The Walking Dead: Michonne Episode 3 Review

Michonne’s tale comes to a close in the finale of TellTale’s miniseries based on The Walking Dead. Does this tale end with grace, or is it as disheveled as one of its many walkers?

The Walking Dead: Michonne Episode 3 Review

Picking up immediately after the events of Episode 2, the third episode of The Walking Dead: Michonne lays the tension on thick. After fighting off a band of thugs, Michonne’s group has found itself fighting of waves of enemies of both the human and the zombie variety. This is made worse when paired with Michonne’s twisted visions of her two kids, which haunt her at all hours of the day. The setup is solid – these plot points would be right at home at an episode of the television show or an arc of the comic book. Unfortunately, the delivery is all off.

For starters, the character development is virtually nonexistant. The game halfheartedly tries to give you a chance to know the characters during one 10 minute interactive segment where you wander around a house, but most of their quips are downright cliche. Hearing a little kid you’ve never met before say he’s scared doesn’t really tell you much about his background. The same goes for her original crew. When they appear midway through the episode, there is little to no emotion attached to it, simply because we don’t know exactly who these people are. For what it’s worth, they may as well be strangers.

A huge part of the episode also revolves around Michonne’s flashbacks. Players are forced to piece together what happened in her life long ago. Things start to make sense by the end of the episode, but these moments serve more as a chance to show Michonne’s fragile psyche than move the plot forward. They just come off as disjointed though – action sequences are brought to a halt so the game can dish out backstory.

The rest of the plot seems a little off too. Protagonists and antagonists are downright bipolar, changing their attitudes in a matter of minutes. Gameplay doesn’t fare much better – much like the previous episodes, there is little to explore here. Puzzles are nonexistant, and most of the game is on a QTE-filled race to the end. There is one chance to explore your surroundings, but even this is sanctioned off from the rest of the action, like it’s a sandbox away from the rest of the game. It seems somewhat pandering, and the tips that tell you what to do next in the top left corner do not help things one bit.

The Walking Dead: Michonne Episode 3 doesn’t quite deliver the punch players are used to. Between the lack of control and uneven plot, this is one adventure that fails to live up to its source material.