As always, thanks for stopping by. This week I conclude my TWD: Michonne mini-series review, and as per the previous few episodes, I genuinely thought this was terrible for a Telltale game. Whilst there’s plenty of urgency in the game (Michonne is constantly forced to think on the spot and make brash decisions), you can’t help but not care for the other characters in the game, which is horrendous when Telltale constantly try to make you feel the weight of your decisions.
Regardless, if you wanna read my impressions you can do so below:
So this week, I’ve decided to post an (old) review for Telltale games’ The Walking Dead spin-off series, Michonne. Given that I was rather tepid about the first outing of the game (which can be read here), I didn’t have much hope for the second episode. Lo and behold, my pessimistic side won out, with the game being massively underwhelming compared to other Telltale ventures.
If you want to give the review a read, you can click on the link below:
“Yeah yeah we know, it’s been a while” episode 2 starts by saying. And it has really has been ages. I bought the season pass at Christmas, well after the first episode had already been released, so it really has been at least 5 months since the series started. What was supposed to take a few months between episodes has weirdly taken a lot longer in Tales from the Borderlands, Especially compared to the Game of Thrones series and Life is Strange, which have been pushing out new episodes every few months.
So was the wait worth it? Well, for the most part yes, with the vast majority of the episode being extremely enjoyable to progress through, with so much happening that it feels like its own game in its own right. There’s plenty of action, plenty of humour, and enough character progression that you really feel like you’re getting to know and like all the characters you come across. So much happened in fact that I’m struggling to remember everything I done in Episode 2. I’ll try and recall as much as possible, to see how much on an impact the game had on me.
So, to start off we’re back with the two main characters telling their accounts of what happened up until they’re captured in the present. In the last episode, Rhys used a security stick to change his personality/ID, making him see Handsome Jack. No one else can see him though, so Rhys goes upstairs to talk with him alone. During this segment you’re mostly playing as Fiona, your other controllable character through the campaign. She tags along with the other cast that fell down into the basement in trying to find a way out. After a little exploration, we find that the security will only work with one persons retina scan, and luck behold, that person is cryo-frozen next to you. Fiona then is tasked with using a spoon to scoop that persons eye out, which results in some funny quips and mistakes along the way. Once the scan is done, you’ll take control of Rhys, and see his conversation with Jack. It’s funny and cool to learn that Jack was so admired in the world of Borderlands, with many Hyperion employees loving his every action, so much so that Rhys apparently had posters of him around his room. some time later, Hyperion starts firing their massive cannon down to where Rhys and the group are located, prompting the Hyperion robot to help you out. It’s here that the group are then separated, as the car they use to outrun a massive beast and the Hyperion missiles splits in two, leaving the two men and two women far far apart.
Next up, Rhys gets a little visit from the chairman of Hyperion, who proceeds to get the two to dig their own graves before he then tries to kill them. it’s here that Jack actually comes in good use, allowing Rhys’ scanning method to overcharge the CEO’s weapon, allowing the two to escape. This whole scene was interesting, as it put the seed of doubt in your mind as to where Vaughn’s allegiance’s lay, after he begged for his life by saying he hadn’t completed his mission of deceiving Rhys yet. It was also funny as hell, with Vaughn weirdly having an extremely toned body, ruining the stereotype of a geeky man having a skinny body.
Once the pair escape, it’s time to make use of Fiona’s racing “experience” (ahem), with Scouter, a fan favourite from the Borderlands series, who will happily fix up Fiona’s car if she becomes a spokesperson for his catch a rideeeeee service. It’s all rather funny, and definitely helps to make the world of borderlands a lot more human, with ordinary people living out ordinary lives. You eventually get chased by an assassin, which you manage to escape from, and finally catch up with Rhys and Vaughn as you make your way to a place where the map at the start of the game pointed you to (an Atlas stronghold).
After solving a quick and easy puzzle, it’s time to meet the enemies again, who force the group to connect the two pieces of treasure they found at the start of the game. Upon doing this, the entire security system starts up purely because Rhys cocks up and drops the big crazy ball that was made. It’s in this hecticness that Jack appears again, asking Rhys to take over his body so he can override the system and use it to their advantage. This is when the episode finishes with everyone at a stalemate, the CEO man and the imposter man having Rhys’ and Vaughn’s friends held hostage, and Handsome Jack having control of the security system. For its annoyance that the episode is ending, it’s certainly a good cliffhanger.
Given my disappointment with the Game of Thrones Telltale series, I’m genuinely surprised how much I’m enjoyed Tales from the Borderlands. Everything about it is funny, and genius in the way it expands on the borderlands universe, something we didn’t know much about in the first place. It does a fantastic job of humanising the characters, with everyone having their perks and secrets. I seriously cannot wait for more, cause compared to GoT, this is my go to series from now on.
Telltales Game of Thrones Series has been very weird since it’s inception many months ago. In the first episode, the character you get to know and think is the main one is killed within a few hours, jarring you from the games pretence instantly. The second episode then goes about causing you more and more grievances without any of it being your fault and all of it being out of your control. The series just keeps on getting shittier for the remaining family of the Forresters, and in Episode 3, that doesn’t look to change at all.
First things first, you start the game out as the long lost brother of the Forresters, Asher, whilst he’s still out in the desert. It’s here that you find him outrunning guards (like he was in the previous episode), only to happen across a dead end. Finding a cave, you come across one of the first protagonists you’ll recognise from the TV series: one of Daenerys’ Dragons. Running around and avoiding the dragon in a contrived and weird setting with guards still chasing you is a weird set piece, especially in a tight small cave, but the episode manages to pull this weird setting back when you run away and take control of Mira, who’s feeling the consequences of her previous actions piling up upon her.
