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EGM Review: Wolfenstein: The New Order

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June 21, 2014

All heil has broken loose

The legacy of the Wolfenstein franchiseis almost as prodigious as gaming itself, having been around for more than 30 years, and is credited with introducing the concept of the modern shooter along the way. Even with large gaps between recent entries keeping it from remaining fresh in the minds of players, those of us old enough to remember those games look back fondly on most of them. Since ours is a “what have you done for me lately” kind of industry, though, Bethesda, the newest publisher for the franchise, and one of their youngest studios, MachineGames, have decided to remind us all once again that killing Nazis never gets old.

Wolfenstein: The New Order sees longtime series protagonist William “B.J.” Blazkowicz return in what serves as somewhat of a spin-off for the franchise. This entry is set three years after the events of 2009’s Wolfenstein, and in that time, General Deathshead has constructed technology that allows the Nazis to take the advantage in the war and put the Allies on the brink of defeat.

In a last-ditch effort to turn the tide back in their favor, B.J. and a ragtag group of soldiers are sent deep behind enemy lines in an attempt to kill Deathshead once and for all. Soon, however, “Blazko” and his crew are captured, and B.J. takes shrapnel to the head as he tries to escape, putting him into a 14-year-long coma. When he wakes up, it’s 1960, and Blazkowicz is horrified to find the Nazis won the war and conquered the world.

On the surface, The New Order comes off as a fairly straightforward shooter, but there’s a surprising amount of depth if you look for it, most notably in regards to the story. Yeah, I know—when you think of most first-person shooters, you think of a collection of muscle-bound morons trying to blow everything up (don’t worry, The New Order has plenty of that, too). But the narrative features a lot layers with each character, starting with B.J.’s “man out of time” complex and trickling down to each member of the resistance group he soon joins.

Much like how B.J. feels out of place in this new world, however, some story elements just don’t seem to fit in with the rest. Sure, MachineGames sometimes asks you to suspend disbelief because this is a videogame, like how B.J.’s still a Nazi-killing machine even after sitting in a wheelchair for 14 years. For most of the game, though, The New Order tries its damnedest to be a stark war story, with levels that gave a real sense of guerilla warfare. Then, suddenly, you’re in a bad remake of Moonraker, shooting lasers in space. I love the fact that MachineGames gets as far away as possible from the supernatural storyline garbage of Return to Castle Wolfenstein and 2009’s Wolfenstein, but when it deviates from that gritty core, it breaks the immersion for me.

Another disconnect comes in the three levels where B.J. walks around the Resistance base and talks to people, suddenly making this hardcore shooter feel like an RPG. Normally, I wouldn’t mind the respite from being neck deep in shell casings after taking on an entire Nazi battalion, but the sudden shift to fetch quests, especially three times in the same area, breaks up the pacing in an unpleasant way, even if the story beats that follow are worth the wait. In fact, the realism of the cutscenes, the detail of the environments, and nary a glitch in sight all make The New Order one of the best-looking games on the new generation of consoles. Stellar voice acting from the entire cast, led by Brian Bloom (Varric from Dragon Age II and Kane in the Kane & Lynch series) as B.J., also helps lend credibility to the game’s narrative elements.

And even when the story’s at its campiest, strong level design and gameplay still shine through. In fact, The New Order’s level design is some of the best I’ve seen in a first-person shooter in quite some time. It’s got the perfect balance between allowing you to be stealthy, offering up plenty of secret paths, or letting you go in guns blazing. Oh, and almost every weapon in the game can be dual-wielded.

To further accentuate these playstyles, the game also offers four perk trees for B.J. to unlock. Stealth, Assault, Tactical, and Demolition options allow B.J. to increase the amount of knives and grenades he can carry and improve the effectiveness of certain weapons. My only issue with the perks? Instead of using a typical XP-based system, the game asks you to complete certain tasks to unlock not only the perk, but also the access to start working on the next perk. It’s frustrating to know that you could’ve been working on several perks at once, if only the game let you do things non-linearly.

The best part of the gameplay, however, may be how it encourages multiple playthroughs. Dozens of collectibles are littered throughout each of the game’s 16 chapters, and each level needs to be played at least twice due to a decision you make early on where you must choose between the lives of two of your friends. Along with this, the game also features four unlockable modes if you find all of the “Enigma Codes” and solve their respective puzzles, meaning you could run through the campaign a minimum half dozen times and still have it play out differently with each experience. And I never once was disappointed by the fact the game has no multiplayer component because of the multitude of single-player options.

The New Order’s greatest success, though, is the fact it rejuvenates this classic franchise more than any game that has tried before it. It looks absolutely stellar, and its surprisingly strong—if sometimes over the top—story highlights the experience. With its brilliant level design and copious replayability, The New Order more than lives up to the Wolfenstein name.

Developer: MachineGames • Publisher: Bethesda Softworks • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 05.20.14
8.5
Great level design, strong replayability, and beautiful graphics more than make up for a sometimes-disjointed plot. The New Order proudly exclaims that Wolfenstein is back, and this new entry should be played by all FPS fans.
The Good Top-notch action puts Wolfenstein back near the top of the shooter heap.
The Bad Some story-pacing issues, perk system could’ve been more open.
The Ugly Next-gen torture scenes and burn victims. Brutal.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is available on Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox One. Review code was provided by Bethesda Softworks for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Bound by Flame

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May 18, 2014

Playing with fire

With the popularity of games like Skyrim and TV shows like Game of Thrones, it’s no surprise to see other media creators wanting to strike while the high-fantasy iron is hot. It’s going to take a lot more than just knights clanging swords together or wizards weaving random spells to break through in this suddenly crowded category, however.

The latest property looking for its slice of the high-fantasy pie is the action-RPG Bound by Flame. Here, seven necromantic magicians known as the Ice Lords are trying to conquer the world of Vertiel with their undead army, which has yet to meet defeat in a single battle after 10 years of conflict. All is not lost, though. You play as a mercenary nicknamed “Vulcan” who’s tasked with protecting the Red Scribes, an order of magicians performing one last desperate act to possibly sway the tide of war back in the favor of humanity. When the summoning ceremony is interrupted, the spirit the Scribes call forth possesses Vulcan, bequeathing him with unfathomable power and possibly the last chance to overthrow the Ice Lords.

