The Walking Dead: Michonne - Episode 2: Give No Shelter (PlayStation 4) Review

The previous episode saw Michonne and her new ragtag crew searching for a group they had previously traded with, only to find themselves captured alongside a couple of kids for "stealing supplies" from some heavily armed survivors. It's a running theme throughout The Walking Dead that the real danger comes from the other people - not the Walkers. Here, it's unclear if this new group are actually "bad guys" that are robbing and killing other groups of survivors or whether they are just people trying to survive and Sam's warnings are the hyperbole and the traditional rebellious actions of a teenage girl.

The large group of survivors seems to just be a community of normal people, but at its head are some worrying personalities. Led by the brother and sister team of Randall and Norma, this pair makes for some decent, if trite, villains. Norma acts friendly, making out she just wants to know what's going on but there's something behind her smile that shows she can't be trusted. Randall is the classic unchained survivor, aggressive and violent with a short fuse, coming across as something of a sociopath.

Picking up immediately where the previous episode left off, Sam and Michonne are left shaken after the sudden accidental murder of Sam's brother and now must try to escape their captors, saving a tied up Pete along the way. From there, they have a long journey ahead of them to escape their captors and to reach Sam's family with the news of their lost son. There's just the small matter of the horde of shambling corpses between them and their destination and now an angry group of heavily armed survivors pursuing them.

Michonne's failing sanity is a big focus of the narrative and is brought much more to the forefront in this episode, with her hallucinations occurring more regularly and at one point she has a mental break and relives zero hour of the apocalypse. The chilling sequence gives fans a much-wanted look into Michonne's history, into her life before the world changed, her kids' names, her home, her family and friends… it's this focus on the character that helps this episode step up so much more than the previous one.

There are some core aspects to Telltale games that always majorly influence the end product based on its quality - the QTEs and choices. The QTEs here are the usual Telltale fare; few will have trouble missing the far too forgiving prompts. What really is enjoyable about the QTE sections is the fantastically choreographed fight scenes - including some of the most brutal and savage kills seen in a Telltale title. Being shot in the head with a flare gun is not a nice way to go. The choices in this episode seem to set up some massively divergent branching stories, including some characters potentially surviving for the finale… or not. It's still very much up in the air how much these will impact on the finale, but it already seems promising enough to warrant multiple play-throughs.