The Wolf Among Us

Cost
$24.99
Format
Digital & Disc
Size
x.xx GB
Available On
Xbox ONE [Reviewed], Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, Vita

Release Date
11/4/14
Developer
Telltale Games
Publisher
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Modes
Single Player

The Wolf Among Us tells the story of Bigby Wolf, otherwise known to you and me as the Big Bad Wolf from the 3 Little Pigs fairy tale. Bigby Wolf is the Sheriff of Fabletown, a small enclave of characters of lore and stories who have come to live in the real world among us humans. These characters include Snow White, Ichabod Crane and the Woodsman from Red Riding Hood to name a few, along with mythical generic characters like Trolls. To hide their true identities, since Fabletown is located in the heart of New York City, Fables must use a magic called Glamour to make themselves look human. Glamour is regulated and expensive. Those who break the rules are sent out to the Farm, a location that is not explored in the game but the characters allude to it being less than comfortable. Think the TV show “Once Upon A Time” even though in truth the FABLES comics predate Once Upon A Time by probably 10 years or more.

The game plays out as what I would call an interactive story. There are some point and click sections and some QTE (quick time event) button action sequences but the majority of the game is conversation choices. Not to say you are going to be sitting there just watching cutscenes. To the contrary, you are interacting with the story constantly. I can’t really call it a point and click adventure in the traditional sense because the game hand holds you throughout. You simply are not allowed to move on until you get all the clues or information you need. Even failing a quick time event typically doesn’t create a game over event, you’ll just fumble around a little and continue on with your fight or chase. There are sections where you could die and have to reload but they are few and far between and you’ll typically be started right back up in the middle of what you were doing trying to get it right this time. In my entire playthrough of the game I managed to die once, and that was because I was interrupted in the middle of a QTE and looked up to my dead character.

Where this game, and with it all Telltale Games, shine is that all your choices constantly affect the game. Obviously if a character dies, they are not going to be in a scene latter in the game, but the system goes much deeper than that. Something as simple as being rude to someone in a conversation at the start of the game will affect how they react and deal with you 3 Episodes later. These relationships and events carry across your entire playthrough of the game. We’ve all played games where you choose between X and Y and it changes the game, but in The Wolf Among Us these events happen all the time. You can change a character’s perspective of you multiple times in a single conversation based on your choices. Something to note though is that no matter how bad or good or indifferent you are, your never locked out of any content, only the context of the conversations and interactions change. You don’t have to be nervous you are “ruining” this playthrough with your choices. Be as bad or good as you want to be. Then play again and do the opposite.

The story really is the thing here. It’s superbly written and the entire cast is amazing. All the characters feel like real people with real problems and as Bigby you have the opportunity to help or hinder them in their day to day lives. The lip syncing is probably the best I have ever seen which is so important to draw you in and make you believe the story is real. Add to that that it is pretty hard to dislike a character whose entire personality is based on the choices you have made for him and it’s a great experience.

There are a total of 5 Episodes with each Episode broken down into 5 Chapters. Each Episode is about an hour and a half of content and I finished my first playthrough in just under 9 hours. The game plays out as a TV miniseries complete with a Previously On at the start that is dynamically created based on your choices up to that point. At the end of each Episode you are presented with a screen that goes over what choices you made and how they line up with the rest of the community and not just the version you are playing. Mine included the ONE and 360 player bases.

If you’ve already played The Wolf Among Us in it’s episodic format then there are only superficial changes to the full retail release. It does play smoother and looks nicer but there is no added content of any kind that I could find. The achievements, although bumped up to 1000gs, are exactly the same as they were before, just doubled in value.

The Wolf Among Us is a compelling story in a world filled with interesting and well developed characters and I strongly recommend it if you haven’t already played it in the 360.

• FINAL VERDICT

How To Survive: Storm Warning Edition

Cost
$19.99
Format
Digital
Size
3.00 GB
Available On
Xbox ONE [Reviewed], PS4

Release Date
10/28/2014
Developer
eko Software
Publisher
505 Games
Modes
Single and Co-op

How to Survive: Storm Warning Edition is a next gen update to the XBLA game How to Survive. This updated edition includes all the DLC for the original game. I’ve never got a chance to play How to Survive on 360 so I don’t know if this is a graphical or engine update also. How to Survive is a top down 3D twin stick zombie adventure game. The game can be played in either Single or Co-op play and has you exploring islands trying to get enough parts to fix your seaplane and escape.

