Review: Walking Dead Season 2

After a long year of waiting, the fifth and finale episode of The Walking Dead Season 2 came out last week. Following the stellar success of the first season, expectations were high for the latest five-episode series.

The first episode finds ten-year-old Clementine making her way north to Wellington, a rumored safe haven in a world ravaged by hordes of the undead. Along the way, she meets a new group of survivors who are on the run from their former leader, Carver.

Though this season rarely reaches the narrative peaks of the first season, a very well-written story keeps you invested through the episodes.

Perhaps the weakest point of Season 2 were the characters. As the action quickly begins to escalate, we don’t get much time to learn more about the new people we’ve met before they start dying off left and right.

It’s not all bad though. There are a few really engaging new characters that you end up feeling a connection with and Clementine’s relationship with long-time companion Kenny really drives the story forward.

The main antagonist, Carver, is definitely one of the more memorable new characters. Voiced by Michael Madsen, Carver rules over a community living in a fortified hardware store where failure is brutally punished.

The people who have known him in the past often make excuses for his violent actions, saying he was once a good man. This ties in well with the recurring themes of the series and sets up some interesting parallels with later conflicts in the story.

On the other hand, much of the supporting cast blends into the background. Some of the new survivors are so one-dimensional that I have trouble finding more than a single adjective to describe their personalities.

In the season finale, there is a moment where you need to choose between two groups. It was then that I realized that one team was comprised entirely of characters that I either didn’t care about or outright disliked. In a series that is known for its hard choices, this is a failure of storytelling.

The action sequences this season have their highs and lows. Aside from a couple standout scenes, the action fails to establish much tension and mostly consists of aiming the cursor at zombie heads and pulling the trigger. Fortunately, this season completely avoids the arcade shooting sections of Season 1.

With this season, Telltale has basically given up on the point-and-click exploration and puzzle-solving segments. This change, which allows the game to keep its focus on story, is a definite improvement.

Choice has always been at the heart of the series. Throughout each episode, the player must make several difficult moral choices which affect how the story progresses.

Season 1 has been criticized for only offering the illusion of choice. The story played out the same, more or less, regardless of the choices you made. Season 2 avoids this shortcoming by offering five distinct endings based on the choices made in the finale.

Some of the endings are more satisfying than others, but each brings this chapter to a close effectively. The multiple endings give the player a greater sense of involvement in the story and add even more replayability to this season. Of course, it would have been even better if choices made earlier in the season also played a part in that conclusion.

Season 2’s storytelling doesn’t quite live up to the example of Season 1, but this latest installment does take a few steps in the right direction for future titles. It offers a few improvements to the familiar Telltale formula while also giving us another great interactive experience.

8 out of 10

Seasons 1 and 2 of The Walking Dead game are available on Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Network, PC,and iOS.

REVIEW: The Wolf Among Us Episode 5: Cry Wolf

The first season of The Wolf Among Us ends strong with Episode 5: Cry Wolf.

This downloadable title is the latest installment in Telltale’s adaptation of acclaimed comic book series Fables. Created by Bill Willingham, the idea behind the series is that our folk tales and myths are based around the stories of actual immortal beings called Fables.

Once the stuff of legend, The Fables have been driven from their Homelands and now lead a secluded existence in New York. When two of their own turn up dead, Sheriff Bigby Wolf begins an investigation which drags him into the criminal underworld of the Fable community.

Episode 5 is all about action and revelation. Through one bloody confrontation after another, Bigby takes on The Crooked Man’s gang and gets the answers he’s been seeking.

The showdown between Bigby and Bloody Mary more than lives up to the buildup from the previous episodes. We’ve seen the Sheriff take some serious beatings, but this fight is the first in the series that carries a real sense of danger. That, combined with the frenetic combat and the reveal of both Mary and Bigby’s final forms makes this scene one of the coolest gaming experiences I’ve had in a while.

The other action sequence, on the other hand, falls flat. The quick time events for the chase through the streets of the city get repetitious and it ends with a pointless choice which doesn’t affect the plot at all.

With all of the fighting and dialogue, this episode has no exploration or puzzle solving. Though the investigation is wrapping up in this segment, the addition of some detective work would have provided a little more interactivity to the proceedings and made for a better experience.

The secrets you uncover about the murders add an extra layer of moral complexity to a story already filled with shades of gray. We get new perspectives on the motivations for the antagonists, making the line between villain and victim of circumstance hard to find.

Telltale’s branching narrative system is at its best in this latest installment. The choices you make seem to have more of an effect on the story than we’ve seen in the past. One choice in particular drastically changes how a later scene plays out, making multiple playthroughs a necessity for fans of the series.

