TellTale defines a new genre with The Walking Dead

There’s a lot of praise for Telltale’s recently released The Walking Dead game. Some call it Telltale’s best effort yet. After playing through multiple times to see how the game can diverge, I’m confident enough to agree with others and add my own claim that The Walking Dead is the first in a new hybrid genre, the Role-Playing Adventure Game.

Comic-Con 2011: The Walking Dead Preview

At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Telltale game designer Jake Rodkin made it clear that The Walking Dead isn’t your normal zombie game. “The last shot of this game is probably not going to be a guy with two axes on top of a mile-high mountain of zombies,” he said.

Back to the Future: The Game Wrap-Up Review

With all five of the Back to the Future: The Game episodes now released, we can take a look back to see how well this addition to the Back to the Future franchise fits with the films, as well as some of its high and low points.

Back to the Future: OUTATIME Review

Back to the Future: Episode 4 – Double Visions
Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Genre: Point-and-Click Adventure
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Platforms: PC, Mac, iPad, and PlayStation 3

This is it. We finally have the last episode of the five-episode season of Back to the Future: The Game. If you don’t already know by this point, Back to the Future: The Game is developed by Telltale Games as a point-and-click adventure game. You control Marty McFly as he travels back in time to save Doc Brown and fixes any problems along the way that may alter the future.

Back to the Future: Double Visions Review

Back to the Future: Episode 4 – Double Visions
Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Genre: Point-and-Click Adventure
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Platforms: PC, Mac, iPad, and PlayStation 3

It was December 2010 when the first episode to Back to the Future: The Game released. Five months later, the fourth episode, Double Visions, is available. At the end of Citizen Brown, Marty was captured by Edna Strickland after finally convincing Doc to fix the time machine and head back to the 1930s. Episode four picks up immediately after, starting with your escape with help from Jennifer Parker. Meanwhile, Edna tries to use Doc’s mind-reading machine from the first film (now a brain-washing machine in this timeline) to reprogram her husband back into Citizen Brown. Marty frees Doc and they travel back to the 1930s for the third since It’s About Time, a few months after young Emmett Brown started dating Edna Strickland. The majority of the episode is spent finding a way to douse Edna and Emmett’s relationship, and reignite Emmett’s love for science.

Back to the Future: Citizen Brown Review

Back to the Future: Episode 3 – Citizen Brown
Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Genre: Point-and-Click Adventure
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Platforms: PC, Mac, and PlayStation 3

When I reviewed Back to the Future: Episode 2 – Get Tannen, one of my main points was how big the role of a new setting played in each of the Back to the Future films. It plays a similarly big role in the games, wherein the first episode, It’s About Time, you visit 1930s Hill Valley during the time of the prohibition. In Get Tannen, you visited the same setting with a few small additions, but overall it felt dull and repetitive. 2K Games’ BioShock 2 was criticized for the same reason. The city of Rapture was such a great place that revisiting it to tell a different story felt uninspired. Episode 3 – Citizen Brown takes place in an entirely different timeline, allowing you to interact with old characters with new personalities.

Back to the Future: Get Tannen Review

Back to the Future: Episode 2 – Get Tannen
Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Genre: Point-and-Click Adventure
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Platforms: PC, Mac, and PlayStation 3

One of the things that made the Back to the Future series so memorable was the setting. The first film took us back to the 1955, when hamburgers were a nickel and soda shops were the hang out spot. In the second film, we were transported to the future, a world where 3D holograms came alive and cars (and skateboards) flew. In the final film, we took a trip to the old west, where Indians and cowboys were a common sight, and duels at high noon were someone’s final stand. In each of these backdrops we saw different versions of the same characters, jokes, and charm. Marty would get called a chicken, a fight would break out, and Biff would get a face-full of manure.

Welcome to Jurassic Park

Cue the John Williams music, Jurassic Park is making a comeback, but not in theaters. Last June, Telltale Games, developer of the Sam & Max and Tales of Monkey Island adventure games, inked a deal with NBC Universal for the rights to create two games based on the Back to the Future franchise and Jurassic Park franchise. The first episode of a five episode Back to the Future season was released last December, with the next episode coming in February.

Back to the Future: It’s About Time Review

Back to the Future: Episode 1 - It’s About Time
Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Genre: Point-and-Click Adventure
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Platforms: PC, iPad and PlayStation 3 (TBD)

In my last post, I said would be posting a review of the first episode in the five episode series of Back to the Future by Telltale Games. I posted this thinking that games almost always are released on the Tuesday of the week. Half-way through the day, I realized that Back to the Future wouldn’t be released until Wednesday, December 22 (the next day). So that afternoon, I went and saw Tron: Legacy with my brother. I will be posting a review of the film sometime during the weekend after the Christmas festivities, but I’ll also be using that time to watch the first Tron, a film I haven’t seen in over 10 years.