The Tutorial is told through a series of survival guides written by a NPC in the game named Kovac. They play out in funny little pictogram skits within each book you find teaching you about your inventory, eating and everything else you need to know to survive. Genius tidbits like don’t sleep in the wide open as a zombie is going to come and eat your face. Stuff you need to know. These guides come into play in a nice loading screen mini quiz where correct answers gain you XP. It’s a nice bonus and the game only loads between islands so you can stay immersed the entire game.

This game is pretty brutally hard. Besides trying to keep your body safe from rampaging zombies, you need to manage your thirst, hunger and tiredness also. Of all of these thirst seem to be the hardest to maintain. There are some fruits that help with thirst but for the most part you are relaying on wells that are on the islands. The biggest issue is once you use a well, it’s done. Everything else in the game seems to regenerate on a timer but as so far I’ve yet to see a single well re-fill. It is also extremely important to keep up on the weapon damage curve. Not finding the one part to get the next bow really puts you behind and makes the game a drag as you tackle not only health but the thirst, hunger and tired levels wasting time trying to find that part.

The game is played out over a series of islands where for whatever reason each boat can only go to one other island. So you get the engine starter for the boat on Los Riscos Island and that gets you to La Vendida Island and it’s not a one use boat. You can now use it to go back and forth as often as you like. But on La Vendida Island there is a new boat to get you to the next island but it needs a fan belt or something. Why am I not just using the boat I already fixed up? It would of been more realistic to make me continue to upgrade the same boat and just have islands be further out. One of the biggest issues with the travel system is that any zombies in the area you are heading to will already be hitting you before you gain control. I’ve died quite a few times just by leaving an area and coming back to a horde or zombies waiting for me. There is no way around this, you need to dodge and roll and pray you get out all the while taking hits you don’t deserve due to no safe zones around loading area. There are quite a few punishing areas that seemed to be there just to hurt the player for no reason. During the games storms you’ll be hit my lightning a TON of times taking massive damage. There are near invincible crocodiles that sap your ammo with how much of a bullet sponge they are. Don’t even get me started on the bear that appeared out of no where and wrecked havoc on my inventory, destroying precious and rare items every time he hit me.

How to Survive has a very complex and interesting inventory system. There are just so MANY items to keep track off and so little space to keep them. I have tires and bones and special plants and all kinds of stuff that I don’t know when I am going to need it or even if I am going to need it. Things can be combined in multiple ways but early in the game their effectiveness is not known. It does add to the difficulty in a very thematic sense as it adds to the unknown factor of your character’s journey. Do I need this plant or is this tire more important? As a player though I hate having to throw something away without knowing it’s purpose or value. When you find a blueprint it will be added to your guide and you’ll know 100% for sure what you are going to get when you combine two items, but the game doesn’t hold you back from experimenting. It doesn’t give you bad options, meaning you will always make something usable, but without finding the page it’s a complete guess as to what is going to be the final product. The game also has multiple stage creations. Your first gun is going to be 5 parts added one as a time until you end up with a makeshift gun so there is some good depth here. If you have the inventory space you are allowed to dismantle items back to their original parts so that you can incorporate new and better things. My biggest piece of advice is to drop your extra items near a boat or safe house. This way you can find them later if you figure out later they are needed. The biggest problem for me is just finding the items. The game doesn’t highlight or give you an indication that something can be used until you are right up on it. There are tons of things just sitting in the tall grass you’ll walk on by 20 or more times until you finally walk over it and get the press A to pick up.

The story is your typical horror survival. Wake up on island, don’t know why you are there, just that you want to get away from the zombies. The voice acting is decent and each mission will have a little intro from the character and what they want. One of the major downfalls is that the gameplay started to get quite repetitive quickly. Every single mission you will undertake is a fetch quest. This boat needs this part, I need this thing to give you this other thing to give to someone else to get the thing you actually want. Again and again and again. The only thing that changes is the island you are on and although they’ll add some new enemies all the islands really look the same. The layout will change but from a glance you are not going to know one from another.

There are a few other modes that have been added to this version that were DLC for the original. There is a challenge series you can do single or co-op. Get to the plane fast, kill all the zombies, that sort of thing. Then there is also a randomly generated island where the layout is the same but what resources and where they are scattered. You also get additional characters to play through with and some alternate costumes that have added bonuses.

Overall How to Survive is an interesting take on Zombie Survival with its Thirst, Hunger and Tired system and it has an amazing crafting system but overall the game started to drag with its near endless fetch quests. If you like the survival genre then there are a lot of new concepts and ideas that push the genre forward in good directions and these additions overshadow the game’s shortcomings.

