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November 21, 2012

Review – The Walking Dead

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , — Jason Westhaver @ 8:47 pm

Review The Walking Dead
Mere words cannot adequately describe what it’s like to play Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead. No game has ever taken me on such an emotional roller coaster; no game has ever made me shed as many tears; and no game has ever made me feel like such of a piece of shit for doing what I thought was right.

This is the epitome of interactive storytelling; the level of artistry we have spent decades searching for, and the most human game I have ever played.

Based on the comic series created by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore, The Walking Dead is the story of life after the zombie apocalypse. While that may sound like a played out cliché, the series has always set itself apart by focusing on the human side of the story, rather than the traditional joyous killing sprees and high body counts. Unfortunately, in the case of the TV adaptation by Frank Darabont for AMC, they’ve decided to exploit this drama and bastardize the story into a run-of-the-mill soap opera.

Telltale has shown their intelligence and resolve by avoiding falling into the melodrama trap and creating a work of fiction that is genuinely moving, without being positively cartoony.

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November 29, 2011

Review – Jurassic Park: The Game

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , — TJ "Kyatt" Cordes @ 8:06 pm

Review Jurassic Park The Game
Remember that knife fight against Krauser in Resident Evil 4, the one that consisted entirely of quick time events? Have you ever wondered what it would be like if Krauser had been a bunch of dinosaurs, and the fight lasted several hours while being interrupted by inconsequential dialogue trees?

I’m guessing no given that if that had been the case, I sure as hell wouldn’t be wistfully mentioning RE4 at the beginning of a review once again.

Alas, my bizarre question is rooted in reality with the release of Jurassic Park: The Game, Telltale’s newest episodic movie-to-adventure game adaptation. Events unfold around the time period of the first film courtesy of a new cast of characters; some of whom work on the island, some of whom are mercenaries flying to the island to evacuate that first batch of people, and still others are sneaking onto the island to retrieve the million dollar Barbasol can full of dinosaur embryos that Nedry was trying to steal at the epicenter of this dino-disaster. In fact, ol’ Newman himself is the only character from the movie to appear in the game, though only as a mangled and faceless corpse.

For the record, there actually is a QTE-driven knife fight between one of the mercenaries and a Velociraptor, which turns out to be pretty awesome.

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September 4, 2011

Review – Hector: Badge of Carnage
Episode 2: Senseless Acts of Justice

Hector Badge of Carnage Episode 2 Senseless Acts of Justice
Hector: Badge of Carnage, Episode 2 – Senseless Acts of Justice, which I’ll just be calling “Episode 2” for the duration of this review, is the long-awaited followup to Straandlooper’s iPhone point-and-click adventure game Hector: Episode 1; however, if you played the PC, Mac, or iPad versions of the game, the wait was of short to moderate length.

Either way, Clapper Wreake’s finest obese, alcoholic curmudgeon of a constable is back to hunt down a terrorist, wallow in depravity, and grumble about everything.

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July 5, 2011

Review – Puzzle Agent 2

Filed under: Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , — TJ "Kyatt" Cordes @ 5:34 pm

Review Puzzle Agent 2
It’s not even three weeks into summer, and I’m already retreating back to the ominous tundra that is Minnesota, to cool off and play Puzzle Agent 2. The sequel to last year’s Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent again follows FBI agent Nelson Tethers, as he returns to the creepy little town of Scoggins, where he previously solved a mystery armed with nothing but a passion for solving puzzles… well, he was also armed with a gun, but he doesn’t use it for some reason.

Having solved the mystery of the Scoggins Eraser factory in the previous game, Tethers isn’t satisfied with how he left Scoggins, Minnesota, and chooses to return on his own to figure out why so many people in town are now missing and what the hell all of those gnomes are up to, and if he happens to solve a few puzzles along the way, that’s just gravy. In case you were wondering, yes, you really should play Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent (which I’ll just be calling Puzzle Agent 1 for the remainder of this review) before playing this sequel.

The ‘2’ in this game’s title isn’t one of those Street Fighter-style “play this game instead, because it’s so much better that people will think that’s where the series started, even though it has a bloody two in the title”. Puzzle Agent 2 is instead the episodic “we’ll put a couple of sentences in the beginning summarizing the events of the last game, but unless you actually played it, your connection to these characters is going to be slim to nil” type of 2, and since this is an adventure game, you want your connection to everyone to be… fat to infinite. Additionally, by playing Puzzle Agent 1, you get to appreciate how all of the old characters are even more suspicious, paranoid, and just all-around weirder than they were in the first game, which is quite the accomplishment.

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April 27, 2011

Review – Hector: Badge of Carnage
Episode 1: We Negotiate With Terrorists

Review Hector Badge of Carnage Episode 1 We Negotiate with Terrorists
I spent a good part of my Easter Sunday playing Hector: Episode 1, a game that I would definitely not want to get caught playing if Jesus were coming back.

Why? This is easily one of the bluer point-and-click adventure games on the market – a hypothesis supported by the fact that you can’t escape the first room in the game without solving a puzzle that involves a condom and a severed foot.

Did that get your attention? Great, I’ll continue then.

Hector: Episode 1, originally released for the iPhone by Straandlooper Animation, has now been brought to the Mac, PC, and iPad by Telltale Games, a company already known for police-based adventure games, although Hector is neither a dog nor a rabbit. You play as Detective Inspector Hector, a (human) constable working in Clapper’s Wreake, an English town that, as they say, “took the ‘Great’ out of Britain.”

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December 24, 2010

Review – Back to the Future: The Game Episode 1 – It’s About Time

Back to the Future The Game Episode 1 Its about time
Telltale Games picks up the ball where the DeLorean fueled film trilogy ended years ago, bringing a Hollywood franchise into their niche playground of point and click adventure. If you’ve “been there and done that” with Telltale’s many releases to date, Back to the Future is certainly a curve ball. Significant expectations ride on the release of this first episode given a legacy of lackluster conversions of films to the gaming medium, predating Back to the Future’s own awkward release to the NES – back during an era where every film franchise was fair game for pixelated exploitation.

Gains have been made in creating richer gaming spaces from such properties, but plenty is still wanting from the bigger development studios typically in control – so double up those expectations yet again on a smaller studio such as Telltale.

But let me spread the good news that the game immediately exhibits the touch of hands belonging to fans, who, fortunately for us, also know how to stitch a game together. From the outset the release offers gamers a lift back to the world of the films, where Doc launches into an apocalyptic spiel about the fabric of space and time at the drop of a hat, and Biff remains the biggest jerk this side of any time period.

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