Taking control of Mira was strange in this episode, with everything stacked against her due to all of the decisions I had made in previous games. Throughout the episode I had guards constantly asking where she was or investigating her, with Margery disowning Mira for talking to Tyrian Lanister behind her back. It all felt far to contrived, with any decision I would have made in previous games coming back to bite me in the bum. Given that I was discussing a contract with Tyrian, Mira is put in the awkward situation of having to get the contract from Tyrians room due to his arrest after King Joffreys death. It’s through this weird scene that Mira has to avoid guards again, meaning every single event happening to her is pushing her one step closer to death/problems, a contrived instance where the player literally has no control over what happens.
Rodrik makes a return in Episode 3, with the guards of Whitehall causing all manner of trouble for the Forrester family. Rodrik, in his feeble state, can’t really do much about the guards, and so goes to the Whitehall’s sister, Ludd, to ask for advice on what they should do. Rudd advices that they should show restraint and not rebel agains the Whitehall rule to lull them into a false sense of entitlement. It’s during this false sense of entitlement that the Forresters can fight back, with the army Asher will be bringing aiding for the cause of the Forresters.
The only redeeming feature of this episode was Gared up at the wall, where his quest to head north to find the grove has unlocked some nice secrets about his friends and comrades. Add to that his nice fight sequence where he has to kill a fellow brother, and you have a truly new piece of story which helps to flesh the GoT world and lore out a little bit more.
It has to be said, that you can tell how cut back and cheap the game is to make considering the fact that you never actually see any fights or action. Take for instance the Joffery death. The game explains that Mira and her friend cannot attend the main wedding as there’s no more space due to it being used for the kings guard. We all know this was purely so that Telltale didn’t have to render/animate an entire death scene, and even the characters that would have inhabited it. You can see this at other times in the episodes, with entire environments not being built in 3D like the rest of the world. Entire scenes are replaced with painted backgrounds, which, when coupled with the 3D characters, creates a jarring and noticeable effect of making the game feel cheap. I can imagine it’s hard to create a new episode once every few months, but the other projects Telltale have taken on can’t exactly be helping.
I suppose I’m just finding the series more and more annoying, as every single decision is given to the player not to empower you, but merely to stump you down a peg or two later on in the series. Every decision may seem important at the time you’re presented with one, but each and everytime you’re beginning to sense that it’s all for nothing. It makes me think that telltale should just go about making the story themselves rather than allowing the player a sense of choice, as it never amounts to anything in the end.
All in all, I didn’t mind the episode too much, but I seriously can’t help but think Telltale games are seriously pushing themselves far too thin with the amount of projects they have going simultaneously. Think about it, Minecraft, The Walking Dead, Tales from the Borderlands, Game of Thrones, and The Wolf Among Us, eventually, somethings got to give, and considering how much I’m enjoying the writing and action of Borderlands, I can’t help but think Game of Thrones is the grunt of the litter with all the franchises they have going. The quality is no where near to the standard of their previous endeavours, both in graphical fidelity, and story telling/sense of worth in this world.
Given that Jon Snow has been shown consistently throughout all the marketing of this episode, you’ll be surprised to learn you barely see him at all. False advertising I’d say.
(Following post will contain spoilers from the first episode of Game of Thrones: You have been warned)
Given my tepid response to Telltales’ Game of Thrones Episode 1, I was unsure as to what to expect from episode 2, considering one of the characters you played as died right at the end of the episode, leaving next to nobody in the Forrester family left to lead the house back to good times. With this in mind, I began my next foray into the Forresters live’s with an open mind, expecting a lot of the brother fighting in the desert, as all hopes of the house rest on him.
So imagine my surprise when the game has a section that begins on the back of a cart, with you playing as Rodrick, the eldest son of Forresters who happened to fall at the battle of the Boltons tower, where everyone was slain. Turns out, he’s still alive, and happens to be very week. You control him as the cart makes it’s way back to the Forresters house, and it’s up to you to pull him to safety out of the cart to ensure people in the town find you. Once discovered, rufus takes his place as lord of the Forresters, ensuring the family at least has someone to look up to and lead the house back to nobility.
Starting in a cart full of dead people is never great, but at least reintroduced someone back into the story, enabling The Forresters a chance back at nobility and power.
It’s through Rodricks’ return that a lot of the big decisions unfold, with key alliances begging for your attention, as well as the continued aggression between your town and the alien Whitehouse’s inhabiting it. During the episode I had to try and woo and old friend/scheduled marriage to unite two houses, decide how to deal with the aliens in my town, decide how to react to enemies who demand I kiss their feet, and how to tow a line between being too weak to retaliate to enemies, whilst still showing how strong of a house we are. It’s all quite dramatic, and makes for some tough decisions, albeit decisions that so far don’t seem to have too much bearing one way or the other. The marriage proposal for example I failed, as I just couldn’t persuade the lady to marry me due to our house’s weakness, but from the looks of the statistics at the end, this could have passed, allowing your two houses to unite, making both stronger. I can’t help but this such a dramatic decision can’t have too much bearing on future episodes, otherwise the games designers would have to make twice as much game to cater to both situations, something we know just won’t happen.
Whilst it’s good to see another Forrester, this section of the game didn’t generally have any bearing on the actual plot, and served more as a device to spice things up when it came to an action segment of the game rather than dialogue.
Enough about Rodrick though, what of his brother in the east? Well this is the part of the game where you effectively just have fun. Asher starts out with a close friend, with the two of them being hired swordsman who have just captured a slave master for Khaleesi’s reward. Upon the arrival of the unsullied, who are meant to pay the ransom, you’re pushed into a fight due to the fact they aren’t paying what they agreed. This turns into an all out chase, as you’re reunited with an old friend from the Forresters that has come to return you home. Whilst Asher’s story is sure to have an impact on the overall narrative of the future episodes, so far it just felt like a good excuse to break up the dialogue sections of the game.
