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Played a new telltale game, or an old one I heard was good. Here to talk about it. You know the drill, people.

So, the game's premise was actually far more weird than I thought. I just assumed it was a werewolf game, but instead, it's a game where all fantasy characters just seem to live in secret in the real world. Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, all that kind of shit. You play as the Big Bad Wolf in human form thanks to a magic knife or whatever.

Now, while this was a weird setting by any standard, I didn't get it. At first it was cool, but there were two issues. One, we didn't actually learn anything about it whatsoever. I didn't really understand it. How come everyone from there seemed to be royalty? Was it just a land where everyone was royal? They weren't in their respective stories, but all the Fables are fairytale characters rather than most of them being background characters in fairies, like one of Sleeping Beauty's neighbours.

But, I'll get over that. What really annoyed me, however, was how Tiny Tim was a character. Tiny fucking Tim. How are Charles Dickens characters in this? They're not Fables. Was there just some large Victorian section of the Fable world? A Christmas Carol was clearly set in the real world, so did the Fable Realm just have a Victorian era earth completely separate from it. 

But, nevermind. The game was cool towards the start, but as it went on, it got boring. There wasn't much gameplay, really, and even in the action sequences, if you didn't react as you got a shotgun pressed against your skull, nothing just happened. Like, you didn't die and restart, it just seemed to wait until you bothered to press buttons. None of the choices REALLY seemed to matter, and in multiple cases you were treated as if you did something you didn't, but in such a vague way that it could technically work. Hell, Tweedledee didn't even mention it after I killed his brother who they were said to be incredibly close, and there's just nothing there. It got stale really fast because of that.

But most importantly, I despised almost every single character in this game. Seriously, they were all so fucking annoying and terrible. I did like...
-Bigby the Wolf: He was just a badass.
-Colin, one of the three little pigs: He was fun, nice to me, cool about me having blown down his house and just pleasant. I wish he had a better role.
-A flying monkey from Wizard of Oz (Wait, is there Oz in the Fable realm?), who was just kinda pathetically likable.

Besides that, everyone was fucking evil. For one, everyone seems to treat you like a peace of shit. The main reason is your history as a wolf that ate people. Now, sure, you did that, but you were a wolf in a world where everything's sentient, its your nature. The whole story is you trying to get them to accept you. However, other characters have no such issues, including Bluebeard, who in his backstory just murdered many, many women. So it really doesn't make sense that you were blamed for being a wolf that needed to eat yet everyone's fine with the serial killer among them. Like, it's just kinda stupid.

In addition to this, the game seems to think you're going to empathize with awful, awful people. Like, I played the game as a moral but stern person. I never hurt anyone who didn't deserve it and generally tried to be nice. Yet everyone seemed to shit on me for doing exactly my job. in a fight with multiple combatants, after which I've already saw how these guys get up after almost everything, I tore someone's throat out to focus on the other combatants, and still lost and almost died. This was after they tried to blow me away with shotguns. Yet the game treated this as a horrifying action. 

Then, a known woman beater and murderer is tracked down with his girlfriend, who has a ribbon around her neck that if she removes, she dies due to magic. She used this ribbon to make many others that can imprison and bind the prostitutes at a strip club so they can't talk and can be killed if they try to escape. The only way to break that curse involves removing the ribbon of the woman who imprisoned them. So I immediately go to do it, but the game treats this as like this sad self-sacrifice, where when she goes to do it herself, you're like "What are you doing!?". Even though she's imprisoned women and murdered two, I'm supposed to care that she now has to die? Fuck that, she's a slaver and without killing her they stay slaves. There's no moral question there, why should I be sad?

Finally, we get the final confrontation. There's a badass fight where you become the Big Bad Wolf, and then you end up face to face with the criminal leader, who has a gun with a silver bullet pointed to your head. It's made very clear he could kill you, but instead, he just wants you to take him in.

Now, at this point, naturally, I got suspicious and assumed this was part of his plan. Since the Fables have short trials and executions right after, he must know something I don't since he could easily at least have a reasonable shot at killing me. So, I tore out his throat. However, as soon as I revealed this, everyone got pissy, even though I said it was in self defense, and it definitely could've been.

However, while this could've been a stupid moral thing (which it failed at anyway), it got even worse. Almost every single character in the confrontation when you bring back the body has worked illegally for the villain and helped him. Beast delivered obviously illegal packages for him without caring what was in them, Butcher let him force slaves to work in the back without paying attention, the Witch made illegal potions for him, and the other opponent was the aforementioned serial killer. They make a big deal about them not being safe around you, never minding the reason these murders happened were because they were helping run a criminal empire. It's like the game forgot all these characters had done awful things, never apologized and then blamed you for being mean to them in arresting them. "Oh, you wanted to burn the tree I use to make potions for the slaves' prostitution? You're so mean!" Hell, two of them blames you for beating them up, which you did ENTIRELY in self-defense, and the game treats it as a reasonable point. Awful and frustrating, it was.

