Added: 09.12.2014 16:11 | 6 views | 0 comments


Tin Salamunic: Developer Telltale Games has a knack for enriching popular franchises. Whether its their comedic writing in Back to the Future or their dramatic representation of The Walking Dead universe, Telltales episodic releases arent mere spin-offs, theyre compelling expansions of the original creators visions. In their latest partnership with Gearbox Software and 2K, Telltale Games crafts yet another masterpiece that deepens an already vast universe. Tales from the Borderlands embodies the series's superb humor without the guns and obsessive looting. Expert writing and dialogue choices take precedence, but there are more action-packed quick time events than in most Telltale titles. As a result, the game captures Borderlands colorful chaos with a fresh perspective. This is a fantastic introduction to what may become one of Telltales strongest series yet.

Added: 08.12.2014 12:11 | 7 views | 0 comments


Travis Bruno of Capsule Computers writes: "Telltale Games has made a name for themselves over the last few years by adapting comic book series such as The Walking Dead and Fables into episodic video games. As such when it was announced that they would be working on an episodic Borderlands game, many people wondered how they would manage to take a brand known for its crazy powers and firefights and tell a story with their own unique spin. Well, now that the first episode of Tales from the Borderlands has been released, is Zer0 Sum worth downloading?"

Added: 07.12.2014 10:11 | 15 views | 0 comments


TouchArcade: We've been huge fans of Telltale games around here since the massive shift that was the release of The Walking Dead. The quality of their games continued through The Walking Dead - Season 2, The Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands which is available on Steam but has yet to hit iOS. The contrast between these recent titles and their previous games like Jurassic Park is just incredible to behold, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Game of Thrones - A Telltale Game Series [$4.99] falls in line with modern Telltale releases instead of, well, their previous works.

Added: 05.12.2014 20:15 | 3 views | 0 comments


Tony Polanco from The Koalition: "For gaming news we talk about how certain Australian retail stores are no longer selling Grand Theft Auto V, how the Xbox One supposedly outsold the PlayStation 4 during Black Friday, the Assassins Creed Victory leak, and the possibility of Marvel and Star Wars characters appearing in Kingdom Hearts 3. On the Pop Culture side of things we discuss whether or not Luke Skywalkers original lightsaber will play a crucial role in The Force Awakens, how AMC spoiled The Walking Dead for millions of viewers, the Suicide Squad cast reveal, and the official synopsis of the Fantastic Four movie."

Added: 05.12.2014 18:26 | 3 views | 0 comments

In 2014, in a pop culture environment where “make it grim and gritty because we’re adults!” is the default and least-inspired approach to everything innocent that's ever been made, The Wolf Among Us feels right at home. That would be an insult if not for the fact that Telltale Games, by way of Bill Willingham's strong source material, is far too talented to waste the premise on violence and grim urban reality for its own sake.

The premise is this: The land in which all the figures of fairy tales and folklore reside has been overrun (by a shadowy figure called The Adversary, oddly not mentioned in the game), forcing a mass exodus into the mundane--i.e., human--world. The vast majority of them settle in Fabletown, conveniently located in Manhattan, and you follow the efforts of Fabletown's elite and its sheriff, Bigby Wolf, to keep this new home from falling apart.

Where the game and its source material diverge is in aim and tone. Fables the comic is very much a product of its medium; it's a series of one-off mysteries, random tales of fable life, and more traditional, comic book character studies, showcasing magic just behind the scenes of a real world. The Wolf Among Us, on the other hand, is less a story of what legends and folklore figures would do with the real world than a straight, neon-colored allegory, a Dennis Lehane nursery rhyme that uses the loss of a fairy tale homeland as a jumping off point to address issues of neighborhood class struggles and possibly the best exploration of immigration that isn't when compared to Telltale's previous work. In essence, if you've played one Telltale game of late, you already know how you're going to take to The Wolf Among Us.

It's sobering, sad, and tense, and occasionally, it even has time to be magical.