Bound by Flame is a perfect example of wasted potential. It does things I wish big-budget games with long-lasting pedigrees would do, but it can’t get the very basics of the genre right. This dichotomy caused me to love the game one moment and hate it the very next.

One thing Bound by Flame nails is the crafting and upgrades. RPG players will be familiar with the clutter of screens on the menu they’ll have to sort through, but once they do, they’ll find a simple system that, from the very beginning of the game, allows crafting of traps, health potions, crossbow bolts, and even the ability to make better materials out of existing ones, such as tempered steel out of three pieces of raw steel. Players can even craft and customize specific parts of their weapons. Adding a new hilt to a sword could up its critical-hit chance, while a new pommel could increase its total damage output. The system is completely straightforward, and as long as you have the parts, you can pause at any time to instantly make your desired item.

Another aspect that I thoroughly enjoyed—and was quite shocked by—was the shades of gray each choice the game introduced. Many titles, including Mass Effect, Fable, and inFAMOUS, have a moral system of some sort, and Bound by Flame is no different. In those games, though, I always found myself easily making the “right” choice, the decision that led me to unlocking the “good guy” branch of an upgrade tree or ensuring that all the people of these virtual worlds would love me. Bound by Flame actually had me thinking about these decisions, and for the first time ever, I found myself playing the bad guy on my first playthrough. Never before has the “good” decision been this difficult. No matter what I did, I’d be sacrificing something, and in the end, I typically chose the “worse” moral option. And, like in many of those other games, the world, my character, and the story changed accordingly to follow my choices.

Since Bound by Flame is able to do things like this, however, it only makes the game’s shortcomings even more painful. While the story is rather bland in and of itself, following your typical high-fantasy fare of medieval themes punctuated with wizards and magic and a world in peril, it in no way compares to how boring the game’s world looks. Five of the most generic environments you’ll ever see comprise the entirety of Bound by Flame—it seems as if the world designer was using a color-by-numbers chart instead of real artistic flair when concocting Vertiel.

A bland environment can be overlooked, though, if you’re neck deep in engaging combat. Unfortunately, this is Bound by Flame’s fatal flaw. Even after leveling up and getting better weapons and upgrades, you’ll still spend most of your time having to resort to hit-and-run tactics where you get close to an enemy, slash a few times, and then run away and let your health and magic refill. Then, you just rinse and repeat until your undead foes fall. The worst part of all this? Many enemies, even the weakest skeletons, take dozens of hits, turning each encounter into a marathon that had me just running straight toward my objectives and ignoring every enemy I could by the end of the game.

And what makes matters even worse is your friendly AI. You can take one of the four characters that join your party throughout the game with you when you go adventuring. They’re all worthless, though, except as distractions to split the attention of larger forces up. Whether it’s Sybil the healer, Edwen the dark mage, Randval the warrior, or Rhengar the ranger, each one is no better than fodder for your enemies. You’ll run around in circles, hacking and slashing and hoping you take out the group of enemies by yourself so that you can quicksave again and not have to redo any section of combat. Between your brain-dead AI allies and the tactics you’re forced to resort to, this is easily some of the most horribly balanced combat I’ve ever seen in an RPG.

It feels like Bound by Flame couldn’t get out of its own way. By trying to institute some interesting systems and provide some difficulty when making your decisions, developer Spiders forgot to focus on the basics. Without that foundation, the game simply can’t stand on its own. Even though I don’t regret playing Bound by Flame, I can’t really recommend it, either, unless you so desperately need a fantasy fix that you’d rather power through the problems than risk having missed it. You can’t say I didn’t warn you, though, when you get burned.

Developer: Spiders • Publisher: Focus Home Interactive • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 05.09.14
5.5
For every great thing Bound by Flame does, it messes up critical gameplay components like the combat. There’s this sense that the game can’t get out of its own way, and only die-hard high-fantasy fans that aren’t afraid of getting torched by a budget title should check this one out.
The Good An easy-to-use, streamlined crafting and upgrades system.
The Bad Combat is cumbersome and friendly AI is useless.
The Ugly The world might’ve been designed with a paint-by-numbers program.
Bound by Flame is available on PS4, PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for PS4. Review code was provided by Focus Home Interactive for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

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Spider-Man No More

If you’re like me, Beenox is a developer still relatively fresh on your radar. Sure, they ported some Spider-Man games to the PC in the mid-2000s, but it wasn’t until 2010’s Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions­, when the studio took point on the web-slinger’s gaming presence, that they really grabbed my attention. Since then, they’ve delivered three solid Spider-Man games in a row, a feat that hasn’t been done, in my opinion, since the LJN/Acclaim days. Unfortunately, it seems that all good things must come to an end, because Beenox’s latest, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, is one of the worst Spider-Man games I’ve ever played.

Right from the get-go, the game may confuse more casual fans, since it’s not a true “movie tie-in.” Instead, you need to go back to Beenox’s first Amazing Spider-Man game. There, they didn’t follow Marc Webb’s first take on the character beat for beat, but rather continued the story of that movie: You played through the fallout of Dr. Curt Connors’ cross-species research and fought several new creatures that resulted from it. Since Sony Pictures seemingly wasn’t enamored with the idea of having their blockbuster movie franchise follow the story a game created, Beenox continued their story from The Amazing Spider-Man, thus crafting an alternate continuity from the films. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 game, therefore, only has the loosest of tie-ins to the new movie in that Green Goblin and Electro are there (Rhino isn’t, because in Beenox’s Amazing Spider-Man universe, he’s a cross-species monster).

Still with me? Once you wrap your head around the multiverse idea, it’s not the worst thing that could’ve happened. This allows Beenox to still have a little creative freedom with the story and not be regimented to following a movie script. After the complicated setup, however, things quickly become mundane in regards to the narrative: Each chapter devolves into loosely tied-together boss battles. In fact, there’s barely any narrative cohesion, period. Most of the story relies on your ability to find audiotape collectibles instead of actually telling you as you progress through the game.

And the dialogue is some of the worst I’ve ever heard in a game, from both Spider-Man as well as his foes. My favorite was a thug screaming out “I like to hurt people!”—truly the bad-guy equivalent to “I like turtles” if I ever heard one. At the very least, the actors who deliver these miserable lines try the best they can with a script that clearly lacks any sort of entertainment value.