Mira is back in this episode too, with her trying to support the Forresters back home from the capital. There were a few decisions I decided to avoid, like forging a letter from Lady Margery to improve chances at the two houses uniting, but this was because of my actions in the first game. Everything for Mira seems pleasant during this episode, all until Tyrion decides to involve her in the negotiations for selling the ironwood the Forresters own. This causes enemies, ones that try to kill her in the middle of the night. Thankfully, you manage to get away after killing the guard that tried to murder you, and so begins the deception and lies in the capital, especially considering guards will now be after Mira due to her being seen in the middle of the night.
It’s sad to see all the Forresters together in their limited numbers, but if this episode is anything to go by, they seem to pop up everywhere just in the nick of time.
Finally, we have Garad at the wall, who must now become a member of the Nights Watch. Apart from some scrabbling with other members, not much happens for Garad, with this section feeling more like fan service than anything else due to Jon Snow’s inclusion in this scene. The conversation is hollow, but at least gives the player the ability to choose their own path with how they would like Garad to be seen going forwards. I personally chose for Garad to be truthful and reliable, but we’ll see how that goes in the future episodes.
Overall, the episode still felt clunky, with a lot of moments feeling hollow and merely there for fan service to say the game has taken place all over Westeros. Whilst the first episode was an ok opener to the series, this episode suffers the curse of being in the middle, starting plot points that never materialise until later. The Decisions I made still may never come to fruition as anything bad or good, but as per always we’ll just have to wait and see what the writers have in store for the Forresters, and whether my decisions have any effect on the end result.
Borderlands has always been a mixed bag for me, with my experience of the first one being forgettable and boring, but the second being exciting and addictive thanks to the local multiplayer nature of the game. Having played through all the DLC on both games, and about to play the pre-sequel one day, I can say I’m a fan of the series, but have never really loved the lore of the world. It’s mechanics are one thing, but the world isn’t really that rich with content due to the disposable nature of the characters that inhabit it. It surprised me to learn that Telltale were making a story based version of the game, mainly due to the fact I knew it would be a comically funny experience, but not one I could imagine lasting 15 hours. With only Episode 1 being available for now, I took the plunge and bought the entire season pass for the game at christmas for only £12, not bad for something that’s going to give me new experiences to come back to throughout the year, but has Borderlands made it through the transition of genre unscathed? Read on to find out.
You start the game out exploring as a chummy person who looks quite like handsome Jack, the protagonist from Borderlands 2, and head of Hyperion industries, a corporation that supplies ammunition and other items to the planet of Pandora. You’ll get knocked out, and upon being dragged, are asked to explain why you’re here by your captor. This starts your story, and finally introduces you to the character you’re going to be playing as throughout the next few episodes: Rhys, a Hyperion employee who is about to become CFO of the company after working his ass off for years. In this introductory sequence, you get to see the inner workings of the Hyperion space craft orbiting the Pandorian moon, which is quite nice to see there’s actually normal people working up there. Upon not receiving your promotion due to an ass killing your boss, you decide to take revenge on him by buying a vault key from the planet, the exact one he wanted. With the reasons for going to pandora sorted, so embarks your adventure of going down to the crazy planet.
Character introductions are as quirky as ever, with text on the screen always talking to the player like a comedian would standing in your room. It’s all comedic, and adds to the overall pleasantness of the game.
Rhys isn’t your only playable character though, so once Rhys finishes his part of the story, you’re introduced to Fiona, a local pandorian citizen her whole life who makes money by scamming people. She has a sister, and a father figure who taught her all the tricks of the trade, and is definitely unlike anything you’ve seen on Pandora before. Playing as Fiona was easily the more interested parts of the game, with new perspectives of the world given to the player, showing that it isn’t all fun and games, and not everyone’s a psychopath, people are trying to make a living, they just get outnumbered by the amount of psychopaths and weirdos you’ll usually encounter.
Both Rhys and Fiona’s story manage to combine, allowing you to get a complete picture of what has happened to the pair of them throughout this episode, and presumably, throughout the others still to come. Overall, it wasn’t the story that got me interested in the game, it was the characters, with Vault hunters like Zer0 having a part in the tail; the original new characters fit in seemingly well in this chaotic world.
New and old faces will welcome you to Pandora in Tales from the Borderlands, with each one adding to the overall hilarity and tone of the game. I hope the series manages to maintain this fantastic combination of characters and situations they then find themselves in.
Humor is a massive reason why I love the Borderlands series of games, with the first one being bland and normal, and the second one making me piss myself laughing. Thankfully, the tradition of humour continues to reign supreme in Tales from the Borderlands, with many sequences genuinely making me and my friend laugh out loud and stop playing the game at times. One of the best ways Telltale games have done this is through Rhys’ eye, which is able to scan the environment and give more context about the items within it. One of the best examples of this humour and context driven comedy is a museum, which had a gentleman sat in a chair with a sword through him. You can see it below:
Seriously, this had me pissing myself laughing. Such simple humour that manages to go so far.
It’s this humour that manages to maintain the pace of the game, with Rhys having grandiose ideas of how he’s the hero of the group, and his nerdy friend being too scared to do anything useful. It makes for a dynamic and interesting presence between all of the characters, one that I look forward to subsequent episodes that explores each of their personalities in more detail.
Overall the episode was a brilliant set up for a (hopefully) brilliant series. Everything fit together so lovely that it felt like a complete game in itself, not a part of a series. Decisions didn’t really mean much (unlike most other telltale games); the game was just fun and a treat to play.
Decisions don’t feel as drastic as other Telltale games, ensuring you just literally have fun.
So, should you buy Tales from the Borderlands? Whilst the price might be a bit of a stretch for many players on PS4 or PC, where you’ll have to invest in the whole series before you even know if you like the game, the Xbox One version gives you a chance to play just the first episode for £3.99, allowing you to technically try before you buy (albeit you’re buying up front anyway). I thoroughly enjoyed the first episode, and would gladly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the humour and lore of Borderlands 2. As for if you wasn’t a big fan of Borderlands 2? Well I’m pretty sure you’re bound to find something you like in the game, with the characters and their personalities being the best I’ve seen in a game in a long time.