As always, the strength of a Telltale game rides on its story, and it shines bright here. While the cel-shaded graphics are very much 1980s four-color comic pulp come to life, the aesthetic built within them has far more latter-day Michael Mann in its blood, capturing the density of 1980s’ New York along with the sense of dingy isolation, backed by a minimalist, appropriately synthy score. Somehow, it's able to convey this sense even when the game is at its most grand, be it in Fabletown's lavish business offices or the shadowy lairs of its elite caste of criminals.

More often than not, though, the game can convey it easily because we spend so much time with Fabletown's lower classes, the folks barely scraping by. On paper, this is a story of the Big Bad Wolf trying to atone for eating people's grandmothers, blowing down houses, and all the rest of his storied mayhem, but it is ultimately a tale of displaced people, second-class citizens whom other residents don't even acknowledge and just might happen to be Grendel, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and the Little Mermaid. It's a strong neo-noir that gets its hands dirty just as much from the grisly violence you're investigating as it does from the ugly first-world problems of its upper crust. It's the story of working poor vs. a harried elite, filtered through the lens of long-forgotten legends and folklore. There's a moment in which an increasingly frustrated Snow White is forced to deal with the complaints of the people directly and states, “We're at war! Don't they realize that?” Almost instantly, you can draw from the squalid bars that people hang out in, the makeshift, threadbare funerals under bridges afforded to dead fables because there's no way to bury their dead, and the contempt that fables have for a government that is woefully unable to provide, and know that the answer to Snow's question is an emphatic “no.” How much that fact plays into your decisions when it comes to bending the law to help out a fellow fable is all on you.

And therein lies the true game at the heart of The Wolf Among Us. If The Walking Dead was ultimately determined by how you have protected Clementine's soul, the same can be said for Bigby Wolf here. The once and future Big Bad Wolf in the comics is Wolverine wearing Sam Spade's trench coat. He's brusque, cold, and brooding, and his past misdeeds weigh on him constantly. The game's Bigby less resembles Wolverine physically and is closer to Sawyer from Lost, and even if you choose the most cold-blooded choices throughout the game, the Bigby of The Wolf Among Us is a different, lighter, more human character, and he is malleable. How do you handle how Mr. Toad is unable to afford a glamour throughout the game and might be deported with a very young, innocent son? How do you treat an injured troll knowing that you're responsible for her sister's death, and by nature of the crimes, there was no way you could've done more? There's a running motif of people speaking of the old land of fables as “the old neighborhood,” “the old times,” the same way you imagine someone haranguing the hero in one of Ben Affleck's Boston crime dramas, and most of these people don't forgive The Big Bad Wolf his misdeeds. Earning their trust determines how the final, crucial moments of the season play out, and the outcomes is less about the integrity of a single character than about the heart of a community. To play Bigby is to manage a city from the inside.

It's the kind of game where The Big Bad Wolf and the Woodsman who saved Red Riding Hood have a nostalgic, sad drink in a bar and talk about their troubles, and the fact that it can be such a quiet, pensive moment rather than a melodramatic joke is a testament to Telltale's work. It's a triumph of tight plotting, wild imagination, and sure-handed direction. It's a game that never flinches in taking its story and its chain-smoking protagonist everywhere it can. The kind of cop we leave Episode 5 with is more a product of his environment than perhaps any other Telltale protagonist so far. Fabletown will remember that, and so will you.

Added: 05.12.2014 18:26 | 1 views | 0 comments

In 2014, in a pop culture environment where “make it grim and gritty because we’re adults!” is the default and least-inspired approach to everything innocent that's ever been made, The Wolf Among Us feels right at home. That would be an insult if not for the fact that Telltale Games, by way of Bill Willingham's strong source material, is far too talented to waste the premise on violence and grim urban reality for its own sake.

The premise is this: The land in which all the figures of fairy tales and folklore reside has been overrun (by a shadowy figure called The Adversary, oddly not mentioned in the game), forcing a mass exodus into the mundane--i.e., human--world. The vast majority of them settle in Fabletown, conveniently located in Manhattan, and you follow the efforts of Fabletown's elite and its sheriff, Bigby Wolf, to keep this new home from falling apart.