The decisions you made earlier in the season also play a role in the conclusion to the story. Whether you went by the book in your investigation or you took justice into your own hands, you’ll have to answer for everything you’ve done.

The final scenes do a good job of showing you the impact you’ve made on the story, something that can’t be said for the end of Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season 1. Cry Wolf manages to wrap up all of the plotlines of the season while still promising one more mystery with a thought-provoking cliffhanger.

With a fantastic story, solid gameplay and a ton of replayability, Cry Wolf earns a 9 out of 10.

The Wolf Among Us Episode 5: Cry Wolf is available for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Windows, OSX and PS Vita for $5.

Bioshock Infinite: Burial At Sea Episode 1 Review

Burial At Sea Episode 1 is a downloadable add-on for Bioshock Infinite that was developed by Irrational Games. It costs $15 through Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network.

Unlike Bioshock Infinite, which takes place in the floating city of Columbia, the Burial At Sea DLC is set in Rapture, an underwater dystopia built by objectivist Andrew Ryan in the wake of World War II and the atomic bomb. Episode 1 of Burial At Sea shows us Rapture on New Years Eve, 1958, shortly before the city was destroyed by civil war.

The game starts off with Elizabeth walking into the office of Booker Dewitt, a private investigator in the underwater city of Rapture. She tells him that she has information about Sally, an orphaned girl who Booker believed to be dead. Their search for the lost girl soon leads them to Fontaine’s department store, a massive building that has been turned into a prison for splicers, people who have been driven insane by addiction to the gene-altering substance called ADAM.

The story focuses on the relationship between Booker and Elizabeth in this world. Though Booker has the same personality and vices, the events of Bioshock Infinite have definitely left their mark on Elizabeth. In Burial At Sea, she is much more jaded and more secretive about her motives.

One of the biggest criticism that most people had with Bioshock Infinite’s gameplay is that the frequent firefights can get repetitious over time. Burial At Sea attempts to solve this by moving away from run-and-gun gameplay to combat that draws influence from survival horror games. Ammo and Eve are in shorter supply than in the main game, forcing you to rely more on stealth, melee attacks, and the smart use of plasmid traps in order to weaken your enemies and even the odds.

The resource management mechanic is an interesting twist on things, but the stealth aspects need some serious work. In most encounters, you can only take out one splicer quietly before the rest of them are alerted and you’re sent into the chaos of battle. There should have been more opportunities to use stealth and thin the enemy ranks before the shooting starts.

Like in Bioshock Infinite, you are revived by Elizabeth when you died, but, this time around, death carries more weight. Each death costs a good chunk of the money you’ve collected, which means you’ll have less to spend on much-needed supplies from vending machines. Dying feels like more of a penalty than it did in Infinite, which adds tension to combat.

The add-on includes a new weapon called the Radar Range. It fires a concentrated beam of microwaves that cause enemies to heat up and explode, which deals additional damage to other nearby splicers caught in the blast. It’s a lot of fun to use, but I would have like to have seen at least one other new plasmid or retrofuturistic weapon in this DLC.

Things start to fall apart at the end of the two-hour campaign. The final boss fight is underwhelming once you’ve figured out the right strategy. The revelation in the closing scene is a little derivative of the ending from Bioshock Infinite, but all of the story elements leading up to it make it work well enough.

For the amount of content you get with Episode 1, the $15 dollar price tag seems a little steep. Big fans of the Bioshock series will definitely want to check it out for the new story and the chance to revisit Rapture in its prime, but others might want to wait for a price drop.

Bioshock Infinite: Burial At Sea Episode 1 gets a 7 out of 10.

Video Reviews for Arkham Origins and The Wolf Among Us

I recently started making video reviews of games to both practice my video editing and to work on my broadcaster voice. So far, I have two videos based on reviews I’ve written in the past few months.

I’m thinking about doing videos to accompany other reviews I write in the future. I’m also toying around with the idea of another video review segment called “From the Page to the Screen,” where I will review games that have been adapted from novels and short stories. I have a handful of titles in my mind, but if anyone has suggestions for video games based on books they would like to see, just leave a comment.

Batman: Arkham Origins Review

Batman: Arkham Origins is the third game in the critically acclaimed Arkham series. It comes to us from game studio Warner Bros. Games Montreal while the two previous games were developed by Rocksteady Studios.

The game starts off with a great premise. Set about two years in Batman’s career, the crime lord Black Mask put a $50 million bounty on The Dark Knight’s head. A group of eight assassins arrives in Gotham City on Christmas Eve to kill Batman.

The gameplay is very similar to that of Arkham City with small changes here and there. New enemy types, such as the Martial Artist and the Armored Enforcer, require more strategy in combat and new gadgets, like the remote claw and shock gloves, are fun additions.