Given the amount of Telltale adventure games out there at the moment, and how much I love Game of Thrones so wouldn’t want the series to be ruined, I was sceptical at first about the new Game of Thrones Adventure game. It wasn’t until Sony had their 10% discount one weekend along with a sale because of their downtime over christmas that I decided to take the plunge and finally buy a telltale series whilst they’re still in development (instead of waiting until they’re finished like I usually do). So, with that being said, here’s my impressions on the first opening episodes (be warned, there will be spoilers throughout this).
Unlike other Telltale games, Game of Thrones will have you playing as multiple characters throughout the episodes, putting you in many different situations. You start out the episode as a squire called Garad who works for lord Forester, a noble knight who has allied himself and his army with the Starks. Your camp is based outside the Boltons keep on the night of the Red wedding (a part in the show/books where the Starks are effectively killed off from the series), meaning lots of death will be awaiting you in the first opening scene. Once the massacre ensues, it’s up to you to get out of the forest with information from the lord on what to tell your own uncle, something you don’t understand, and have to option to adhere to with the many decisions you now must make.
Eventually, you’ll come across your own family home, which has been ransacked by thieves from a competing family not too far away. In your desperation, you manage to fight off two of them, with a third one running away to tell his lord of your crimes against their house. Garads family is dead, and he must still make his way to the family’s (Forrester) household. It’s here that you learn that the new lord of the house is a young boy (about 15 in age) and is now struggling to be a lord with all of its decisions. It was taking control of Ethan that I had some of the more interesting moments in the series, with big decisions having to be made with next to no prior knowledge of what is right, and what is wrong.
The final character you take control of in this episode is Ethan’s sister, Mira, who’s at kings landing, and is a servant to Margaery Tyrell, the soon to be wife of Joefrey, king of the 7 kingdoms. It’s up to Mira to try and get support from the capital before the forresters rival family tries to take over their control of the forest of ironwood; world renowned for making the best ships and shields available. Mira’s part of the story is interesting, albeit fairly bitchy considering she’s at the capital and is being interrogated by Tyrian and Cersai Lannister. It’s an interesting break from what happens in the north, but starts to show the fractures in Telltale’s story telling in their games, with your decisions really having no impact on how the story actually unfolds. I suppose it’s genuis that they actually make you feel that your decisions will have consequences, but with so many games under their belt now, you’re sure and know these stories will play out the same regardless of what you do.
Eventually the game puts you back in Ethans shoes, pushing you to make decisions which will effect the whole family and your subjects. I have to admit that at times I struggled for an answer when presented with multiple decisions, but eventually said I would meet the new warden of the north in my hall, since the family doesn’t have much of an army and is just trying to get into the Lanisters good books after being loyal to the Starks for so long. After a length dialogue, the episode ends with Ethan being stabbed, a conclusion I found disappointing considering how well I believed it had gone up until that point, but a conclusion that apparently happens to everyone that plays the game, regardless of the decisions you make.
So, what did I think of the episode, and Game of Thrones translation to a adventure game series? Well first, it sucks that you need to be watching the TV series or reading the books in order to truly know whats going on in the game. I understand companies want “transmedia” content, but when many are pushed away from a game purely because they don’t have any knowledge outside of that game, it just sucks as a whole in my opinion. As for yet another game being made by Telltale games? I can’t help but think they’re being stretched pretty thin from a company stand point, with many of the scenes feeling underwhelming or outrightly blunt due to lack of funding or lack of staff available to make assets. One example I did not like was getting Garad to try and look outside the Forresters house window to the accompanying ironwoods behind, only to get Garad seen from a different angle to mutter the words “wow, look at the ironwoods”. It just felt.. bland to say the least, and severely limiting considering what we’ve come to expect from the TV series with all of its bells and whistles.
So is Game of Thrones a worthwhile purchase? So far, I’d say no. Granted, its nice to see the kingdom of westeros from a different perspective, especially from a new family standpoint who are effected by the bigger events in the show. But for all of it’s big branding, the game feels underwhelming so far, with decisions that ultimately amount to nothing. For a game whose entire premise is the decisions you make, time will only tell if Telltale games manage to put more effort into branching the story depending on what you choose to do, as it’s the biggest advantage gaming has over other mediums: the ability to choose and be an active member of a story rather than a passive onlooker.
So here we are at the final episode. It’s taken a while (7 hours so far), but its been worth it to see Clementine’s story evolve throughout the course of the Season.
So here we are. After 4 episodes of The Walking Dead Season 2 we’re finally here, the penultimate conclusion of what will happen with the group and Clementine herself. Given the insanity of what happened at the end of the last episode (Rebecca being shot in the head due to turning into a zombie) and all out war happening between the Russians and our group, I was excited and interested of what would come of everyone, expecting the series to conclude with Clementine by herself again.
Anyway, back to the start of the episode, where the consequences of the firefight are starting to play out. Luke gets injured and a few Russians die, with Jane making a return as she heard the guns going off and felt obliged to help. I was thankful of this conclusion as I was expecting the firefight to be a cop-out for the writers to kill off a bunch of characters easily without having to write them away. Regardless, once it’s over we take the Russian gentleman we stole the medicine from as hostage and tell him to direct us to his place with lots of food, and so the group embark on walking for hours to reach his safe, secret location. This all felt a bit strange considering we could all see a city from where we were standing in the last episode, yet no one suggested we go there.
Choices are big and heavy in this final episode, with everyones sanity and lives on the line with every choice that you’re given. It doesn’t help that there’s a separation in the group forming, making every choice all the more important.