Where the game and its source material diverge is in aim and tone. Fables the comic is very much a product of its medium; it's a series of one-off mysteries, random tales of fable life, and more traditional, comic book character studies, showcasing magic just behind the scenes of a real world. The Wolf Among Us, on the other hand, is less a story of what legends and folklore figures would do with the real world than a straight, neon-colored allegory, a Dennis Lehane nursery rhyme that uses the loss of a fairy tale homeland as a jumping off point to address issues of neighborhood class struggles and possibly the best exploration of immigration that isn't when compared to Telltale's previous work. In essence, if you've played one Telltale game of late, you already know how you're going to take to The Wolf Among Us.

It's sobering, sad, and tense, and occasionally, it even has time to be magical.

As always, the strength of a Telltale game rides on its story, and it shines bright here. While the cel-shaded graphics are very much 1980s four-color comic pulp come to life, the aesthetic built within them has far more latter-day Michael Mann in its blood, capturing the density of 1980s’ New York along with the sense of dingy isolation, backed by a minimalist, appropriately synthy score. Somehow, it's able to convey this sense even when the game is at its most grand, be it in Fabletown's lavish business offices or the shadowy lairs of its elite caste of criminals.

More often than not, though, the game can convey it easily because we spend so much time with Fabletown's lower classes, the folks barely scraping by. On paper, this is a story of the Big Bad Wolf trying to atone for eating people's grandmothers, blowing down houses, and all the rest of his storied mayhem, but it is ultimately a tale of displaced people, second-class citizens whom other residents don't even acknowledge and just might happen to be Grendel, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and the Little Mermaid. It's a strong neo-noir that gets its hands dirty just as much from the grisly violence you're investigating as it does from the ugly first-world problems of its upper crust. It's the story of working poor vs. a harried elite, filtered through the lens of long-forgotten legends and folklore. There's a moment in which an increasingly frustrated Snow White is forced to deal with the complaints of the people directly and states, “We're at war! Don't they realize that?” Almost instantly, you can draw from the squalid bars that people hang out in, the makeshift, threadbare funerals under bridges afforded to dead fables because there's no way to bury their dead, and the contempt that fables have for a government that is woefully unable to provide, and know that the answer to Snow's question is an emphatic “no.” How much that fact plays into your decisions when it comes to bending the law to help out a fellow fable is all on you.

And therein lies the true game at the heart of The Wolf Among Us. If The Walking Dead was ultimately determined by how you have protected Clementine's soul, the same can be said for Bigby Wolf here. The once and future Big Bad Wolf in the comics is Wolverine wearing Sam Spade's trench coat. He's brusque, cold, and brooding, and his past misdeeds weigh on him constantly. The game's Bigby less resembles Wolverine physically and is closer to Sawyer from Lost, and even if you choose the most cold-blooded choices throughout the game, the Bigby of The Wolf Among Us is a different, lighter, more human character, and he is malleable. How do you handle how Mr. Toad is unable to afford a glamour throughout the game and might be deported with a very young, innocent son? How do you treat an injured troll knowing that you're responsible for her sister's death, and by nature of the crimes, there was no way you could've done more? There's a running motif of people speaking of the old land of fables as “the old neighborhood,” “the old times,” the same way you imagine someone haranguing the hero in one of Ben Affleck's Boston crime dramas, and most of these people don't forgive The Big Bad Wolf his misdeeds. Earning their trust determines how the final, crucial moments of the season play out, and the outcomes is less about the integrity of a single character than about the heart of a community. To play Bigby is to manage a city from the inside.

It's the kind of game where The Big Bad Wolf and the Woodsman who saved Red Riding Hood have a nostalgic, sad drink in a bar and talk about their troubles, and the fact that it can be such a quiet, pensive moment rather than a melodramatic joke is a testament to Telltale's work. It's a triumph of tight plotting, wild imagination, and sure-handed direction. It's a game that never flinches in taking its story and its chain-smoking protagonist everywhere it can. The kind of cop we leave Episode 5 with is more a product of his environment than perhaps any other Telltale protagonist so far. Fabletown will remember that, and so will you.