The weak narrative isn’t the only thing that makes this the worst Beenox Spider-Man yet; nearly every aspect of the gameplay is inferior to previous titles by the developer. The “menace” system, touted when the game was announced, is a joke. This is your typical “good guy/bad guy” meter that you see variations on in games like inFAMOUS and Mass Effect. As expected, it hinges on doing good deeds in the open world, or ignoring them and seeing the people’s view of you diminish. Only a handful of the same crimes repeat, however, so they become as boring as the boss battles. Meanwhile, there are usually so many going on at once that it’s a neverending uphill battle to keep Spidey from being viewed as a threat. The worst part is that all this has no influence on the narrative, and the reward for being lauded as a hero is minimal stat boosts and fewer enemies in the world. Why even bother at that point?

Also, going back to the boss battles for a brief moment, while it’s nice to see some of Spidey’s most iconic villains again in a videogame, the battles themselves are of the worst “rinse and repeat” variety, wherein the bosses don’t have more than two or three easily avoidable moves, causing you to repeat the same pattern over and over until you whittle away their health.

The developers also emphasized how much time you’d be spending in the open world this time around compared to the last Amazing Spider-Man game. That’s as blatant a lie as I’ve ever heard. There are just as many “dungeon” segments in Amazing Spider-Man 2 as there were in the previous game, and you probably spend even less time web-swinging down Manhattan’s concrete canyons than that one due to the shorter story. Beenox can do indoor sequences perfectly fine, as proven in previous games developed by them like Edge of Time and Shattered Dimensions, but when you stress that you’re going to keep players more in the open world, do it.

Speaking of web-swinging, though, this is the worst gameplay change. Talk about trying to fix something that wasn’t broken to begin with. I understand there’s a movement for “realism” in comics and games, but this is a story about a man who has spider-based powers fighting a man made out of electricity. The need to be grounded in reality isn’t necessary, but Beenox tried anyway and now web-swinging requires a solid surface to stick to. While this design has been done in games before, this iteration of Spider-Man’s Manhattan—already a bland and lifeless shell of the hustling, bustling metropolis—doesn’t lend itself well to this tweak. I’d often shoot my web at some ridiculous angle, if I could find one at all, in order to adhere to this rule. Thus, I never really got into a great rhythm with my web-swinging, which was especially frustrating during the game’s racing side missions, which require a lot more precision than the game allows.

But wait! There’s more! While it’s clear that the combat/counter system is a rip-off from the Batman: Arkham games, it seems Beenox couldn’t resist to steal a little more from the Dark Knight. Amazing Spider-Man 2 sees stealth rooms make an appearance, and they just reek of the “predator room” designs from Rocksteady’s games. And, like everything else in this game, they’re inferior in every way. Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense replaces Batman’s Detective Mode, and much like Arkham Asylum, players will run into the problem where they’ll feel like they never have to turn the power off. This means that even if the levels were beautifully designed (which they aren’t), they’d only see them in the red-and-blue hues this mode paints everything in. On top of all this, the combat upgrades from the first game have been simplified into only eight powers, with three upgrades each. So much for doing everything a spider can.

My final issues with the game come from the technical side of things: Glitches galore, folks. Not only are the character models bland—and only half a dozen of them are scattered throughout the game—but many of them love just vibrating themselves through walls, sidewalks, and rubble. Throw in three late-game crashes in the middle of boss battles, and I almost had enough to never look at this game again.

Despite the abject time I had playing the game, I was able to finish it, however, because flashes of the competency Beenox illustrated in their previous games do appear sporadically. These came in the form of tributes to some iconic moments from Spider-Man comics—like Cletus Kasady being wheeled into Ravencroft at the start of the Maximum Carnage storyline—that, as a lifelong fan, I understood and instantly recognized. But that only made me more frustrated, because it meant that Beenox had to know them, too, and yet they still let this miserable pile of data get stamped onto a disc and sent to stores. If you’re a Spidey fan, hope that Activision lets Beenox out from under this movie-licensing deal and gets them back to making original Spider-Man games.

Developer: Beenox • Publisher: Activision • ESRB: T – Teen • Release Date: 04.29.14
2.5
Easily Beenox’s worst outing with the Spider-Man brand. Nearly every game system is a step backward from the previous three Spidey games—this one isn’t worth your time or effort.
The Good The story has its moments.
The Bad Web-swinging takes a huge step backwards, the “menace” system is a joke, and the dialogue made me want to stick a pencil in my ear.
The Ugly 40 years of comic book history was diluted down into a less than 10 hour game.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is available on Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii U, 3DS, iOS, and Android. Primary version reviewed was for PS4. Review code was provided by Activision for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Kirby Triple Deluxe

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Kirby and the Beanstalk

Someone at Nintendo sure loves Kirby. Ever since the Pink Puffball first debuted back in 1992 on the original Game Boy (he was white back then because of the system’s limited color palette), if we count collections and spin-offs, the most recognizable figure on Popstar has had 23 games starring him come out over the past 22 years. But what’s even more amazing is that people haven’t gotten tired of him. I believe a large part of this is because the Kirby series always finds a way to make the simple characters shine, and the core gameplay mechanics of sucking up enemies and stealing their powers feel fresh and new each time. Kirby: Triple Deluxe, his 3DS debut, is no different.

Triple Deluxe begins with Kirby resting peacefully at his Dream Land home, when all of a sudden a giant beanstalk (appropriately called the Dreamstalk) erupts from the ground, lifting Kirby’s home and Castle Dedede into the night sky. Assuming King Dedede is up to some new mischief, Kirby floats over to the castle. When he arrives, though, he is shocked by the sight of unconscious Waddle Dees scattered about the place and a new foe, a spider named Taranza, carting King Dedede away in a magical web. Putting past transgressions aside, Kirby knows he has to save King Dedede and stop Taranza.

On the surface, Kirby still has his same classic powers of sucking up enemies and copying some of their abilities. To help him quell this new threat, however, he has several new hats to wear as a result of his copying prowess. Archer allows Kirby to fire arrows in a 360-degree arc; Bell gives Kirby the ability to use a pair of bells as blunt objects as well as to stun enemies with soundwaves; Beetle sees Kirby impale and throw enemies around with a special rhinoceros beetle horn; And Circus has Kirby turn into a clown who can throw flaming bowling pins or balance on a ball to roll over enemies with. The new powers are a lot of fun—and very useful in several situations—but they don’t hold a candle to the single most powerful new skill Kirby can acquire: the Hypernova.