During the hike, it’s determined that it’s too far to walk in one day, so the group takes a break in a generator sub station, ensuring they’re fenced in and can sleep easy for the night away from walkers. It’s here we start to see different sides to the characters, with Kenny being an emotional angry wreck like always, but being extremely protective of the baby, Jane being a loner that admits to liking luke and eventually joining the circle, and the others having a laugh and drinking. It was a nice moment, one which allowed everyone to loosen up for one night, joking about sex and things they done when they were younger, with Luke commenting how its his birthday. It was nice, but couldn’t last for long as the writers needed to cause some tension in the group, with Kenny getting annoyed at others for helping the Russian feel welcome to the group.
In the morning the group sets out for the house, upon which they come across some walkers as they’re about to cross a frozen lake. It’s here you come across your first big death of the episode, with Luke falling into the lake after bonnie says for Clementine to help him. His deathly stare underwater was pretty gruesome, and made sense for this death to happen after the warm campfire and stories that were told the night before, so I should have seen it coming in hindsight. This death causes a lot of tension in the group, with Kenny’s temper becoming all the more aggressive towards the Russian, and in turn causing the rest of the group to fear him. It doesn’t look good for everyone, but at least there’s hope: a car.
Emotions are high in this pen-ultimate episode, with everyone questioning everyone else’s decisions. Here we have Jane bereaving the loss of Luke after he died in the lake.
Kenny eventually gets the car working, but not before we see even more tensions in the group, with the group seemingly becoming divided in two. Jane and Kenny with the baby (AJ for Alvin Junior) on one side, with Bonnie, Russian man and Mike on the other. During the night when everyone’s asleep you go outside to see what’s disturbing your sleep, only to find Bonnie, Arvo and Mike trying to escape with all of the supplies. I held them at gunpoint, but gave in and let them go, only to get shot by Arvo. From the looks of it, you were always going to be shot by Arvo, you were just given the illusion of choice. After waking up in the car with Kenny and Jane (plus AJ), you’re told that they didn’t take the car and that the bullet passed straight through Clementine, so she’ll be fine. It’s in here you still see tensions within the group, with Kenny and Jane bickering and shouting at each other over disagreements as to where to go with the car. Eventually, you come across a pile up of cars, and in the chaos of walkers coming over whilst Kenny explored, the group is split up with a crashed car and no where to run. At this point, you’ll take control of Clementine and will be tasked with walking through woods during a blizzard, meaning you can barely see 5 metres ahead, so avoiding zombies is best. This whole part was made to make sure the player felt hopeless, that they’re bound to die here with the snow and zombies both freezing and killing Clementine.
Eventually, you find Kenny at a service station, and after a bit of time Jane returns, without AJ. Throughout the whole episode Jane has always talked of getting rid of the baby, which may seem heartless, but it’s a logical choice considering the group has no food and doesn’t know where to go, so at the moment Kenny doesn’t see a baby, he flips, starting a massive fight between Kenny and Jane. You try to get involved but it’s hopeless, with the two adults fighting to the death it seems. You’re finally given one final choice in the game: To shoot Kenny (who’s about to kill Jane) or to look away. No matter the choice, it seems Kenny will always die, even though I personally chose to shoot him due to how much of a risk he was to everyone’s continued survival. He tells me with his dying breath that I made the right choice, and that I must survive. It was a sad farewell to an otherwise likeable character, but when the game constantly gets you thinking about survival, he wasn’t the best of people to have along for the ride. We find the baby in a car, to which Jane said she done it so we could see Kenny’s true side, to ensure we made the right decision. I forgave her and so we walked on back to the superstore we were in Episode 3, where supplies are found and a new group of people are met. So concludes the season.
Possible one of the hardest (or easiest if you’re cold hearted like me) decisions of the show so far, choosing between a reliable and intelligent character and one you’ve known for a while feels like more of a decision over logic or heart rather than who’s the better character, with Kenny being heart for how long you’ve know him, and Jane being the intelligent survival choice.
Edit: Upon reading up on the possible alternate endings, I’ve found that actually, the game differs hugely in what happens. Unlike the first season of The Walking Dead which would always end the same way with Lee dying and Clementine walking alone, the second season allows either Kenny or Jane to live, and then proceeds to either go back to the store (from Episode 3) with Jane or to proceed on to Wellington with Kenny. This seems insane considering how many different choices players are going to make, and can become a logistical nightmare for the team in the third season.
I enjoyed my time overall for the whole game eventually. What started quite weak quickly turned into a proper decision making game, one where I thought my decisions were irrelevant until they actually started having a lot of weight behind them. Looking around online, it seems that there are so many possibilities for the third season, meaning I can’t believe how open this season was, for the players and the characters in the story. I look forward to The Walking Dead Season 3 now, which surprises me given how much I wasn’t enjoying this season at the start. These final few episodes really turned it around for me. I’d hugely recommend this season to anyone that has played season one, and would recommend they get through the first few episodes before truly making a verdict on whether they liked the game or not, as I was surely turned around by the end.
With Episode 3 leaving on a high point in my books, ensuring I felt a little more for the characters and was genuinely interested in where they would go, I was looking forward to playing episode 4, will it suffice to my expectations?
After enjoying Episode 3 last week, I was looking forward to getting my teeth into episode 4, with the shit storm 3 left us with. For those of you who haven’t played, Episode 3 finished with the group managing to escape from the superstore and start making their way through the hoard of zombies disguised as zombies themselves with Zombie guts all over them. You finally come across radia? who has been bitten by a zombie, and its your choice whether to cut her arm off or to kill the zombie biting her. As I’ve been playing this season through as fairly heartless and logical, I went for her arm, ensuring she wouldn’t get infected and would at least live to see another day.
Episode 4 begins with telling you whether your decision was meaningless and stupid regardless, just to ensure you have fights and tension later on with the rest of the survivors. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, we all knew that radia couldn’t survive amongst the hoard whilst either bitten or bleeding profusely, but it was how they treated and made Kenny act afterwards that truly was annoying. He becomes a mess, blaming it all on yourself (Clementine), and causes tension in the group where there should be none. It felt extremely contrived, which I suppose is a given at this point considering some of the flaws in the plot so far, but it still felt weird to have something so logically correct be reduced to a problem later on purely for story-tellings point.
