The Wolf Among Us Episode 1 Review

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Last year Telltale Games proved to everyone that their strategy of making episodic titles based on existing franchises could work with The Walking Dead. It was certainly one of my favorite games of the year.

The Wolf Among Us is based on a slightly less well-known comic series called Fables. The premise is that the characters from the fairy tales that we grew up with left their homeland during a mass exodus and are now living among us. Specifically they live in a neighborhood of New York City called Fabletown, and the fables who can't pass as human have to use expensive spells called glamours to blend in. Because of this a lot of them have to live at The Farm, which is a community of fables located upstate away from the prying eyes of us mundies.

The player character is Bigby Wolf (formerly the Big Bad Wolf) who now works as Fabletown's sheriff. They make it clear that most of the fables either fear him or simply don't trust him, so I took the angle that he would want to prove that he had changed his ways. Unfortunately circumstances threw me into a few fights anyway.

The fights used quicktime events similar to The Walking Dead, but they seemed to go much more smoothly. There are also fewer puzzles; moreover investigating a crime scene is a lot more interesting than finding pills for a guy I thoroughly don't like.

The art direction is absolutely gorgeous. I could literally take my screenshots and make a comic book out of them. Being that it is set in the 80s everything has a slightly neon tint to it and all of the major events seem to happen at night. A little cliché, but there you go.

As with The Walking Dead the decisions you make during this episode will have consequences later on, mostly in the way you treat people. As much as I tried I think I may have done a few things that I will regret later on. This is a Telltale game after all.

EDIT: you can now read my review of Episode 2.

Audiosurf 2 First Impressions

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Note: A "first impressions" is basically like a review, but for a game that isn't finished yet. Depending on how the game changes between now and launch, my final review could be different.

Audiosurf is literally one of my favorite games, so I jumped on the Audiosurf 2 Early Access (read: beta) as soon as it came out. For those of you unfamiliar with Audiosurf, it is a PC game that takes any song you have on your hard drive and creates a course out of it. Whenever the music is fast and exciting, the course is fast and exciting. You get points by gathering blocks as you go down the course.

The main idea behind Audiosurf 2 is to support mods, namely custom modes and visual themes. This is a really cool idea, but I'm not sure it will scale well in an Audiosurf game. My main concern is this: in the original game you choose a character who has a certain special ability. At the end of the song, your score is compared to all of the other scores in the level you chose (so if you chose a Casual character, you would be compared to all of the Casual scores, etc.) In Audiosurf 2 it looks like the scores are only compared within the mode that you choose. What if I find an unofficial mode that somebody made that I really like, but nobody else plays it because it's not built in? On the other hand there is no way for all scores to be compared in any meaningful way because the developers can't guarantee that the scoring systems will be comparable.

The menu is one thing that is without a doubt better than Audiosurf.

In the original game I started out playing Casual characters, and quickly found that Mono was the best. Eventually I worked up the courage to start playing Pro characters, and I did quite a bit of experimenting until I figured out how to play Eraser well. Unfortunately there is no Eraser mode in Audiosurf 2 (though I am sure it is only a matter of time before somebody makes a mod of it).

Most of the official modes are variants of Wakeboard, which was teased in a couple of trailers a while back. Most of the points you get in Wakeboard modes comes from the jumps and tricks you do.

The problem with this is that you have to wait until the song is about to get fast (which happens maybe three times in a song), jump, and push a few buttons to do some tricks. It doesn't feel like it requires much skill on the part of the player, so I've been avoiding the wakeboard modes as much as possible.

Here you can see a couple of modes that are more similar to the ones in the original game. I felt more at home, but again my favorite character isn't there. Also, playing Double Vision while trying to take screenshots is impossible.

Audiosprint is a good example of what is possible with community-created modes. It's designed to be a party game where you take turns playing. It's pretty simple: either jump over or slide under the obstacles as you pass them. The runner emits this horrible scream every time she hits an obstacle, which is really distracting and will probably make you hit more obstacles. It's pretty hilarious in a group setting, but utterly obnoxious when you are playing by yourself.

That's right, someone made Triple Vision. My roommate and I played a game of it, but I think it would work best with three people. It also would have helped if we had communicated more on what colors we should go for, because we filled it up quite often and lost a lot of points that way.