• FINAL VERDICT

Project Spark

Cost
$0.00
Format
Digital & Disc
Size
2.52 GB
Available On
Xbox ONE [Reviewed], Windows 8

Release Date
10/7/14
Developer
Team Dakota
Publisher
Microsoft Games Studio
Modes
Single & Multiplayer

Project Spark is a “game” where the main purpose is to get you to use it to create your own games. Where as games like Little Big Planet are games first, and give you the ability to create your own levels, Project Spark is where you create games and there happen to be a few official games to play. The majority of the content is geared towards you making a game. And you can make just about anything. 2-D sidescrollers, top down dual stick shooters, RPGs with leveling systems and unlocks. You think it up and you can make it, to a degree. This is a Free to Play after all. As with all these types of games there are a select few creators making amazing things that are definitely worth your time to play, but there are also thousands of unplayable boring garbage to wade through to be able to find the good.

Team Dakota has included a short 3-D adventure game called Crossroads that is playable right out of the box. It’s really a story you are telling. Everything from what you are seeking to what buildings are in the starting town to what boss you will fight is all up to you and is generated in real time and is quite a bit of fun. My issue with Crossroads is that it’s really just a thinly veiled attempt to get you to buy DLC. Almost every options comes with 1 or 2 DLC options that when chosen send you straight to the store to buy them.

As a Free-to-Play game I understand that things are going to cost real world money. They need to make money to keep making content. Unlike 90% of the world, I understand that. Content Packs cost between 500 and 1,000 tokens each, which translate to $5 to $10. Some of these, like the Massive World Builder, are almost a requirement to build a game of substance. At launch there are already over 15 content packs to buy with various combos and bundles making buying decisions even harder. Here is a graph that Mescad made just to try to track what comes in what. Please look at this and tell me as a new player what the heck is going on here:

Most of the content packs can be bought with in-game money. Money is most easily earned through a series of daily challenges. The kick to the gut is that almost a quarter of them require DLC to even do. There are challenges for beating bosses that only come in DLC and there is always challenges for all 4 Champions, 2 of which are paid DLC. This money trickles in at crazy low rates. Like all F2P games you’ll earn a ton of money your first few days as challenges and milestone are easy to complete, by week two you are getting next to nothing. The other money grab is you can buy Spark Premium, for real money, which gives you a 200% bonus to XP and in game money and also allows you to buy DLC that costs real money for non-Premium players with in game money. So you have to pay real money to earn in game money to buy DLC without real money. WOW.

Project Spark also has a episodic game that is based on a cardinal sin of mine for creation games. The stuff that the devs put out, in Project Spark’s case: Void Storm, utilize things that we as players do not have access to in creating our own games. I expect the devs games to be better because of their vast knowledge and time with the engine, but I also expect to be able to look at that code and have it help me make my game better. Void Storm utilizes voiceovers and graphics and Kode that I don’t get to use. It would be one thing if these were presented as a showcase of things to come, but it feels more like they wanted to be able to do something that Project Spark couldn’t do, so they added it anyway.

Creating games is where its at through. Project Sparks has basic frameworks available to get you started and there is a active community to help with any issues you encounter. You are not going to create something amazing in the first 20 minutes though, there is a lot of code required to make things work. Coding in Project Spark is called Koding with a K, I guess just to be cool. It’s all based on When, Do statements and everything you can do is represented with Tiles so there is no guessing as to the structure or wording. Like When: My Player interacts with door, Do: Open the Door is a simple example. They give you the tools to make things a lot more complicated though like When: My Player has the Key and has killed 50 Goblins and I have 20 coins, Do: Open the Door. After you watch a few YouTube videos and really scour the forums you are well on your way to making a passable game. But who has the time or inkling to do that? If they had made the designer like they made Crossroads, where you are presented with choices. What kind of game do you want to make? What kind of enemies? Etc, etc and then you do in and do some tweaking it would have a much broader audience and a much lower bar to getting that first game created.

For you achievement hunters I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t spell out the insane amount of time it will take to complete Project Spark. First off there are a fair number of achievements that are tied to DLC. It is possible to earn enough in-game money to buy the DLC without real money but it’s going to be a fairly substantial time investment. There are also a LOT of achievements for getting an insane number of downloads (multiple levels on up to 50,000 downloads. Yes 50k) and votes on your levels. The game is currently flooded with garbage and instant win levels for people who are mad scrambling for achievements.

As it stands Project Spark is a great start. There is a lot there, but there is also a lot missing. The most positive thing I can say is the future looks bright as Team Dakota is actively working with the community to enact improvements and new content is constantly being added. For the cost of a big fat nothing it’s a fun quick enjoyable game even if all you do is play the Crossroads adventure game, which also is constantly going to be updated.

• FINAL VERDICT