By eating a Miracle Seed, Kirby will gleam like a rainbow in Hypernova form, giving him the ability to eat massive objects in one swallow. From mini-bosses to obstacles like fallen trees, nothing is too big for Kirby to gulp down. The Hypernova form allows Kirby to literally change the terrain around him to fit his needs while continuing on his adventure. This new ability is so powerful, though, Kirby can only use it for the rest of the stage he is on and not carry it with him like his other copy abilities.

Along with these new powers, the 3DS affords Kirby some new gameplay mechanics, especially when it comes to puzzle solving. Taking advantage of the system’s gyroscope, you can manually aim rocket launchers and cannons to destroy enemies and blocked pathways, or slide specially marked blocks around to help Kirby get past traps and the like.

The 3D feature is also a huge boon for Triple Deluxe; Not only does the game look great, with bright pigments punctuating each landscape, but also the 3D is subtle enough most of the time as to not be a distraction. Meanwhile, several puzzles take advantage of the depth of field the 3D provides to create hurdles Kirby has never really had to deal with before. So, by utilizing some 3DS hardware features (and not shoving them down our throats to feel “gimmicky”) and combining them with the classic platforming action the Kirby franchise is known for, Triple Deluxe provides a huge variety of unique challenges for Kirby to tackle.

For all the new things that this game added, there are also a lot of nice little nods to Kirby’s history, scratching that nostalgia itch older fans of the series may have. Not only are there 20 old-school copy abilities this time around—like Wheel and Needle—but also a lot of the bosses are takes on some of Kirby’s most iconic foes. From the return of Kracko to Flowery Woods (a larger, more difficult take on Whispy Woods), many of the bosses, and even a couple of the stages, are nothing but direct nods to what’s come before in the series.

If that’s not enough for you, there is also a new “Keychain” system. In the single player game, you can collect keychains that represent special scenes or characters from Kirby’s entire 22-year history in games. They don’t do anything in particular, but they’re nice to have. If you don’t want to spend time searching for them in the campaign, you can also spend 3DS coins (three at a time) to receive a random pick, or trade unneeded keychains with other players via StreetPass (a great way to get rid of any duplicates).

Not everything is perfect in Dream Land, though. The Kirby games have never really been that difficult, and Triple Deluxe is no different. If it takes you more than eight hours to find every collectible (that isn’t a randomized keychain) and beat the story, I’d be shocked. Also, I never liked the resetting of your lives and powers every time you exit the game. I know, this is something that has gone on for a long time in the series, but it still bothers me as it makes star collecting and 1-ups completely pointless—simply by exiting the game, you’ll be back to having seven lives. I get that it’s one way to get around an issue many other Nintendo platformers run into—the stockpiling of lives—but why not make a game that’s a little harder then?

Of course, Triple Deluxe is named that for a reason: the single-player campaign is just one of three included modes. The first added game mode is Dedede’s Drum Dash, a music rhythm game that has you hit the A button in time with the music as you try to maneuver King Dedede across a bunch of giant bongos. Honestly, this was a bit of a throwaway experience, as neither the interface nor the music are all that good.

The second extra game, Kirby Fighters, is far better—and actually might serve as a nice warm-up to the Smash Bros. games coming later this year. Up to four players can battle it out in the arenas inspired by classic Kirby locales, using special attacks to whittle away opponent’s lifebars while trying to maintain their own by eating food. As a twist, you can select from all of the powers from the single-player campaign to customize your Kirby, opening up possible match-ups such as Ninja Kirby vs. Bell Kirby vs. Beam Kirby vs. Leaf Kirby. This mode is so deep, it even has a single-player arcade ladder system, where you can try to see how fast you can make your way through seven different matches.

In the end, Kirby: Triple Deluxe is another fine addition to the long line of stellar handheld games in the series. A couple of outdated practices and a forgettable mini-game were not enough to stop me from feeling immensely satisfied with my experience after polishing off the final boss. New powers and well-executed use of the 3DS’ peripheral features added just a bit of freshness to keep this old formula working well, giving the Pink Puffball yet another successful debut on another Nintendo console.

Developer: HAL Laboratory, Inc. • Publisher: Nintendo • ESRB: E – Everyone • Release Date: 05.02.14
9.0
Kirby’s debut on the 3DS could not have been better as new powers and puzzles complement classic Kirby gameplay to provide an experience both fresh and familiar to longtime fans.
The Good Inventive puzzles and new powers complement classic Kirby gameplay.
The Bad The resetting of lives and powers each time you exit the game; Dedede’s Drum Dash mini-game.
The Ugly The fact that the main bad guy is based off a spider, but only has six legs, bothers me a lot.
Kirby Triple Deluxe is a 3DS exclusive. Review code was provided by Nintendo for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff

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Simpsons did it

We all know by now that taking a movie, TV show, or comic book and trying to turn it into a game rarely works. More often than not, it ends up being a huge mess that neither fans nor developers end up happy with. Occasionally, though, someone hits it out of the park and the risk pays off. One media property that’s still trying to hit gaming gold is Family Guy.

We’d rather sweep games like Back to the Multiverse under the rug than celebrate them, so Fox looked to change the series’ digital luck like they did with the Griffins’ Animation Domination cohorts, the Simpsons, and Tapped Out. Instead of EA Mobile, Fox tapped (no pun intended) TinyCo, the creator of TinyMonsters, to bring the mobile digital revolution to Quahog. Instead of breaking new ground, though, they simply decided to retread what’s already been done over in Springfield.

Right from the get-go, you can tell that Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is a carbon copy of The Simpsons: Tapped Out. Sure, some minor tweaks are present, like the story and characters obviously tailored to fit Family Guy, but starting with Peter and Ernie the Giant Chicken destroying Quahog in their latest brawl the same way that Homer destroyed Springfield by letting the power plant have a meltdown, this is just another free-to-play city builder with some Sunday-night flair.

The gameplay consists of rebuilding Quahog in any way you deem fit. You’ll be laying down roads, rebuilding houses and businesses from the show, and sending your favorite characters off to do various tasks in an attempt to earn currency to build up Quahog bigger and better than it was before. If you don’t want to wait for an hour for Chris to finish picking his nose or six hours for Mort to do Peter’s taxes, you can use real-world cash to buy premium currency or “clams” to make everyone almost instantaneously finish what they’re doing. The app also features a social aspect (explained as being part of Stewie’s multiverse) where you can invite your Facebook friends to join—and, if they do, you can visit their unique Quahogs and earn extra money and XP.