At this point Audiosurf 2 is not worth getting. Audiosurf still has lots of people playing it, and you'll be able to compare scores with all of them. If you don't have Audiosurf yet I would highly recommend it; as I said, it is one of my favorite games, and my go-to game if I have a few minutes to chill.

Batman: Arkham Asylum Review

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As much as I love playing creative indie games, it is really refreshing to play a game with a huge budget where they worked closely with Nvidia to optimize the graphics and make a 3D Vision ready game. What I mean by all of this is: Batman: Arkham Asylum looks gorgeous! There were even a few scenes that had a lot of PhysX effects going on that my GTX 670 struggled with. I wouldn't have guessed that it came out in 2009. One of my biggest pet peeves is when games that look great have cutscenes that have been rendered in 720p (I'm looking at you, Mass Effect series) but the only difference I could see in Asylum was that the cutscenes were not in 3D.

I'm not a huge Batman fan, so I don't know who most of the villains are; I only learned about Two Face when I watched The Dark Knight. Arkham Asylum does a very good job of introducing the characters and giving their backgrounds. They even have a little bio section for each major character with both in-universe and real life facts about them. I could tell that most of the character designs were new takes on those characters, and I definitely think that they were done well. I found it a little odd that almost every single person in the game was ripped, but this is Batman after all.

Mark Hamill did a phenomenal job voicing the Joker. He was easily the most interesting character tho listen to, and I intentionally died a couple of times so I could listen to him taunt me.

Each main villain had a couple of levels devoted to them. My personal favorite were the Scarecrow levels because I got to relive some of the defining moments in Batman's life. By that I mean I got to see his parents die.

The gameplay is pretty basic: left-click to hit people, and right-click to counter when they try to hit you. Some enemy types switch this up a little by making you stun them first or dodging behind them before you can hit them, but ultimately it only adds one extra button that you have to hit before taking them down.

My favorite parts of the game were the rooms where there were a bunch of armed thugs in a large area, and I had to figure out how to take them down without being seen. It reminded me of the scenes in Batman Begins down by the docks where Batman did just that. Unfortunately I wasn't quite as good at it as the real Batman.

The detective "puzzles" were fairly interesting, but usually very straightforward. I felt like I was doing less detective work and more just following a trail that the developers would only let me see if I turned on the special goggles.

My least favorite parts by far were the boss battles. They were clearly constructed exactly the same way that boss battles were made back in the 90's. I was usually stuck on a platform below the much larger boss, performing the same actions multiple times while looking for patterns in their attacks so I knew when they were vulnerable.

I wonder which way I am supposed to go.

It took me a little over 10 hours to complete the story. It seemed like I wasn't missing much by not exploring heavily; the main missions took me all over the island. It would have been nice to have gotten more of the audio logs, which were pretty amusing, and I only found a fraction of the Riddler trophies. I'm definitely not a completionist.

It's always unfortunate playing a game that uses Games for Windows Live. At least this time it didn't force me to update the game (that is what Steam is for, dummies.) Unfortunately one of the consequences of this is that they have a bunch of achievements listed on Steam, but nobody can get them because the achievements currently go through Games for Windows Live.

Overall I enjoyed the game a lot, and I would recommend that anyone who thinks Batman is the coolest play it. It's currently $20, which is a pretty reasonable price.

The Future of Gaming

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Now that all of the major players have put their cards on the table, I would like to give my thoughts on what is going to happen. Given the events of the last week, I think we are on the verge of a very different distribution landscape, and I am looking forward to it. Let's start out small.

Mobile gaming isn't going anywhere; it's definitely going to continue to grow. However, we need to get people more used to paying $10 or more for a quality game if we are going to see more than these simple little high-score focused social-oriented free-to-play games that are the bane of our existence. Why is it that Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery is still the only mobile game with a decent story that I have played?

The Ouya tried to encourage those kinds of games to come to Android, but they really dropped the ball. It took them so long to release the darn thing that Nvidia came out with a new version of the processor they were using by the time Kickstarter backers got their hands on the system.

Nintendo is in an interesting position. The Wii U isn't doing very well, but the 3DS is selling like hotcakes. As we have seen over the last decade, Nintendo can do well by simply having a strong first-party title lineup. This is something nobody else can claim, and I don't see them changing their strategy.

