By William Chandler

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am definitely way behind on this one. But c’mon friend, this is an enthusiast site. If you want some fucking by the minute video game coverage of just about every single shit property that hits the market then perhaps you should head on over to Giant Spot or Rock, Paper, Informer or whatever sites people like these days. Anyway, I really like what Telltale games have been doing with their properties as of late. They are a studio that shows great improvement with just about every single release and I respect the fuck out of that. Now they’ve polished their formula to a mirror shine and even though The Walking Dead was decidedly not my jive, that fact had absolutely nothing to do with the game itself. I really just don’t care at all about The Walking Dead universe. That said, I was still able to complete the first two episodes of that series just out of pure appreciation for the mechanics and solid character writing.

I am so indescribably flaky when it comes to schedules that there is absolutely no way I can stick to a set viewing time and remember to tune in every week or month or whatever. This creates a problem when it comes to me and Telltale because they really dig their episodic release formats for their games. Fortunately, the entire first season of The Wolf Among Us is now out and, being a huge fan of both noir and fables, I decided to start playing.

I’m not here to spoil the whole damn thing for you because the chain of events that occurs in the roughly two hour series premiere is absolutely fascinating, but suffice to say that the plot thus far appears to be extremely well done. Who knows if the whole thing can keep up with this level of quality but I definitely have my fingers crossed. Even the dialogue is really solid across the board, but I was particularly impressed with the depth of character from many of the seemingly shallow side characters you meet. Both the Huntsman and Toad show a great deal of depth by the end of the first episode even though they seemed like some seriously basic ass bitches at the beginning. I certainly hope this trend continues as well. Bigsby, the leading man, is decidedly generic as far as protagonists go because he struggles heavily with not giving a fuck and being extremely disliked, but I like him anyway because I identify with both of those traits.

This game, like others in the Telltale library, is extremely reliant on quicktime events to move things along, and while they are never really going to be an ideal game mechanic, they are about as well implemented here as they are ever going to be. So, unless you absolutely despise their entire existence, you won’t find any problems to speak of. Other game mechanics include standard adventure game tropes of interacting with flashing objects in the environment and talking to various people about various subjects to various results. Both of these aspects are similarly well done and I particularly like the fact that your dialogue responses are timed, meaning you often have very little time to decide what to say. This ensures that the conversations flow well and feel very natural, lending even more credit to the writing quality. The Wolf Among Us also advertises that you, as the player, will be making many difficult choices throughout the game that will drastically alter the progression of events, and while I have not played enough to truly see whether or not this is the case, it certainly feels like your choices matter at the time.

Honestly, unless you absolutely hate story driven adventure games, you should probably just play The Wolf Among Us.

The Verdict: I give it a “Dope as fuck” out of 170.