The payoff of hoarding cash and visiting friends is hopefully forwarding the “story” of rebuilding Quahog and unlocking some original animation and dialogue. The humor here is definitely a bright spot if you love the show, and Quest for Stuff even introduces its own set of zany, one-off characters, but I would’ve loved some more voice acting besides the prerecorded one-liners that get repeated constantly.

A major difference between Quest for Stuff and that other Fox animated-sitcom-inspired city builder is that each character also has bonus costumes that give them a new set of actions. Performing specific activities or having particular buildings also gives you bonuses to unlock even more costumes. Peter dressing as a “lady of the night,” Quagmire stripping down to a Speedo, and Lois going commando (not that kind of commando—like a soldier) are just some of the different outfits available.

Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff also tries harder not to turn into a game where you’re constantly waiting for quests to finish up. You rarely have to endure 12- and 24-hour tasks in order to finish quests that advance the game as you continue to unlock more of Quahog’s unique denizens and structures. This is a double-edged sword, though, since I also found that my Quahog got very cramped very quickly. I was constructing buildings faster than I was unlocking land—the exact opposite issue I often face in Tapped Out.

Despite the glaring lack of originality, The Quest for Stuff isn’t a bad game if you simply take it for what’s it worth: a free-to-play title that’s great for killing 5 to 10 minutes on your lunch break. But it won’t get you through a long plane flight. It won’t kill all that time wasted sitting at the DMV. It won’t get you through that boring meeting at work as you pretend to take notes on your iPad.

But dropping into your own digital Quahog for a couple of minutes a day will probably give you a much-needed chuckle as Bonnie twerks for way too long on a backyard stripper pole, Quagmire lets his pet gerbil loose, and Peter stuffs his face at the local burger joint. If you’re a fan of Family Guy (and considering you don’t have to spend any money on this), there are probably a lot worse things taking up space on your mobile device’s hard drive right now.

Developer: TinyCo • Publisher: TinyCo • ESRB: N/A • Release Date: 04.10.14
6.5
The lack of originality is evident from the opening animation, but in small doses, The Quest for Stuff can provide fans of Family Guy a welcome chuckle here and there, and that makes it worth the free download.
The Good Captures the essence of the show’s humor.
The Bad A lack of originality; only good in short intervals.
The Ugly Meg.
Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is available on Android and iOS devices. Primary version reviewed was for iOS using an iPad 2. Review code was provided by TinyCo for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Kinect Sports Rivals

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Getting nowhere fast

One of my biggest surprises during the launch of the new consoles wasn’t a particular game, but the absence of one. Microsoft didn’t release a wholly Kinect-oriented first-party game to show the potential of what the motion-control device could do for gaming. Well, six months after launch, Microsoft’s finally ready to rectify that glaring omission with Kinect Sports Rivals.

Rivals is developer Rare’s chance to help Microsoft grab that casual market early in this new generation—and prove why the new Kinect is worth an extra $100 for the Xbox One. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of pressure to put on a single title, and after playing Rivals for a dozen hours–far longer than most any sane person should–I can say that Rivals may hurt the case for Kinect a lot more than it helps it.

Kinect Sports Rivals follows the same formula as seen in the first two games of the series, with six different sports you can choose from: Soccer, Bowling, Tennis, Target Shooting, Climbing, and Wake Racing. These sports are all tied together this time, however, by a story that sees you, as the newest athlete, come to Rivals Island, where three warring factions vie for control of this tropical paradise through the art of competition. As you play through the missions, which really just serve as extremely long introductions to the games, you learn the personalities of the island’s inhabitants and finally get to choose to join one of them. After unlocking the sports in Story mode, you can then play them whenever you want.

Kinect Sports Rivals actually started off on a high note that made me extremely hopeful. Not only was it a joy to hear David Tennant providing the narration (shoutout to all the Whovians out there), but Rare’s facial-recognition tech is definitely a boon for the Kinect. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well my digital face turned out after scanning it into the system, especially when I had some less than spectacular results when I tried it at Gamescom last August. Unfortunately, the entire experience was nothing but downhill after this.

It’s a nice idea to try to motivate players through a loose story to play the different activities, but when compared to the Kinect Sports releases that came before it, Rivals is the most poorly executed of the bunch. Problems that were frequent with the first generation of Kinect rear their head again here far too often. Many times, I’d have to turn on every light in my apartment for the sensor to recognize me, and even giving the camera a decent six-foot berth, it often would say it lost sight of me while playing several of the games. At one point, it even said that it couldn’t see my legs, probably because I was wearing dark jeans, even though I’d never left my initial position from when I started.

My fashion faux pas aside, I quickly grew frustrated as I realized that even with all the touted advancements in the new Kinect, the same issues just kept cropping up. Even trying to navigate the menus by swiping my hands was a nightmare, and I ended up just using my controller to select where I wanted to go on Rivals Island instead.

The games themselves are also either dumbed-down versions of things we’ve already played, or so simple that you wonder why you’d even need to bother with a Kinect. Target Shooting is just pointing at the screen, Bowling is the same as before, Climbing breaks half the time because every time you reach over your head the Kinect sensor goes bonkers, Wake Racing feels like a test to see how long you can hold the same pose, Tennis is just swinging your arm around, and Soccer never picks up your leg motions correctly.

A couple of new features do work, at least. The focus on challenging your friends and trying to beat their scores and times provides a hint of replayability for über-competitive gamers. The addition of power-ups, like bowling balls with superspeed or double scoring in target shooting, also gives many of the sports an extra semblance of strategy (when you can get everything to work).

As a whole, however, Kinect Sports Rivals falls far short of its lofty ambitions. It’s not fun, and it only furthers the argument that the Kinect is completely unnecessary–and unwanted. Now I know why Microsoft didn’t launch with a Kinect-oriented game. I just hope that they decide to abandon any future projects revolving around the peripheral. Maybe they’ll let Rare go back to making good games again.