Now to the good stuff. This week Valve announced SteamOS, Steam Machines, and the Steam Controller. SteamOS is based on Linux, which is really the only way that they could have done this. Yes, Linux doesn't have nearly as many AAA games as Windows at this point, but licensing Windows for all of the Steam Machines would drive their prices up. Valve gets around this by streaming Windows games from your PC over your home network. Because of that, Steam Machines will initially only sell to people who are already into PC gaming. Not to worry, Valve is working on encouraging big publishers to bring their games to Linux. Because there will be a Steam Machine for all occasions, they will be competing directly with everything from the consoles to the Chromecast.
I am much more interested in the controller they unveiled. Having it emulate mouse and keyboard inputs for games that don't support controllers was a brilliant move, and it means that is the one thing they announced this week that I will definitely be getting as soon as it comes out.

There were a couple of interesting stories about Sony and Microsoft this week. Both are looking into streaming their games to devices other than their core consoles. Sony is considering everything from PCs to tablets to TVs. Microsoft of course will probably only make this available on Windows and Windows Phones. If Valve succeeds in getting everyone to support Linux (I really hope they are) then the only reason for PC gamers to stay with Windows (aside from familiarity) would be for Microsoft to make Xbox games available on Windows as well.
Sony seems much more likely to support Linux, as they have no reason to push Windows sales. I like the way that they talk about treating the PlayStation brand as a service rather than just hardware. And think about it for a moment: how does Sony make money? Not by selling consoles, but by selling the games on those consoles. If they can bring their games to more people by offering a streaming service, I think they will.

The piece of hardware that I am most excited for is the Oculus Rift. These headsets are already incredibly popular, and they haven't even released yet. Innovations like this and the Steam Controller are only possible on open platforms, where they can support games that weren't even made with anything but mouse and keyboard in mind.

My dream for the gaming industry for some time has been for the hardware people to focus on making hardware, the software people to focus on making software, and the distributors to bring us services that add to our overall gaming experience, all on top of an open software platform. This has been how most of the PC gaming world has worked for as long as I can remember, and Valve and Sony seem to be the distributors most poised to take advantage of this model.

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs Review

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Right on the heels of playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent I jumped into Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. Despite the fact that it was developed by a different group and has a completely different setting, I was expecting to have a very similar experience. While the beginning was very similar, as the game progressed it diverged in many ways, and not all of them were bad.

Unlike the first game, the player character has a very specific goal from the beginning: find his children. At first I thought that he hadn't lost all of his memories, but as the story progressed it became clear that he didn't know how the machinery around him worked, even though he was clearly the one who had built it.

Lighting is very important, and just like the original you get a lantern to light your way. However, this lantern never runs out of juice, and spending time in the darkness doesn't affect your character's sanity. I found this very odd, because it was one of the main sources of tension and fear in the first game. As it turns out, A Machine for Pigs is much more about the story it has to tell than it is about scaring your pants off.

The story starts off slowly, when the game is still at its scariest. It then builds into an arch that I don't want to say anything about because it would be very easy to spoil and it really is the strong point of the game.

The themes surprisingly focused heavily on the class struggle of the late 1800s, and utilized pigs as the metaphors and imagery for almost everything. In a way it reminds me of the social commentary that Bioshock gave, but a much smaller taste.

The gameplay was a lot simpler than the first game. Most of the tasks that I had to complete wouldn't even count as puzzles, they were that straightforward. It probably helped that most objects that were interactable were puzzle elements. For example, I once found a candle that I could pick up; suspecting that there was a puzzle coming up that required it, I brought it with me. I was right. A lot of the drawers and doors had these huge visible locks on them that clearly meant "You cannot open this, there is nothing useful inside, and the developers don't want you wasting all of your time opening tons of drawers because there isn't any health or sanity for you to worry about. Just move along and continue the story we have crafted for you."

One of the creepiest things in the game were these colorful pigmasks. They would show up in areas that I had already explored, and occasionally disappear again while I wasn't looking. It gave me the sensation that I was being watched. I also suspect that they sometimes changed the map around me, similar to Antichamber but much less obvious. Or maybe I just got myself lost.

Oddly, there were several things in the game that reminded me of Portal 2. In many areas there were large maps of the complex with the area I was in highlighted so I could tell how close to my goal I was.

There was also this one walkway that would have fit right in among the older parts of Aperture Science.

I love it when games acknowledge the silly things they make us do.

A Machine for Pigs was a very well-made narrative, and it moved me deeply. However, it was extremely short at 4.5 hours long. I would price this game at $10, so wait until it goes on sale.