So, everything was shit in the end and I just decided to be a dick and terrify them all, because fuck those ungrateful cunts. In the end, it turns out one of the prostitutes told the fuckers about how the first girl murdered was planning to run off with evidence against them and started it, and rather than be mad at her for getting that poor girl murdered, your only choices are console her or be quiet and understanding.

Bizarelly as a side note, and I checked, and if you bring in the villain, he gets executed anyway. So it makes no sense. Why would he let you take him in? Why not kill you the many times he had the chance if taking him in would almost certainly lead to his execution, given he knows his ally is waiting to betray him? It makes absolutely no sense.

Anyhow, not much else to say. The one character I liked at the start, Snow White, went from love interest to raging cunt, as she just orders you around. I mean, at one point, she says "Mr Wolf, Flycatcher left his keys." And then she just drops them in your hands. Like you're her fucking errand boy, despite the fact you're a sheriff, you're not going that way and that's not her job. Hell, she orders you around constantly despite not having the authority to do so. She's just so unlikable.

So, while the game looked cool, had a cool setting and had some interesting stuff, it got boring and bland fast, didn't really make a lot of sense if you thought about it, didn't really have a working plot, no real choices and you just end up having the game tell you you're a dick for being the only reasonable person in the town. By the end, I just wanted to kill everyone and be done with it. Fuck it, I guess. Iffish game, I wouldn't go for it.

Meanwhile, I don't give enough credit to good games I've played. I played Broforce today, that's a fun action pixel thing to play with friends that's just a love letter to old action films. Psychonauts, Fallout New Vegas and Portal 2 are still some of the greatest games of all time. Played a short free game called Who is Mike? on Steam that was really good and you can finish in like no time at all. I played Thomas was Alone, that was short but really fun, great and hilarious narration. I also played an ALIENS arcade game a while back where you play as a marine on an Earth that's been taken over by aliens, and it's fucking amazing. Short with no plot, but you just get a smart gun and a flame thrower and you just waste aliens and face huggers and it's the best time ever.

So play one of those, not this mediocre, overhyped trash.

It was okay.

I didn't play this but I like the Fable setting.

You really struggle to find things to say about games you don't hate but it's nice you gave them a paragraph at the very end.

Oh, I can do that.

Psychonauts

Psychonauts is this really cool game where you're a psychic cadet in a summer camp. It's got a really fun, cartoony style with weird characters and stuff like that, but it's got this amazing level of dark humor behind it. Like, at one point, two really cheerful characters tell you they once jumped off a roof, and when you ask why, they say because the poison didn't work. Like, great suicide jokes about a summer camp game. The gameplay is really cool, with platforming, fighting and the occasional puzzle. 

The entire setting of the camp feels so fresh and real. Genuinely, even though there's not that much interaction with the other students, but it feels like they're all actual and interesting characters who you actually grow to like over a very short time. There's amazing variation between levels as you inception inside peoples minds, from a massive war-themed level to an underwater monster fight to a godzilla battle where you play godzilla. 

The levels are all really cool, because they actually make sense given the characters minds. When you inception inside the fun party girl's head, tehre's a great big disco, but there's hidden areas where you see her dark past. Inside calm and collected psychic agent Sasha, it's just one massive cube to show how organized and collected he is. Inside paranoid insane dude Boyd, it's this bizarre, twisting suburbia where cameras take pictures of you and people stare at you from behind pictures.

The game's so simplistic and childlike in the best ways, yet deep and profound in others, funny and delightful in others and just the genuinely perfect mix of everything. It's so funny from start to finish as well I just can't express it. I remember in one mission, you're trying to convince a chess pawn to fight even though he knows he'll die, so you pay him. And he goes to his offscreen wife. "Bye, dear, off to die in a meaningless war for a king who will never know my name. Don't spend the money on knitting. (To you) God, she's got so into knitting lately. Part of the reason I'm so willing to die." Hilarious.

All the missions are fun, unique and amazing, the characters are interesting, the game works with such cool things and its a great setting. I really can't stress how good this game is, I really recommend it.

 

Broforce

Broforce is a cool and fun homage to action films. You play as a bunch of different action movie rip-offs from Brominator to Rambro to the Brodock Saints to whoever. It's really fun and silly, but I'd definitely only recommend it if you were playing it in real life with your friends, it's not the kind of game you'd want to play by yourself. However, if you are, it's cool, fun and quick-paced, and good for wasting away a bit of time killing terrorists, aliens and demons. Great party game though, and cheap enough.

 

Portal 2

Portal 2 is just amazing. The gameplay is fun and interesting, an amazing puzzle game, and all the levels are really both hard enough to entertain but never too difficult that it becomes a task. The setting is cool, a destroyed and run down massive sci-fi place. But what really makes this game shine is the voice actors, the humor and the dialogue. With Stephen Merchant, co-creator of the Office UK, as a bumbling, idiot robot, JK Simmons as a crazy boss and Ellen McLain as a crazy AI, it's one of the funniest and most endearing games you'll ever play.

