The Wolf Among Us Episode 1 Review

My review of The Wolf Among Us Episode 1: Faith was recently published in Central Michigan Life newspaper. Hopefully, I’ll have a review of Arkham Origins published in the next week or so.

http://www.cm-life.com/2013/10/23/review-the-wolf-among-us-episode-1-faith-keeps-players-entertained/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=review-the-wolf-among-us-episode-1-faith-keeps-players-entertained

The Wolf Among Us Episode 1 is the latest from Telltale Games. The adventure game developer found mainstream success last year with The Walking Dead Game Season 1.

The Wolf Among Us is based on a lesser-known comic book series called Fables. The first episode of the five-part series is out  on Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Network, OS X, and Windows.

It has a captivating comic book art style, similar to that of The Walking Dead Game, with an added touch of film noir shadowing to give it a murder mystery atmosphere.

The game revolves around the concept that the characters from the fairy tales we all know are based on real immortal beings called Fables. The Fables have been driven out of their homelands and now reside in modern-day New York where they try to blend in with humans.

You play as formidable lawman Bigby Wolf. It’s your job to ensure the Fable community remains a secret and to keep the Fables from killing each other.

Episode 1 starts off with a tense battle between Wolf and the axe-wielding Woodsman. The action sequences take cues from games like Heavy Rain. You interact with objects using the cursor and perform Quick Time Events to avoid taking damage. The action feels smoother than in previous games from Telltale and it provides engaging cinematic fights.

The choices you make over the course of the game will affect how the story plays out, during the first episode and through the rest of the season. Everything you say or do has consequences or benefits later on, giving you a real feeling of involvement in the narrative.

Players don’t need to be familiar with the book series to enjoy the game. As all of the characters are pulled from children’s stories and pop culture, you can figure out who’s who pretty quickly. The game also provides character bios in case you want to learn more about these versions of the characters.

Aside from a few minor framerate issues, the only real drawback is the size of the download file. The download for the first episode as well as the saving system for the series takes up nearly two gigabytes of space. For people who don’t have much space on their Xbox or external hard drive, this could be problematic.

You can play through the game in about two hours. However, because how you play changes the story, you’re likely to do a second and third playthrough to see the outcome of making different choices.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Assassin’s Creed III Review

Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, Assassin’s Creed III continues the story of the centuries-long battle between the Assassins and the Templars. In the present day, Assassin Desmond Miles uses a machine called the Animus to relive the lives of his ancestors both to learn the skills he needs to survive and to unearth  ancient secrets.

The game takes place in colonial America during the Seven Years’ War and the Revolutionary War. You begin the game playing as Haytham Kenway. You play as him for the first few hours, leading to a nice plot twist that ties into the game’s theme of showing all sides of the story.

For the most part, the game relies on the same tried-and-true gameplay that has been built upon and refined over the course of the series. The combat system remains easy for casual gamers to pick up, but provides a challenge when you encounter large groups and the tougher enemy types. The usual freerunning and stealth elements are all there and there are also some welcome new additions, like hunting and naval combat. The latter is definitely one of the highlights of the game.

The naval warfare missions have you act as captain of a ship as you try to sink and board other ships. Different types of enemies, weather conditions like stormy seas and rouge waves, and a variety of attack options constantly switches things up and the scale of the encounters make each battle feel epic.

You play through the second half of the game as Connor, the son of Kenway and a Mohawk woman. Out of the series’ protagonists, Connor is the most interesting. He has the stoicism of Altair and the driven determination of Ezio as well as a naive, idealistic view of the world that is constantly challenged during his quest. Being half-British and half-Native American, he is divided between two worlds. He seeks to save his tribe by killing the Templar leaders, but he struggles with the idea of killing his English father to do so.

By contrast, Connor’s descendant Desmond is still as bland as ever. Sure, he makes the occasional sarcastic comment and there is one scene where he rants angrily about feeling manipulated by everyone around him, but those elements alone don’t really make up a personality. All of the segments where you play as him are unbearable and act as a distraction from the Connor’s story. The overarching narrative that centers on him does finally go somewhere in this installment, but the cliffhanger ending feels tacked on and unsatisfying.

The Assassin’s Creed series is not known for its well-executed endings. This is particularly true for Connor’s story. After a difficult boss battle about halfway through the game, I anticipated a similar fight at the end. Instead, Connor’s storyline ends with a rather anticlimactic chase sequence. The foot chase and the death of the Big Bad we get would be a fitting conclusion for a movie or book, but it seems completely out of place in an interactive medium. A video game should go out with a bang, but this one goes with a whimper.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Asssassin’s Creed III polishes the established gameplay of the series and gives us the great new naval combat mechanic that will be expanded on in the sequel. Despite the lackluster framing narrative, the main plot delivers good storytelling with a somewhat disappointing conclusion.

On a side note, I think Ubisoft missed out on a great opportunity to have Ben Franklin give you all of your gadgets and weapons, like Leonard DaVinci in Assassin’s Creed 2. It wouldn’t really make sense in the story, but it would have been awesome.