Developer: Rare • Publisher: Microsoft Studios • ESRB: E10+ – Everyone 10 and up • Release Date: 04.08.14
4.0
Instead of making a case as to why you need a Kinect, Kinect Sports Rivals shows that the peripheral—and most games revolving around it—still have a long way to come.
The Good The facial-recognition tech; David Tennant’s narration.
The Bad Familiar tracking and space issues shine a light of doubt on how far the new Kinect has supposedly come.
The Ugly Remembering when Rare made good games like GoldenEye and Donkey Kong Country—I miss those days.
Kinect Sports Rivals is a Xbox One exclusive. Review code was provided by Microsoft for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Trials Fusion

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Daredevil’s delight

I’ve always enjoyed the Trials series, because it’s uncommon nowadays to get a game that gives you a sense of accomplishment every time you finish a section—and that seems to be a staple of Trials’ charm. It constantly tests your reflexes as you try to guide a digital motorbike across ridiculous landscapes while battling Newton’s laws of motion. It’s rarely easy, but almost always fun.

So, it was with great pleasure to find that Trials Fusion, the latest entry in the series, has that balance that made me curse it at times—like when I didn’t have enough momentum to carry me through a vertical loop—but still made me want to try again and again until, thumbs aching, I could pump my fist in the air after nailing a perfect run for the gold medal.

Just like previous games in the series, you play as a motorbike driver who moves along a linear path through an obstacle course designed by madmen. By beating stages both quickly and without crashing, you earn medals, which then unlock more stages that continue to ramp up in difficulty. To increase replayability, each stage also has three special objectives that require you to play the course differently each time. Some tasks ask you to locate and flawlessly run through alternate paths, while others demand you perform a variety of acrobatic moves on your bike.

The first things players will likely notice is that Fusion’s courses are just as demented as those seen in previous Trials games. You bounce across a bunch of blimps hovering around skyscrapers, get shot into the air by water fountains in a park, and need to anticipate tracks that rise and fall at the whim of an automated factory’s maintenance programming. Couple this with the voice of your instructor providing color commentary in the background and the always comical demise you meet after crossing the finish line, and the tracks seem to have as much personality as some antagonists in more narratively driven games.

The controls are also just as tight as the previous games, with your position on the bike affecting momentum just as much as the pressure you apply to the gas or brakes. When you combine the insane level design with the crisp controls, it’s easy to see the series’ infamous difficulty is also mostly intact. Even early on, you can’t just hold down the accelerator and hope to barrel your way through each stage.

There’s a little more handholding overall, however, that Trials veterans should be aware of. Fusion sees a lot more checkpoints in each individual trial to restart from, but only a perfect run will net you gold, which is a nice way to cater to both the casual as well as the hardcore.

Something that clearly favors newcomers? Tricks don’t unlock until the third level, nearly two dozen stages in. While I get that a lot of controls might be a bit much for novice players to take in—and with this being the first game in the series on a Sony system, there’s a strong possibility for a new audience—that means experienced Trials players have to wait for almost a third of the campaign before they can unlock their Superman handlebar grab, and that could rub them the wrong way.

Putting this aside, when it comes to the core pillars of the game, developer RedLynx thankfully appears to have taken a “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” approach to things. There’s more to Fusion than just racing through obstacles and performing absurd poses in mid-air and praying that you stick the landing each time, though.

The renowned track creator also sees a return. RedLynx once again opens up their toy box and gives players all the tools they used to make the tracks the game launched with. Once you create your own tortuous run to the checkered flag, you can upload it to a new community bulletin board where players and developers will vote on tracks each week, with the best of the best getting the spotlight.

Like many of your runs through late-game courses, however, Fusion does hit the occasional pothole. A new leveling system sees you gain XP for every course and challenge you complete, and it’s used to unlock different costumes and bike parts. This common gaming feature hits a snag, though, because the parts are for purely cosmetic purposes. Cosmetic-only unlocks certainly aren’t unheard of, but I would’ve loved for new parts—or even entirely new bikes—to feel like they handle differently from one another. The only vehicle that doesn’t feel like a clone of all the others is the ATV, but that’s because it’s a completely different class of vehicle. I don’t need to completely deconstruct the bike and fine-tune the engine like some car-racing simulator, but knowing that some bikes go faster or have better grip would’ve given me some motivation to unlock items.

The multiplayer from Trials Evolution also returns, but only a local versus option is available day one. A patch with a new online multiplayer mode is coming down the line, but neither mode is likely to hold your attention because your focus will always deviate back to not crashing than winning the race.

Trials Fusion is still a worthwhile experience for all those wannabe daredevils out there. When you’re able to push past a lot of the little additions that didn’t work out, Trials Fusion is still one heck of a platform racer with a core that longtime fans will enjoy—and that newcomers should embrace.

Developer: RedLynx • Publisher: Ubisoft • ESRB: E10+ – Everyone 10 and up • Release Date: 04.16.14
8.0
While Trials Fusion isn’t the best entry in the long-running motorbike-racing franchise, the core of what made previous entries so great remains, which should satisfy longtime fans and newcomers alike.
The Good Gameplay is still challenging enough that it feels like an accomplishment when you beat courses.
The Bad Pointless leveling system; local multiplayer only at launch.
The Ugly The looping theme song that haunts you in your nightmares.
Trials Fusion is available on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for PS4. Review code was provided by Ubisoft for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Constant C

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March 26, 2014

The C stands for charming

Constant C, a puzzle-platformer where players take control of an intrepid robot trying to right science gone wrong, immediately intrigued me when I first saw it at Tokyo Game Show last year. With a couple of simple button presses, gravity and time were mine to command, so the possibilities for countless physics-based puzzles instantly became evident. The only real question: Would the cute little bot’s platforming escapades have enough of a soul to motivate me through the dozens of stages in the final game?

The bot in question—known as Rescue Robot—is designed to activate if his space-station home ever succumbs to some calamity—and, as is quickly relayed via the master AI system, it has. After experimenting with time travel and gravity manipulation, one of the scientists’ devices runs amok, enveloping the entire station in a stasis field that’s frozen everything in place—except you, thanks to inhibitors in your robo-parts that let you walk and jump around. So, it’s fallen to your metal shoulders to see if there’s a way to turn the field off and save the facility.

The biggest hook here is how you can interact with the immobile world. Starting off only able to pull nearby objects out of stasis, you can ride the momentum of boxes that froze while falling to get to another part of a stage. Alternatively, you can clear other boxes out of your path to open up exit doors. As the story progresses, more complex obstacles, such as lasers, moving platforms, and globes, all start to hinder your progress.

