dead series, then The Walking Dead Collection is the definitive way to do so. You’re getting all of the episodes that have been released up to this point, with remastered visuals and improved settings for the earlier games in the series. Season one remains the crowning jewel of the series that the subsequent seasons never managed to recapture, but it’s nevertheless worth making the return journey as we gear up for the final season in 2018.
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