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.

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.

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.

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.

E3 2011: What we know about Telltale’s The Walking Dead

Telltale Games had a smaller presence at E3 than I hoped, with their meeting room situated in the Concourse Hall between West and South Hall. But if you watched AMC’s The Walking Dead television series, you know what game they promoted from the image above.

Don’t take that to mean the game will follow the storyline of the Frank Darabout-produced series, though. Telltale’s Senior Director of Marketing Richard Iggo stated simply, “We see Kirkman’s work as canon.” Robert Kirkman is the writer of the "The Walking Dead" comic, which the show is based on.

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.

Jurassic Park Delayed, Telltale Coming to Xbox 360

In case you didn’t notice today is Wednesday. Games, along with other types of media, are usually released on Tuesday. Yesterday was the last Tuesday of April, which means we won’t be seeing the first episode of Telltale’s Jurassic Park: The Game this month like previously announced.

Telltale Games sent an email to all pre-order customers stating the will instead be pushed to a fall release. Telltale CEO Dan Conners notes the extra time will be spent to change the game from the heavily-inspired Heavy Rain gameplay, saying it would be “moving in new directions,” and pushing game mechanics and storytelling “beyond anything you’ve seen from us before.”

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.

The Walking Dead Island of Nublar

Dead Island


If you’ve never heard of Dead Island before, you’re not alone. The game was first announced in 2007 by developer Techland, who also created the Call of Juarez series with Ubisoft. Now with publisher Deep Silver, a new trailer was released last week as an IGN exclusive that’s blown away audiences. The trailer is accompanied by soft piano music as a family is overrun by a zombie invasion on an island vacation. Variations of the trailer have already appeared featuring music from the televisions series LOST and the somber rendition of "Mad World" by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules.

Hell Freezes Over and the Dead Walk?

The Return of the Duke

After 12 years of proverbial development hell, Duke Nukem Forever is finally being released. On May 3rd, players will be able to experience the game that redefined the term vaporware.

The Duke Nukem series began in 1991 as a side-scrolling shooter. Several follow-ups and iterations were released until its last appearance in 1996 as a first-person shooter, titled Duke Nukem 3D. Then developer, 3D Realms, promised a sequel to be released within the next few years, titled Duke Nukem Forever. However, several unsubstantial release dates came and went. 3D Realms later said in 2001 that the game would be released when it was done, denying to announce any more possible release dates.

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.