Later on, your powers increase and diversify, mirroring the smooth, upward flow of difficulty you’ll see over the dozens of stages set across six levels. These include the gravity skill mentioned earlier, which allows you to turn the world on its axis by either 90 or 180 degrees, and a second stasis-dampening field that allows multiple objects in motion at once. The expansion of your powerset also, unfortunately, opens up your playtime to potentially devolve into a comedy of errors. The gravity abilities allow Rescue Robot to use momentum to fling boxes around corners and into normally unreachable positions, which fast becomes a cornerstone of gameplay.

I found having the 90- and 180-degree rotational shifts relative to your position maddening at times, however—I kept wishing that the buttons were instead assigned to specific walls in the room, and I’d often rotate myself the wrong way, thinking the leftmost wall was still X, even though now it had changed to B after my initial rotation. Yes, this is largely user error, since I kept slipping into a way of thinking that the game obviously wasn’t designed for. To do it the way I would’ve preferred would’ve required a different control scheme, possibly setting up all four directions to the D-pad or the second analog stick. Having to take a step out of the game, though, and methodically plan out my button presses instead of letting them flow naturally was a bit disappointing.

The second stasis-dampening field also comes with problems, but these are clearly on the technical side. Rescue Robot’s presence brings objects into and out of stasis at an ever-quickening rate, and the later levels require more precise timing and movements. As a result, the use of the second stasis field would often culminate in some screen tearing and lag, and it would occasionally lead to frustrating deaths for reasons that weren’t always clear.

The more I played Constant C, though, the more I forgave these shortcomings. Besides solving puzzles, you’re also encouraged to collect special data tubes. Not only do these unlock later stages, but also they allow the master AI to “remember” security footage from before the accident, letting you see what led to the space station’s eventual downfall. These movies include a surprising amount of character development by showing you the fates of your creators and provide an unexpectedly delightful, compelling backstory.

The data tubes also serve another purpose, though. Some levels are simple and straightforward, tempting you to just press on and let the station’s secrets remain undiscovered because the data tubes are tucked away behind near-impregnable defenses that truly push your reflexes. It’s here, in the optional objectives, where the overall difficulty can spike. You could probably rush through the game in about four hours, but if you want to collect all the tubes and have a more fleshed-out and enjoyable story, you’re looking at easily twice as long. If you’re a completionist like me with a penchant for punishment, however, you won’t be satisfied until you collect every last one. Plus, it always felt rewarding when I figured the puzzles out, and the process never felt daunting.

Of course, once you beat the game and collect all the data tubes, there’s not much in the way of replayability. But considering the 100-plus puzzles that push your skills with a controller, charming story, and interesting mechanics, Constant C shows—much like its plucky protagonist—that it has more than enough to overcome its shortcomings.

Developer: International Games System, 5pb • Publisher: Mages, 5pb • ESRB: E10+ • Release Date: 03.12.2014
8.5
Some minor bugs and a lack of replayability can’t hold back Constant C, a puzzle-platformer full of memorable conundrums and surprisingly charming characters.
The Good Inventive puzzles; delightful characters.
The Bad Lack of replayability; controls take some getting used to.
The Ugly Realizing how much time you spent struggling to get those last couple of data tubes.
Constant C is available on Xbox 360 and PC. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox 360. Review code was provided for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Yoshi’s New Island

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This is why dinosaurs are extinct

For many gamers who grew up in the SNES era, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island was nothing short of extraordinary. Not only did the game look and play great, but no one would’ve figured that playing babysitter with Yoshi—a character himself just introduced in Super Mario World­—would be as charming or as addictive as it was. Since then, we’ve visited Yoshi’s Island a couple more times, but those subsequent sequels and spin-offs never quite lived up to that original outing that featured Baby Mario.

Nintendo never stops trying to improve on past iterations, however, so they brought in Takashi Tezuka—the original Yoshi’s Island creative director—to find a way to finally top his 1995 surprise hit. So, with the help of relatively new developer Arzest, Tezuka, now in a producer role, presents Yoshi’s New Island. But you can’t recapture the magic of Yoshi’s Island without the proper team in place, from top to bottom.

Chronologically, Yoshi’s New Island picks up immediately after Super Mario World 2. That dumb stork that let Baby Luigi get kidnapped in the first game realizes that he delivered the Mario Bros. to the wrong house. Taking flight, bundles in beak, the stork begins to search for the Bros.’ proper parents. Kamek, Baby Bowser’s caregiver and head Magikoopa, sees another opportunity to kidnap the twins. He again snatches Baby Luigi, and again lets Baby Mario slip through his fingers and fall to an island below. Luckily for Baby Mario, this happens to be the Yoshis’ second island—their summer home (kind of like those jackasses from my home state of New Jersey who vacation on Long Island). The Yoshis snatch up the future plumber and quickly realize they must unite the twins, no matter the cost.

At the very least, most of the elements you’d expect to be quality in a Nintendo game shine through here. The music’s great—I found myself sitting on the title screen while writing this review simply because I found the theme song that enjoyable. The game also looks very nice, providing the bright colors and stark contrasts that make enemies and allies alike really pop off the screen with the series’ trademark coloring-book art style. If only the same could be said of the 3D effect, which doesn’t do all that much to the world except provide a little roundness to Yoshi and some of the enemies.

Yoshi’s New Island also controls nicely, and Yoshi can use all the same moves from previous games like his stutter-step float and chowing down on enemies to turn them into eggs. He also gets some new moves that provide a little variety compared to the original game, such as making giant eggs out of giant Shy Guys to destroy the environment, or making giant metal eggs out of—you guessed it—giant metal Shy Guys to help him sink to the ocean floor.

As a fan of Super Mario World 2, I really wanted the game to reinvigorate this spin-off series. Instead, Yoshi’s New Island falls far short of its ambition. On paper, it’s as long—and features as much replayability—as the original. Six worlds, each with eight stages, and each with a bevy of collectibles in the form of stars, red coins, and flowers, could keep completionists busy for hours on end. Here, though, the stages are far shorter than in the original Yoshi’s Island, and I completed the game, with most items found, in fewer than 10 hours. This lack of depth in each stage meant I felt no joy of discovery when I came across a new warp pipe or hidden crevasse, no sense of accomplishment when I found every item on a stage. It all just felt like a cheap—and far easier—rehash of the original.

How easy, you ask? This is possibly the easiest Nintendo game I’ve ever played, and I died only a little more than a dozen times. And that’s after I killed myself several times stupidly in the last few stages because I’d become so disenchanted with the entire experience. Before this game, I don’t remember any Mario game feeling like a grind, no matter how simple it may have been at its core. Here, I found myself running into enemies a few times and letting Baby Mario cry until the timer ran down to zero, just to punish the little brat. That incessant whine served doubly as a personal torture for the fact that I ever got my hopes up in the first place.

