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.

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.