The opening of episode 4 takes off right where the action got started in episode 3, ensuring players are able to go through one of the most daunting experiences of the season so far. Amongst all of the zombies, people break down, and tensions are high, ensuring the start of the episode has the most action of the series so far.
Once the zombie hoard is done, it’s then a case of reuniting with the group whilst Rebecca struggles with her labour. This is where you’ll get the chance to get to know a fairly unknown character in the series so far: Jane. Jane is a master when it comes to killing zombies and surviving, meaning she’s fantastic for clementine to be hanging around to learn more survival skills. Jane will teach you a few killing techniques, like kicking a zombies leg then stabbing them in the back of the head with a screwdriver to get the job done. You’ll spend 20 minutes going around a trailer park killing zombies with Jane at your side, trying to find the others. Eventually, you’ll come across Luke and Sarah, who are held up by zombies covering a trailer. You manage to rescue them, but its here that you’ll have the option to save or kill Sarah, who seems to have lost her mind and cannot physically move when the zombies are coming. I managed to save her, but it seems like either way, she was going to die, with the player having no ability to change this outcome. You aren’t applauded for saving her, and if anything are actually told you made the wrong decision later on.
Once you’re back at the camp, the Rebecca is definitely in labour, and so the group will have to find a safe place for her to have the baby. I decided to team up with Jane again, given how useful she is and how found of her character I was becoming. Going with her we found a man that we robbed for his drugs, whilst also finding a whole store and gift shop on a second floor, ensuring zombies wouldn’t be able to get to us. It was during this sequence that we started to see some of the flaws in Jane’s character, with her becoming quite angry and a bit unpredictable at the touch of a button. Clementine was then tasked with finding the others and telling them of the store, which gave me a chance to learn a bit more about everyone else in the group. A bit of playing was done, and we found a jacket which would come in handy for Rebecca during the childbirth, but nothing story wise happened, it was all more for character building, something that makes me sceptical as it could only mean these characters are going to be killed so soon after I get to know them.
Rebecca manages to finally have her baby, much to the delight of Kenny, who becomes somewhat weird in his maternal instinct towards this newborn. The baby is certainly going to come with his own challenges for the group.
Finally, the hoard comes, and after some action of holding the zombies back, Rebecca finally manages to have her baby. In doing so, the group seems to relax a little, but they’re not out of the woods yet, with many having not eaten in days, and Rebecca getting weaker all the time. The group decides to move out, at which point they’re greeted by the gentleman we robbed earlier, who’s brought with him a group of russian gangsters that all have guns pointing to our heads. The situation gets a little out of hand, with Rebecca zombifying by the minute, Clementine is given the decision to kill her or shout for help. Yet again I done the logical thing which was to shoot her, which then ended the episode with gunfire going off from all sides. I can’t help but feel that this was only written into the episode to ensure most people died out before the final episode, as the group was fairly large,
The episode overall was alright, I enjoyed the character building moments that allowed clementine to learn more skills but to also think on who she can and can’t trust in the group, and what she should do if worst comes to worse. I don’t feel this one was as strong as the previous one, but it certainly sets the series up for a nice finale. One thing kept bugging me though through my playthrough, was on how I didn’t really care about the character too much and was making more logical decisions than emotional ones. I can’t help but think that in the first season all the group you joined up with were in the same situation, you had been together through the start of the walkers and were a tight knit group, making peoples deaths all the more emotional. In this season Clementine is introduced to a group of strangers that already know each other: they’ve been through their hardships and have trust in one another. The entire season so far has just made me feel like an outsider, not thinking about the group and constantly thinking about myself, something the writers may have realised and worried about in the games development. I dunno, I’m just throwing that out there as it just keeps bugging me that I don’t have the same connections to characters as before. I suppose we’ll see next week how things pan out.
With the previous episode not getting off on the right foot for me due to (in my opinion) not much happening, I was looking forward to Episode 3 to see if Telltale games have managed to better themselves at character building and the circumstances around said characters would make for better story telling and character progression.
With Episode 2 of the second season of Walking Dead not really gripping me, I was looking forward to jumping into episode 3 to see what would become of the group of characters being slaves in a supermarket, considering how angry and psychotic one of the characters behaved at the end of the last episode. This was certainly going to be a better episode if not purely for the fact the season has to make a lot of plot points to tie it all up nicely within the next 2 episodes, so with more characters, more deaths and more decisions, I was hoping for the best.
The episode starts out by introducing you to a few new characters at a new place: a superstore that has been barricaded and held up. We’re told the group currently occupying the place has done such a good job of holding up that they have electricity, guns, water and are even starting to grow their own food to ensure they constantly have a food source once the rations run out. The new characters you meet are just as diverse as the rest of the characters you’ve met so far, with Reggie being a kind and sincere gentleman (who is in charge of ensuring you don’t cause a ruckus and are introduced to others safely), Mike being a harsh but up front kind of guy, and Jane being a loner that seems to have survived by herself quite well before being captured and turned into a slave. (we are told she was found with zombie guts and blood all over her, meaning she knows that this is one way to hide from zombies from our past experience in the first season). The group is told to get an early nights sleep as they’ll be working around the clock tomorrow.
The group are held up and constantly watched by their superiors, ensuring that they don’t do anything out of line. It’s out here in the courtyard that you’ll actually have time to make your plans to escape, with Clementine and her small physique being put to good use in sneaking and gathering resources.
On your first day of working you’re introduced to more characters that work throughout the superstore, and are even made to work for a lot of it, refilling ammo, cutting branches etc. to please Carver, the brains behind this operation. Throughout all of it you’re told this is for the best, to ensure you continue to survive and to ensure that everyone trusts each other after your group escaped once before. Throughout all of this, Carver takes Clementine aside and speaks to her one to one, asking her what it’s like to be raised in a world like this and also saying that him and her are alike, that they’re strong and need to do what has to be done in order to survive, unlike the others. It was a nice moment, one which showed a bit more of Clementines bad side which we rarely see. She may act nice, but she has to be strong in order to continue living in this hellish world.
