The Wolf Among Us review - game noir

I’ve never read a single issue of the Fables comic, but that makes me the perfect audience for The Wolf Among Us.

It takes a simple premise and flips it on its side. All the fairy tales we heard about as kids, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the seven dwarfs, Jack and the beanstalk, they’re all real. But rather than living happily ever after, they were forced from their homes by ‘The Adversary’ and now live in a place called Fabletown in New York City, where they live among normal people hiding their true identities with spells called glamour making make them look human.

Gone Home review - connecting the dots

If you have any interest in playing Gone Home, don’t read past this paragraph. Just go buy it and play it. It’s best played blind, without any pretense knowledge, and gives you an experience that can’t be replicated in movies, books, or other mediums.

It is 1:15 AM on June 7, 1995. You are Katie Greenbriar, just coming home on a dark rainy night from a year traveling through Europe. You arrive at the house, but no one is home. There is a mysterious and ominous sounding note on the door. Where is everyone?

Ten Best of 2012: The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead is a harrowingly beautiful, emotionally intense game. It evokes the spirit of its source material (the comic series, not the television show) through its art style, writing, and characters. Lee Everett is probably the best use-case for a potentially silent protagonist, offering interesting options whether responses are moral, amoral, or non-existent. The cast of characters offer enough variation there is always someone among the group to like. The relationship between Lee and Clementine is one of protection and security, driving players to care enough that they’ll do things they otherwise wouldn’t to defend Clementine and keep her safe.

Ten Best of 2012: Diablo 3

About a month after its release, I was ready to call Diablo 3 the game I regretted buying most. Having never played either of the previous two Diablo games, I was swept up in the zeitgeist of release, looking forward to playing hours of what I essentially viewed as a single-player MMO.

Release day came, and while Error 37 was frustrating at the time, it was inconsequential to the amount of actual playtime. After a little more than 25 hours, I completed both the normal and nightmare difficulties and had a level 50 Monk. At that point I asked, what else?

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.

Jurassic Park coming November 15

Telltale Games announced yesterday that its forthcoming Jurassic Park game finally has a release date. Jurassic Park: The Game will release on November 15 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Mac, and PC. In case you forgot, that is right amongst the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Need for Speed: The Run, and Saint’s Row: The Third.

In the past, Telltale released games an episode at a time on a scheduled basis, usually month-to-month. For Jurassic Park: The Game, players will be able to experience all five episodes continuously, as Telltale noted that the game’s five episodes will be released simultaneously.

PC players will be able to buy the game digitally from the Telltale Store, Steam, or other online stores, and PlayStation 3 players can purchase the game through the PlayStation Network. Xbox 360 players, however, will need to purchase the game as a retail disc in order to play. This probably has to do with the guidelines of Xbox Live Arcade and the terms of their recent licensing agreement with Microsoft.

Telltale also revealed that a planned iPad version of the game will come sometime after the initial November 15 release, though it will be released episodically, rather than all at the same time. You can read a preview of Jurassic Park: The Game here.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive a go for 2012

Nearly seven years after the release of Counter-Strike: Source, Valve is once again returning to one of the most popular online action games in the world. In a press release, Valve announced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a downloadable game for the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Aracde, and Steam.

Being slated for release in early 2012, the game will contain new maps, characters, and weapons and updated versions of classic Counter-Strike maps like de_dust. New gameplay modes are also being introduced along with matchmaking, leaderboards, and other features found in modern FPS games.

ESEA News has a hand-on write up about Counter-Srike: Global Offensive where they discuss some of the new features. “While old guns are being tweaked and re-evaluated, a few new weapons were added, including a new heavy machine gun rifle, new pistols, and a new shotgun, but I think the biggest addition was with the equipment. They added molotov cocktails, an expensive $850 item, which can be used to slow down opponents and re-route opponents through AOE damage.”

Being coined CS: GO, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will be co-developed by Valve and Hidden Path Entertainment, who developed Defense Grid and helped with Counter-Strike: Source. Rather than simply build on the current version of Counter-Strike: Source, the game is being built on an updated version of Valve’s Source Engine.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will be playable at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle and at Eurogamer Expo in London.

Puzzle Agent 2 Review

Puzzle Agent 2
Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Genre: Adventure Puzzle
Platforms: PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, PSN

Puzzle Agent has been described as the American version of the Professor Layton series. Having never played a Professor Layton game, I can’t say how true that is. What I can say is that the game felt like mix between X-Files and the Coen brothers’ Fargo. But just like the main character, Nelson Tethers, players weren’t satisfied with just one visit to puzzle-obsessed town of Scoggins, Minnesota.

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.