They also expanded the rather straightforward detective sequences into a bigger part of gameplay. While investigating crime scenes, you can now scan evidence to virtually reconstruct what took place there. You can then rewind and fast forward through the simulation of the crime in order to find more clues.

The crime scene mechanic is a great way to break up the countless fist fights and predator missions of the game and it really gives you the feeling that you are playing as “The World’s Greatest Detective.”

The main story only lasts for about seven or eight hours. However, the collectible hunts, challenge maps, and well-developed side missions will keep you playing for weeks to come. They’re not all great though. The Enigma datapack collectibles were obviously just tacked on in order to emulate the Riddler trophies from other Arkham games.

The biggest problem with Arkham Origins is that it is not a polished experience like Arkham City. Several times I ran into unrendered textures and I got caught in a fight where neither I nor the enemies could throw a punch, forcing me to restart.

During the cinematics, the video often freezes up or the audio drops out, breaking any sense of immersion in the story. Other people have reported more serious game-breaking glitches, but I didn’t encounter anything too bad.

The story itself is a bit disappointing. You basically just fight the eight assassins while trying to put a stop to the criminal enterprises of Black Mask, The Penguin, and The Joker. It plays out more like a series of loosely related issues of a comic book than one unified plot.

Everyone knows that the villains are the best part of any Batman story. Arkham Origins has more than a dozen super-criminals, including some of the more obscure figures from the Batman rouges’ gallery.

It feels like most of the new adversaries don’t get nearly enough screentime while the focus is kept on the more popular villains we’ve already seen before. A lot of these new characters are just glossed over or are presented as completely one-dimensional.

The boss battles in the game are for the most part clumsy and uninspired. From the repetitious duel with Deathstroke to the insultingly simple final battle with Bane, none of them manage to live up to the great boss fights with Mr. Freeze and Clayface in Arkham City.

Where Batman and The Joker were voiced by Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill in the previous games, they are now played by Roger Craig Smith and Troy Baker respectively. They both do an excellent job of imitating their predecessors’ trademark styles and each brings a little something new to the characters.

With a lack of depth and some technical problems, Arkham Origins doesn’t quite measure up to Arkham City. However, it’s still a satisfying experience that is sure to please fans of the series and anyone who wants to see more of Gotham City and the Dark Knight.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Batman: Arkham Origins is available on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for$60 and for PC and Wii-U for $50.

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.

Game Review: Bioshock Infinite

Irrational Games’ Bioshock Infinite came out this Tuesday.

The original Bioshock set the standard for storytelling in video games and Infinite proves itself a worthy successor in that respect. The game takes place in Columbia, a floating city in the clouds founded at the turn of 20th century on the concept of American exceptionalism. The protagonist, Booker DeWitt, is sent to Columbia by a mysterious employer to find a girl named Elizabeth. His search quickly drags him into the middle of a conflict between the self-proclaimed prophet and founder of Columbia, Zachary Comstock, and a revolutionary group called the Vox Populi.

Fortunately, the game doesn’t become one big escort mission after you rescue Elizabeth. She helps you out frequently by scavenging supplies during combat, opening locked doors, and suggesting different paths and solutions to problems. She also has the power to open doorways to other dimensions called Tears, which becomes an important part of the plot later on.

There’s no such thing as a boring fight in Columbia. Aside from normal gunmen, you battle floating battleships, automated turrets, and a variety of stronger enemies like the hulking Handymen and chaingun-wielding George Washington robots called Motorized Patriots. A good selection of firearms and Vigors – tonics you can drink to gain superhuman powers – keep the frequent firefights from becoming repetitive. Elizabeth can also use Tears to summon weapons and create cover for you during combat.

When you die, instead of restarting at the last checkpoint, you respawn nearby with a little less ammo and money. Similar to the way the Vita-Chambers worked in the original Bioshock,  this system allows you to get right back into the action. In my opinion, this mechanic does not work well, because it takes all meaning away from your failure and makes the game a little too easy for skilled players. On the other hand, the system can also strand players with less experience in battles they aren’t equipped to deal with, leading to one death after another.

The ending of the game is one that sticks with you. A couple of memorable plot twists and an ambiguous epilogue will leave you wondering about the game’s story for hours afterwards. Though the twists don’t exact stack up to the one Andrew Ryan tells you in Bioshock, they are still completely unexpected and make you view many parts of the game in a new light on your next playthrough.

With a one-two punch of gratifying gameplay and a compelling, original narrative, Bioshock Infinite lives up to and surpasses its predecessor in every way. It would be a huge mistake to miss out on this one.

Rating: 9 out of 10