The “storm” that’s fast approaching is in fact a massive amount of zombies that are invading the superstore. Using this storm to their advantage, the group decide they’ll escape among the chaos, a wise decision but one with many troubles.
After a few days of hard work, the group work on a plan to escape this “prison” by getting a walkie talkie to Luke, who managed to never get captured in the first place, and activating all of the speakers outside the supermarket to attract the hoards, ensuring their escape is masked even more. With Clementine being the smallest character, you’re kind of forced into doing most of this work for the team yourself, a task which is annoying, but allows the rest of the characters quality time to start up arguments on how they should proceed. Nick is definitely quiet in this episode, which may be because many players may have had him killed in the last episode, meaning the writers of this episode couldn’t factor him in through fear of many players not having him to begin with.
Once all is in place, the final day is upon your group, all thats left now is to proceed with the plan. As Clementine you manage to sneak into the managers office, start up the microphone, and set about attracting the hoards of zombies to the building. It’s here that your group will be stopped by Carter at gun point, to which Clementine manages to dissolve the situation by jumping on him and disabling him. What follows next is pretty gruesome, but needed in progressing Clementines story and narrative for future episodes: she watches as Kenny beats Carver with a crowbar. You can choose to walk away from this, but I felt it was best if Clementine saw this, to ensure she was strong for the future episodes.
Decisions are reasonably big in this episode, with their consequences up front and deep. Here, you’re given the choice to kill the zombie, or cut Sarita’s arm off. I made the latter decision myself to ensure she survived (I won’t know if she did or not until the next episode).
Overall the Episode was a lot more interesting than the previous one, with decisions left and right, all making me question what I actually wanted to do. There were many different groups of people making me choose between them, and I never knew the right thing to do. This episode was a perfect example of how The Walking Dead works best, with many different factors making your decisions all the more important, but with little time to make those said decisions. I found myself constantly regretting any decision I made the second I made it, with was a fantastic feeling from any game. If the last two episodes play out in any way like this one, then I’ll be happy and would have had a fulfilling and fantastic experience. The tension is building on Clementines journey north, and I for one and happy to see where this is going.
Given how the last episode ended, with Clementine becoming a part of another group, big expectations are sure to come about for this next episode, with more personalities to explore and learn as this episode plays out.
After playing through Episode 1 of The Walking Dead’s new season, It was time to jump straight into episode 2 to ensure I got to know my new group all the more better than our initial encounter. I wouldn’t recommend playing The Walking Dead straight through from start to finish, but playing a day between each episode seems to be the best experience.
The episode starts out from the offset with your decision from the previous episode taking full effect. You’re being chased down with your choice of character that you saved whilst zombies make their way towards you. Clementine and Nick (I saved the guy that hadn’t been bitten), manage to find a shack that they can hold up in, and so starts the next 2 hours of character building, where not much actually happens in the scheme of losing characters or making big decisions, but instead you get a bit more intimacy in this new and weird group you’re now a part of.
Zombies as always are still a part of The Walking Dead, but they’re more of a background prop rather than the core premise behind the game. Where the real terror lies is in the people still alive, and how they interact with one another when the world around them has fallen apart.
Eventually, you and Nick manage to get away from the shelter of this little hut, but are soon thrown into another danger: another group of survivors that are after the group you’re currently with for reasons unknown. So starts your adventure of getting away from the shelter of the house you’ve been staying in, where you now have to go on the run from these maniacs. It was this part of the episode where I most felt that the group, for all its flaws and weaknesses, was annoying in the way in which they both didn’t trust Clementine, but also in the way in which they went about doing everything. It felt like their arguments were contrived, senseless, and made no sense in the grand scheme of the narrative. In Season 1 of the walking dead you’d have Kenny constantly cause tension in the group through his worry for his own son Duck, which was understandable for any father in the apocalypse, but in Season 2, all arguments just seem trivial in comparison.
There will be some moments where things start to look a little rough for the group, but as always you know things will turn out OK in these early episodes so that you can grow accustomed to the characters to ensure the story becomes even more devastating when the game throws them away.
Your group will eventually make their way to a ski resort, a place which seems to have a plethora of food, electricity and safety in an otherwise hellish world. It’s here that you’ll meet an old friend from the original season: Kenny. Kenny has seemingly managed to survive in this world, even after losing his whole family, managing to get a new family in the process. It’s himself that will introduce Clementine to the group at the ski lodge, and in turn bring up reminders of the past by asking about Lee and explaining a little about himself. It was nice to see a familiar face after seeing so much hostility from this new group of people, and was definitely one of the highlights of the episode, ensuring I look forward to seeing Kenny more in the next few episodes.
The rather mundane episode comes to a climatic end when the rival group manages to catch up to the ski resort, saving everyone from a zombie hoard, but in the process taking everyone hostage. It’s in these moments that you’ll see the most death of the episode, with plot pieces being set up to ensure that players have to be put on the spot in their decision making, leading me to regret the choice I had made seconds after making it.
There a few moments in this episode where you’ll need to scout the environment for everyone else to ensure the path ahead is safe, or to ensure the rival group aren’t after you. It’s in these moments that you see how small the area is that this episode takes place in, losing some of the gravitas that the dialogue gives to the groups current predicament.
Overall, The Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 2 felt quite contrived in the grand scheme of things, with characters worries feeling mundane compared to past predicaments and their current situation. It’s definitely a far cry from the episode 2 of the previous season, with that one feeling more of a one off than an actual progression of the narrative, something Season 2 Episode 2 ensures not to repeat. In continuing to progress the story rather than have a one off episode, everything ends up coming off very obtuse, with situations lacking in substance and arguments feeling contrived, to the point that characters act outside of their usual selves just to make a plot point to further the narrative at a later time. I’m definitely interested in where this season will go, but so far I haven’t been impressed compared to how ground breaking the original was on so many levels.
