Now this was a real surprise. Telltale's finally stumbled upon a license fully in sync with their strengths, and the results are stupendous. Forget about all the boring drama from
The Walking Dead and the attempted maturity from
The Wolf Among Us and welcome in the exciting new generation of Telltale games. This is the best it's been since the studio's beginning and should put an end to any doubts over whether or not they were ever going to recover from their Walking Dead experiment.
Borderlands of all things. Who'd have thought? I don't keep up with the universe at all, having only played through the first one, but no matter. You don't need to know anything about it to enjoy this game. Just know that it's a sci-fi action adventure that'll have you smiling the whole way through. The only bad thing I can say about the story is its heavy dosage of modern comedy writing style, the kind engineered to get 20-somethings yucking it up afterward at the office. I have a low tolerance for that kind of thing, but even still, it didn't seriously detract from my enjoyment of the first two episodes.
Telltale's even taken some of their biggest criticisms against their QTEs to heart. I nearly fell off the couch when I played
this part from the first episode. There are plenty more scenes like this where you have to rapidly think to yourself, Do I do this, i.e. follow the button prompt, or don't I? Although there was some element of my wanting to fail that QTE on purpose because I thought it'd be funny, because the setting allows for such humor in the first place (unlike in games like
Heavy Rain) it becomes a valid branch, and we're treated to an unexpected piece of videogame magic that we can laugh with, not at.
This has turned out to be a real fun adventure that I'm glad to be a part of. Part of me wants to load up the third episode right now, but I've already played enough for the day. Even so, it makes me wish we had more games like this, and it's even got me interested in what's in store for Telltale's
Minecraft: Story Mode, which could potentially turn out to be just as great.