Tag: Telltale Games

Taking place during the movie, but never crossing over with the main characters, Jurassic Park: The Game follows the story of the can of dinosaur embryos Dennis Nedry tried to smuggle off the island. There are eight characters involved with the storyline but being completely honest, they're on an island where dinosaurs are running amuck, so expect some deaths to occur, including yours. That's right - in a telltale games rarity, it is now possible for your character to die in the game. It's one of the better parts of the game actually. Watching characters getting eaten by all the different dinosaurs helps deal with the painful lack of gameplay.

That is not to say that you don't do anything. When the player is involved it's generally little more than a bunch of button mashing and watching for Heavy Rain inspired directional buttons, all to make your character slowly turn their head. The limited level of actual interactivity involved here is tragic. There are certain points in the game where you can walk away from the computer and come back several minutes later and it is as though you've never left; the game will gone on without the player. Sure, they've thrown a handful of QTE type buttons that need to be pushed here and there but unless the gold medallion pops up in the upper right hand corner of your screen the worst that will happen is that your character will stumble a bit and look a tad stupid, but it doesn't make a difference in the end. For the scenes where it does matter, the gold medal will change down to silver, bronze and eventually no medal at all depending on how many times you die or screw up the button sequences. Each episode is divided into scenarios so once you've played through you can go back and redo sections if you want to improve your medal standing. Controls consist either of the keyboard (arrows keys or WASD) or a gamepad.

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Look out, gnomes - Nelson Tethers is back!

Telltale Games' Puzzle Agent 2 takes us, and Agent Tethers, back to Scoggins, Minnesota. The eraser factory may have reopened but there is still a town full of puzzles to be solved. Completely bothered about how things ended during his last investigation in Scoggins, a small, frigid, town that's only exports are erasers and weirdness, Agent Tethers uses his vacation to head back to this isolated area and try and figure out what's really happening.The game opens with a nice sort of recap of the previous game and gives you an idea on where his mind is right now. The Hidden People seem to be haunting him, members of the town are still missing and the Eraser Factory may have been able to reopen but something is still not right. With trust fellow FBI Agent Jim Ingraham willing to help out, despite his lacking puzzle skills (he is in Vegetable Crimes, after all), the adventure begins.

While Puzzle Agent 2 may not be something to come home after a long day at work and relax with, it is a genuinely fun and mind teasing game. There are a large variety of puzzles to play through; in fact, the game feels like one of those mixed puzzle books but with a fantastic story line thrown in. Granted, it's bizarre to the point of being borderline wacky, but that comes to be expected, as Agent Tethers just so happens to be in the FBI's Puzzle Research Division. Unfortunately, like many of Telltale Games' releases, the game ends a little too abruptly. While the player is certainly getting their money's worth, Puzzle Agent 2 leaves you wanting more, and ends with a number of unanswered questions. Thankfully once the credits roll a whole file full of all the puzzles you played through is at your disposal, (as well as any you may of missed along the way) all of which can be replayed as many times as you would like.

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Six months in the making, Back To The Future: The Game wraps up in its wondrously unsettling finale, OUTATIME.

Things were looking grim in the final few moments of episode four; Edna and Citizen Brown were plotting against Marty and even though young Emmett had committed himself to building a new invention for the Expo it was hard to say what was going to happen to the timelines, to Marty and to the Doc we all love from the movies. While it wasn't as easy to list out what was going to have to be fixed from the beginning this time around, things start falling apart quickly. Young Emmett goes missing, Citizen Brown goes off the deep end, and Edna, well, Edna's the same righteous verging on insane annoyance she has always been.

Surprisingly, taking place in the 1930's yet again wasn't such an issue this time despite being in familiar areas. The majority of this episode is spent in the Expo, which even gets its own special little theme song from Trixie Trotter. OUTATIME introduces one new character, who ends up being something of a letdown. Strangely, he doesn't even have a face, odd for someone (supposedly) as famous as he is. Jacques Douteux is an underwater explorer, who is perhaps appropriately dressed in a diving suit, that just so happens to help out with a situation later.

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As we build up for the finale, prepare for your mind to be blown.

When last we left our hero, Marty McFly, Citizen Brown was on his side, and although they were both prisoners it seemed like they were well on their way to making things right. From the looks of it, all they had to do was escape, go back to the 1930's, and ensure that Edna and Doc never got together. As usual, despite all the amazing feats the two had pulled off in the past (present? future?), things never quite work out they way you'd expect. That said, with the DeLorean needing major repairs and the 1930's being full of love, betrayal and heartbreak, this episode will leave you speechless. Granted, that description does sound a little like a cheesy romance novel, but honestly when the unthinkable happens at the end of this episode it will blow your mind.

Heading back to Hill Valley of 1931, although necessary, was a little worrying. There had already been two episodes having us trapped in the same small spaces for nearly the entire time and it wasn't all that appealing to look at. The space was generally lacking compared to the quality of the characters but mostly it was a been there, done that feeling.  Luckily after a brief, mostly unimportant stint in front of the courthouse, we were in two new locations this time around; the Expo entrance and young Emmett's workshop. Neither place had much playable area but they got the job done and were something new to look at.

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