While on the subject of torture, the game also features a multiplayer. At first, the six minigames (each unlocked after beating a world), sound like they could be a positive element if they proved worthwhile. Instead, they’re the biggest facepalm moment of all (as EGM’s Andrew Fitch can probably attest to, since he helped me test them out). Instead of versus minigames, they’re all co-op-oriented, so you’re just trying to work with a buddy to beat your own high scores over and over again. How sweet and innocent and not at all what I want from a multiplayer minigame. Could it have been that bad for the two players to face off against one another in competitive enemy-eating, coin-collecting, or balloon-popping?

Even the things Yoshi’s New Island gets right feel watered down compared to the original. I loved the boss battles from the first Yoshi’s Island.  I remember Burt the Bashful, Salvo the Slime, and Naval Piranha like it was yesterday. And while the bosses start off well here, they fall into simple patterns and die in a predictable three-hit fashion, which most of the original Yoshi’s Island bosses never did. Three hits to kill not just the first boss, but every boss, just seems so antiquated now, and it’s shocking games so often still adhere to that rule.

The Yoshi transformations remain a lot of fun but falter for different reasons. Like before, our tongue-happy dinosaur pal can become a helicopter and a submarine, but he can now also change into a bobsled, a jackhammer, a mine cart, or a hot-air balloon. But even this is spoiled by the fact that you’re forced to use the 3DS’ gyroscope to control Yoshi through the special sections, making what could’ve been a saving grace clunky and awkward instead.

You can’t blame Nintendo for trying to capitalize on a character that clearly holds a special place in many gamers’ hearts. In retreading ground most of their audience will be familiar with—and doing it less successfully this time around—it just seems they went about it the wrong way. As a platformer, Yoshi’s New Island works fine, but it’s definitely not up to Nintendo’s usually stellar standards.

Developer: Arzest • Publisher: Nintendo • ESRB: E – Everyone • Release Date: 03.14.2014
6.0
It may say “new” in the title, but there’s simply not enough to get excited about in Yoshi’s New Island. Fans of the original will probably be turned off by this inferior and all-too-familiar retread.
The Good Fun boss battles; new eggs and transformations for Yoshi.
The Bad Relies too heavily on nostalgia to cover up gameplay deficiencies.
The Ugly The return of the most annoying sound in videogames: Baby Mario’s crying.
Yoshi’s New Island is a Nintendo 3DS exclusive and was reviewed using a retail code provided by Nintendo.
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EGM Review: Walking Dead: Season Two: Episode 2 – A House Divided

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Cannot stand on its own

After nearly three months between episodes (the holiday break no doubt adding to the delay), we finally get a chance to play out the cliffhanger ending from the first episode of The Walking Dead: Season Two from Telltale. Because I want to avoid spoilers, I’ll talk about Episode 2 – A House Divided in broader terms than usual.

For as much as I looked forward to it, A House Divided is my least favorite episode of the eight Walking Dead chapters we’ve received so far. While it’s clearly designed to set up events for the last three parts of the season, it develops at a much faster pace than players may be used to. In only 90 minutes, the entire group changes, both in terms of its personality and its makeup. This accelerated storytelling meant that the gravity of most situations didn’t hit me until after I’d finished the episode, so many of the “gut check” moments that have come to define the series just weren’t there in my eyes.

I think part of the problem is that there’s so much focus on action in this chapter. A House Divided offers almost no exploration or puzzle-solving to speak of, moments that normally allow players a chance to catch their breath—or at least lull them into a false sense of security. Here, it seemed like Clem was just thrown into crisis after crisis where lives were at stake, dulling the effects of members added or subtracted from the group. Plus, the couple of conundrums thrown Clem’s way are overly simple and not really worth being called “puzzles.”

One story element that is enjoyable? Ramifications from Season One and 400 Days finally start to crop up. Even though I was partially expecting it, a powerful reunion took place that was one of the more moving moments I’ve ever seen in a game.

Other problems arise beyond the quickened pace, however. The most glaring is that Clem, an 11-year-old girl, has become the leader of the group. While it makes sense that everyone sees her as wise beyond her years due to what she’s been through, putting the fate of so many lives solely in her hands feels wrong. Maybe it’s the idea of her having lost so much innocence that really doesn’t sit well with me, but seeing her pretty much boss around middle-aged physician Carlos, twentysomething Luke, and the rest of the group just doesn’t work.

Also, with all the action on display in this episode, I rarely felt as if what I did with the controller mattered. We’ve had to shoot zombies in the series before, and you have to do it again here. Clem’s known how to shoot a pistol for two years now, and she’s shot zombies from point-blank range plenty of times. So, when placed once again into such a situation, why does it take three tries for Clem to get the satisfying, brain-blasting explosion when I put the aiming reticule on a zombie’s forehead to get a headshot kill? You still have a large enough zombie horde to trigger the familiar click of an empty chamber and lead into the predictable scene where Clem has to run for her life and fend off one of the undead hand-to-hand. Don’t make me feel like I’m wasting my time.

And that’s the thing about A House Divided: While it does a nice job of changing up the setting and puts all the pieces in place for what should be a crazy third episode, Episode 2 is mostly just filler, and I felt like it wasted my time to a degree. If you’re a fan of the series, obviously, you should play it, because your decisions will continue to carry over—and you can’t play Episode 3 without getting through this first. You might want to hold off until the third episode is about to be released, however, so that you can quickly get the taste of Episode 2 out of your mouth with what will hopefully be a nice payoff.

Developer: Telltale Games • Publisher: Telltale Games • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 03.04.14
6.0
A House Divided is the weakest episode, by far, in Telltale’s Walking Dead series. Much of the action and plot “twists” are predictable and don’t hold nearly as much weight as in previous episodes.
The Good Old friends from Season One and 400 Days finally make their presence known.
The Bad A faster, more action-oriented pace dulls the effects of the more “dramatic” moments.
The Ugly An 11-year-old ends up bossing around a ton of adults in the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse.
The Walking Dead: Season Two: Episode 2 – A House Divided is available on Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and iOS devices. Primary version reviewed was for the Xbox 360 with a retail code provided by Telltale.
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