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Tales from the Borderlands – Episode Five Review: End of the Road
It took them a while but Telltale has finally completed the Tales from the Borderlands series just as they got Minecraft: Story Mode off the ground. It’s fitting that one of Telltale’s game spin-offs ends as another begins. From what I understand of Minecraft: Story Mode (review coming soon), it’s apparently designed to appeal mostly to kids which is how I would peg the stereotypical audience of Minecraft proper.
I look at Tales from the Borderlands in a similar way. No, it’s not a kids’ game but it is a game designed to appeal to the audience of the proper game that it’s based on. In its final episode, though, Tales from the Borderlands finally clicks in the way we’ve gotten used to from Telltale Games.
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etg Tales from the Borderlands Giveaway
So we’ve managed to get an extra code for Tales from the Borderlands. Since I already have one, there’s only one logical thing to do: Give it away!
We’re running the contest through gleam.io which will randomly draw one winner from the entries. You can earn up to five entries into our contest. The giveaway starts now and closes at 11:59 PM EST on October 31st. We’ll contact the winner with the code on November 1st.
The giveaway is closed and the winner has been contacted. Thanks for reading.
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Tales from the Borderlands – Episode Four Review: The Bravo-Team
If you were to ask the critics, Tales from the Borderlands is the hidden gem of Telltale’s slate of episodic adventure games. I’d hazard that those critics are also going to be fans of or at least have played the Borderlands games at some point in time. I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve never put much more than five hours into Borderlands.
When you take that into consideration, it’s probably not that much of a surprise that I haven’t rated Tales from the Borderlands as well as most critics. And while a number of critics saw the penultimate episode of TFTB as the best episode in the series and called the series the best thing out of Telltale since the first season of The Walking Dead. I saw it as just an episode.
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Game of Thrones – Episode Five Review: The George R. R. Martin Special
What’s the old George R. R. Martin special? Political intrigue mixed with copious amounts of violence, death and destruction. Sure, that’s probably over simplifying the books and TV show but that’s what keeps people coming back every time.
It was only a matter of time before Telltale Games’ Game of Thrones series also started to get closer to resembling a video game version of Game of Thrones rather than a Telltale game with a Game of Thrones coat of paint. That doesn’t mean that Episode Five – A Nest of Vipers was the best episode of Telltale’s Game of Thrones this season.
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Tales from the Borderlands – Episode Three Review: The Long Road Home
I’ve never really understood how Telltale can be so good at writing these episodic narrative arcs but be so completely incapable at writing the second episode of those stories. They go from great starts to non-existent follow-up and that certainly dampened my enthusiasm for the third episode of Tales from the Borderlands. Fortunately for Telltale, they aren’t too bad at bouncing back from a subpar effort and certainly did with this episode of TFTB.
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Game of Thrones – Episode Four Review: Old Wounds
After the last episode of Game of Thrones (A Telltale Game Series), I lamented the fact that it felt like the story was far too on-rails for my liking and that the Forrester clan were getting no hope spots in their continuing battle to save their House from being crushed by the combined forces of House Whitehill and the various Bolton and Lannister forces. While the latter doesn’t really change that much (it is a Telltale game after all), we finally see a glimmer of hope and a little comeback from Team Ironrath.
Given that we’ve been beaten down emotionally by Game of Thrones on TV and in the game, it was nice to have that little bit of hope.
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Tales from the Borderlands – Episode Two Review: Atlas Shrugged
I know these episodic reviews of Telltale’s games aren’t exactly the most timely but the increasing length of time between Telltale’s releases aren’t exactly speedy either. We’re getting to the point where I’m not exactly sure that Telltale will be able to complete Tales From The Borderlands during this calendar year since the gap between releases is just over three months.
So some three months after it was released, I’ve finally gotten around to reviewing the second episode of Tales From The Borderlands. It would have been a lot easier to review this is I felt any passion for this product but I’m not entirely sure that I don’t feel a little more passion than Telltale does.
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Game of Thrones – Episode Three Review: Words are Wind
One criticism that Telltale has faced since their renaissance with The Walking Dead is that their games have become quite formulaic. There’s a lot of talking, some needless quick-time events and a helix story structure that only diverges based on your choices for a short period before following the intended plot. But even with those complaints, Telltale is very good at telling their story.
The problem is that when you release games episodically, there’s an expectation for the climax inside the episode and to build the “season”-long story at the same time. The first two episodes of Telltale’s Game of Thrones have been serviceable as their own episodes but they haven’t rushed to build a story going forward. With Episode Three: The Sword in the Darkness, Game of Thrones properly drives us forward in the season-long narrative.
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Game of Thrones – Episode Two Review: Love’s Labour’s Lost
It took a long time but it looks like Telltale Games finally found its strong suit with The Walking Dead series. That story kicked off their foray into mature stories, strong characters and meaningful interaction. The gameplay around it wasn’t the emphasis but rather a means to get you to the next character moment.
While Telltale’s new Game of Thrones series didn’t debut at the peak of TWD’s excellence, they did a great job with the talking portions of the game. The memorable moments in the first episode came from the interactions of the two Forrester children who were talkers rather than fighters. The second episode of Game of Thrones has a little less conversation and a little more action but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying.
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Mojang and Telltale Teaming Up for Minecraft: Story Mode
I’ve never played Minecraft which puts me in an amazingly small minority of gamers. That doesn’t mean that the possibility of a Minecraft story mode doesn’t intrigue me. This isn’t going to be your standard story mode in Minecraft.
Yesterday, Mojang announced that it would be teaming up with Telltale Games to make Minecraft: Story Mode. It’s not a story mode in Minecraft, though. It’s a standalone Telltale Game set in the world of Minecraft.
et geekera 