All the voice actors absolutely kill it with their roles, and it's just constant hilarity. Seriously, it's just so good. It's well paced, packed full of cool easter eggs and just really clever and funny and if you care, amazingly well reviewed, as is Psychonauts. 

As well as this, the DLC is so cool. Basically, you just continue testing, but it's in alternate dimensions. These don't change anything gameplay wise, but you get to hear all the alternate dimension JK Simmons and they're fucking amazingly funny. Just buy the game, it's not too long, it's less than ten dollars and I promise you will not regret it.

 

Fallout New Vegas

Talked about it enough in the past, it's everything Fallout should be. Humor, amazing gameplay, loads of replayability, genuine moral nuance in choices, characters that feel real, amazing setting and lore. Hell, there's enough nuance that pronunciation of a character's name tells you where those characters live and their stance on him. It's so nuanced that just the other day, I saw people arguing over the moralities of the various factions, because it's a genuine question, not just "Play good or play evil". Go play it, I'm not wasting time recommending it more when you could just do that.

 

ALIENS Arcade Game

I'm not going to waste time recommending it because it won't be in your nearby arcade, but play Alien Isolation. Amazing gameplay and atmosphere, genuinely brings back the terror and fear of facing Xenomorphs.

 

Who is Mike?

It's short and free, so it won't take too long to try. There's not much I can say without spoiling it, but you lose nothing trying it. It's one of the games like Vampire Hunter where you get no information to start with, and your answers determine the situation. Who is Mike? Determined by your answers. Anyhow, you wake up to find another version of you right in front of you, both of you terrified by the other, and you have to figure out what's going on. Short, free, just play it quickly because you lose nothing and its a cool enough concept and execution.

A good post that everyone will be too lazy and apathetic to reply to.

You're really behind on this one if you're just now playing it. I'm not even sure how much I remember.

I think the setting is based off of a comic or something. Telltale doesn't make anything that doesn't already have a set universe as far as I know. You'd probably understand it more if you looked more into whatever that original setting is (I didn't care to). What do you mean they seemed to be royal? From what I remember, a good deal of them were living either in the slums or some shitty apartment complex. Or are you referring to the characters themselves being princes and princesses?

Tiny Tim? Oh, him. Again I think this goes back to my previous paragraph. The setting must pull from a very broad range of stories. I didn't think anything of it when I played it.

Wolf Among Us actually received a decent deal of criticism because of this. As far as choices i Telltale games go, this one had the weakest, and yeah. there were no characters that I liked aside from Bigby and the pig. That could be intentional seeing as to how Bigby was one of the few (if not only) characters that came from a bad past and was trying to be better. Everyone else either kept being a shitbag or became a shitbag.

They probably hate Bigby more than Bluebeard because, while both come from a past of killing people, Bigby is now in a position where he is directly asserting authority over others. Bluebeard can at least stay out of the spotlight if he wants but the same can't be said for Bigby. Plus, one of them is an animal that could transform into a man-eating monster should you press him. It's heavily implied that Bigby could fuck everyone up if he wanted to. Also, from what I could tell, the people that Bluebeard did harm to are all dead or not around. Many of Bigby's victims are both alive and around to remember what he did to them. That's what tearing out what's-his'name's throat (yes, even after he threatened you) is treated as such a horrid thing because people are seeing flashes of what made Bigby one of the most feared fables in the first place.

Wait, wasn't that woman with the ribbon being forced to do that? If so, there's your answer.

 

Eh, I'd rate it a 5/10. It's a somewhat decent game with no replayability. It's clearly the weakest Telltale title released in recent years. I don't even remember the ending. Something about him being a giant wolf and Bloody Mary. Something like that.

Royal as in being princesses and princes. Didn't make sense. Despite these people's tales having necessitated entire kingdoms existing in the fantasy realm, we only see the royalty and main characters, which doesn't really make sense. 

Eh, all of Bigby's victims are dead, with the exception of at least one of the three little pigs, who is definitely cool about it, and the Woodsman kinda, who is pissed. Bigsby's went from a feared monster attacking at will to actually having changed an incredible deal, given he doesn't eat everyone in sight. Bluebeard, on the other hand, not only hasn't changed and doesn't want to, but is actually in the exact same position of power as before. It just didn't really make sense, especially since there was a bunch of characters like Bigsby who terrorized the old world, such as two trolls who ate people and Grendel from Beowolf.

No, the women with ribbons were all forced to do it because the ribbons controlled them, but the person who created the ribbon was Georgie's lover, who did it out of her own free will because she wanted to start a business with Georgie.

Side Note: I also kinda liked Jack, thinking back. And another annoying thing, at one point when you accuse the villain of being the murderer, he tells you he might be cruel, but not a murderer. Even though in his backstory, it specifically states that no, he murdered his wife and daughter. Just wasn't put together.