These are the characters you get to chose from, each one with their own unique story.
I was blown away by the Walking Dead back when I played it in January, as I’m sure many of you have heard from many publications, its a landmark game for story telling, and certainly has a uniqueness to it that’s hard to find elsewhere. 400 days is a piece of DLC to go on top of the walking dead, and is seen as a separate chapter on the chapter select screen. Each story is about 20 minutes in length, with a Epilogue that follows after completing each characters story. So for £3.99, its a nifty price for an adequate amount of content.
As with the previous Walking Dead chapters, zombies are still a part of the story, but it’s the characters and relationships which really makes the game come to life.
Each story feels like a fully realised game in itself, with characters feeling extremely rich and deep. It makes you wonder what other game studios are doing with their writing staff, or whether Telltale Games have stole all the good writers of our time. When you select a character from the billboard, you play as that character, and undergo the traumatic experience they did on a certain day within the 400 days after the initial outbreak. Having the characters’ stories broken up into different days really helps to tell completely different stories, and helps to make you face different scenarios as time goes on. For example, a whose story begins a few weeks after the outbreak may be fine for food, but may have relationship or bandit problems, where as a character at 300 days may have food problems, therefore tensions would break out about rations. It makes for some very different scenarios, allowing characters to flourish under these intense situations.
Multiple choice is back in this DLC, with decisions seeming to have a greater impact on the story than in the original game.
Graphics and gameplay haven’t changed, with the game turning to multiple choice and conversation options to tell a story rather than action sequences. That isn’t to say that the original game had a lot of action pieces, but this DLC certainly has a lot less, making it a lot more laid back than previous chapters. Decisions you make seem to have a lot more impact than previous chapters, now this may be because you aren’t as attached to the characters (how attached can you become in 20 minutes?), but things are definitely a lot more drastic than before.
Dialogue is fantastically written, as it was in the original, there’s just not as much to do this time round.
Pros:
Amazing stories make the Telltale writing staff some of the best in the business
Plays to the engines strengths by making sure there’s next to no action involved
Cons:
If you’re looking for action, it’s not here
So in conclusion, The Walking Dead: 400 Days gives you more of what you want, and less of what you didn’t want from the original 5 chapters. Its shortness does stop you from getting as emotionally involved as the original game, but each story has enough depth to make sure you’re satisfied.
I don’t know who this bloke is, but he seems pretty cool, and giggles every now and then, so I’m happy.
For this week I wanted to review Poker Night At The Inventory, the first Telltale Games poker game, but I found that everytime I went to start a new tournament, the game would crash on my Mac, and since I have no access to a PC at this moment in time, I had to make do and play the second game in the series. This isn’t a bad thing at all, in fact I’ve heard the second game is definitely a lot better than the first, it’s just that I wanted to see the evolution of the series for myself, not take other peoples word on it. So without further adue, here are my impressions of Poker Night 2 by Telltale Games.
So this is the whole crew of Poker Night 2, with GLaDOS being the dealer. It’s a nifty team, with personalities mixing to make a great atmosphere for Poker. From left to right: Brock Samson from Venture Brothers, Claptrap from Borderlands 2, Ash Williams from The Evil Dead and Sam from Sam and Max.
So as you can tell from the title of the game, Poker Night 2 is a game about poker, with a sprinkling of recognisable characters as your rivals.This adds a nice spin to the traditional poker game as you enjoy listening to characters converse about a range of subjects, from what it’s like to be a Dog (Sam has some good answers) to what it’s like having your face plastered all over signs across Pandora. (Claptrap is pretty witty in his response).
Theres not much to be said about the game of poker itself unfortunately. Poker Night 2 gives players the choice of Texas hold ’em, or Ohama rules, which is all fine and good for a poker game, although more rule sets could have been chosen. You’re always given $20,000 to start a tournament, and this money is completely imaginary, none of your own money (bar the purchase of the game itself) is used. It would have also been hilarious to have a strip poker version, as the money has no value, and it would have been fantastic to hear Brock or Sam get annoyed at losing a hand.
You can buy characters drinks using tokens you earn by winning tournaments. The drunker a character gets, the more tells they have for when they’re bluffing. Also shown is the Borderlands deck of cards.
What really differentiates Poker Night 2 to other poker games is it’s unlock system, in which there are 2 different types of unlocks. The first is when you win a normal tournament , which gives you tokens to spend as you please. These tokens can go towards buying new decks of cards, new chip designs, new boards to play on, and finally, drinks for characters whilst you’re playing a tournament (in-game unlocks). The second type of unlocks are rare and happen when a character bets a valuable object of theirs for the winner of the tournament. These unique objects allow the player to unlock content in other games, for example costumes in Borderlands 2 and Team fortress 2. From my point of view, the latter unlocks seem to be a purely commercial part of the game, an incentive if you will, of players who are huge fans of other games getting as much content as they can for the games they love. The £3.99 price tag then is really a piece of DLC for Borderlands 2 and Team Fortress 2.
Pros:
Great atmosphere and charm from the characters you are pitched against
A solid poker game for those who like poker
Cons:
Fairly short
Character conversations can become repetitive, I’ve heard Claptrap ask Sam what it’s like to be a dog 3 times in 6 tournaments
By itself, the game is OK, it doesn’t break any new ground when it comes to Poker, and definitely has charm, but I can’t help but feel the only players who are going to find the best value in the game are those who own both Borderlands 2 and Team Fortress 2 in steam and want more content for them. Otherwise I don’t think the characters alone are enough to detract hardcore poker players away from the hundreds of free online poker games, and with a £3.99 price point, I think Telltale Games know this too.
