The Wolf Among Us

I broke one of my gaming rules to complete the Wolf Among Us on Xbox One. I had already completed the game on Xbox 360 but it did not qualify for a review as Arcade titles do not have to have 1,000 Gamerscore. This changed when the Xbox One was released which required all games to have 1,000 Gamerscore and they also rereleased The Wolf Among Us. And made it free with gold.

Now, I knew I had already completed the game on 360 but I did find it quite enjoyable and it was free so why not?

I won’t talk too much about the storyline because it’s the main reason for playing the game but it is basically an original take on fairy tales where all the characters live together in a weird twisted version of our world. You play as Sherriff Bigby Wolf (yes, the big bad wolf) as he attempts to solve an ongoing series of murders.

A lot of effort has gone into the graphical depiction and characterisation of many of your favourite childhood characters and the voice acting is definitely one of the highlights of the game.

The general gameplay mechanic is the same as most TellTale games – see Game of Thrones – in that the way the story progresses and the way characters behave towards you are influenced by the dialogue and action decisions you make. Sometimes this does fall short though as you can see slight pauses between lines of dialogue that show something different would have been said if you had made a different decision earlier in the game. It’s not game breakingly obvious though so not a major deal breaker.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 35 Achievements

Another reason I cheekily chose to play this one again is that the achievements are really easy. All of you have to do for 30 of them is play the game from start to finish. I think I mentioned in the Game of Thrones review that there is scope to add replayability through the achievements but TellTale has chosen not to do this for any of their games to date. However, The Wolf Among Us does have an additional set of requirements.

During each of the episodes, you have to witness certain events or meet certain characters to complete all of the Book of Fables entries for each episode. Sometimes this sees you having to do alternate dialogue options for about ten extra minutes of game play but there is nothing so onerous as to make you play the whole thing twice.

Downloadable Content – N/A

As I said at the start, The Wolf Among Us is one of the more enjoyable story game experiences available on the Xbox One. If you haven’t played a TellTale game, this is definitely the one to start with. It offers the most originally and the more engaging characters that the series has to offer.