The Walking Dead - A New Frontier

A note before reading – the game is over a year old so expect this review to contain information that could be considered spoilers. Read on at your own risk.

The latest instalment of the current guise of The Walking Dead franchise was another Halloween purchase that I pushed up my playlist due to it’s easy completion status. However, what I failed to recognise again is how much of a drag these games are to get through.

A New Frontier sees you take control of Javier Garcia – a guy I actually thought was called Harvey for the first few hours of the game – as you are given the backstory of his initial survival before being brought up to the current timeline which is a few months after the end of season 2.

The first thing that you can do is import your decisions from the previous seasons if you have played them. As the story develops, in true Telltale style, any decisions you previously made are immediately made redundant through flashback scenes. The game follows this course through the remainder of the game too. All decisions can be summed by asking the question, ‘do you want John to die now, or later?’ He is going to die, you cannot stop it from happening but at least the game presents you with a choice in the matter.

Another notable thing about the in-game decisions is that some of them don’t even impact how the other characters react to you. The prime example of this is Tripp. When I played, I went behind his back to get what I wanted faster and then later I shot at some cunts who were trying to kill me which caused them to burn his town to the ground. And he still acts like your best friend. I know that the guys who burned the town down would have done it anyway but the way I played, Tripp should have blamed me.

This kind of behaviour continues throughout the whole game to the point where characters will change their opinion of you at the flip of a switch and go from liking you to totally hating you and it feels very much like this happens because it has to happen for the story Telltale want to tell.

I gave up caring about the outcomes the characters could face about half way through and instead of trying to keep everyone happy, I just split between doing what Clementine and Kate wanted the whole time and screw everyone else. I have to say, it made the game more fun not caring!

A New Frontier suffers from the same game play issues as its predecessors with slow load times and sometimes glitchy and patchy graphics. In addition to this, the music continues the trend of being depressing throughout, to the point where I couldn’t play it for a prolonged amount of time and had to watch some uplifting TV to get over it.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 30 Achievements

There are six achievements for each episode and it’s another case of just completing the game in order to get them all. The only hard bit is trying not to fall asleep when you actually have to take control of Javier and move him around to look at various bits of garbage.

Downloadable Content – N/A

So apparently there is a final season on the way but Telltale have decided to release the entire current collection again which can be bought for a mere £49.99. Not only does this make no sense to do it for an incomplete collection, but it’s a total rip off at that price – but probably examples the willingness of people to pay £4 per episode because if you haven’t played the games and want to play them, £49.99 is probably cheaper than buying them all individually. I won’t be buying it though.

I will play the final season to see how it pans out but to be honest, I will be glad to see the back of the The Walking Dead series. I can’t help but feel that the series would have been much more enjoyable if it wasn’t sold as ‘your choices matter.’ Because they don’t.

DreamBreak

As part of my Digerati splurge, I also picked up DreamBreak without knowing much about it. True Achievements recently ran a ‘12 days of Christmas’ Challenge and one of the challenges was to unlock a set amount of achievements in Action Adventure games.  Now I’ve completed it... I still have no idea what it’s about. So this will be a very short review.

As stated DreamBreak is an action adventure set in a crazy version of Russia. You start the game by walking to work from the train station and doing some work... then some weird shit happens and you end up on a quest to stop some evil corporation from doing... something. I’m not quite sure, but as I used a guide (again, I know) to sweep all the achievements in a few hours, it would be unfair of me to comment on the story in any way.

The graphics and controls however, I found very fiddly. It’s from the same guys that made Uncanny Valley so the graphics suffer from the same issues I put in that review. With the controls as well, again you can tell it’s a game that wasn’t originally designed for the console market as when you have to use a gun, it’s awkward and fiddly. However, they do give you an infinite shield so dying is fairly difficult once you know how to use it.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 11 Achievements

It takes about 1-2 hours to run through the game using a guide. Without one, I imagine it would be an indefinite amount of time to complete as working out what you need to do in some circumstances is just plain difficult.

Anyway, if you play through the game without going out of your way, you will get three achievements. There are three different achievements for different choices at the end of the game but you can use tactical saves to get these.

The other six achievements are all situational that require you to find and interact with certain items in the gaming world. There is an arcade machine you need to play and complete for two achievements. This is a simple game of shooting guys while using your shield to not get hit but it takes a strangely large amount of time to get through the game which feels a bit ridiculous.

You also have to bet on a lama race (yes, a lama race) and hope your lama wins. The race outcome is predetermined though so if you know which lama is going to win the first race before you bet, this is easy. There is another achievement for riding a hover bike which involves an interaction which some random dude at some point in the game.

The last two achievements are for getting some collectibles scattered throughout the game. They do stand out but again, knowing where they are ahead of time makes this easy. There aren’t many of them and the game world isn’t that big so it’s not too much of a pain to get them.

Downloadable Content – N/A

DreamBreak is another weird game. Even after playing it through the whole way, I’m sure I understand what the point of it was. But it is an easy completion for Gamerscore enthusiasts and it doesn’t take too long to get through.

Uncanny Valley

This one was part of my Halloween sale spending splooge that saw me buy a load of Digerati games. It’s also the second game picked by my number selection program.

My resounding impression of the game is that it’s really fucking weird. You play a guy called Tom. At least that’s what I think his name is. My biggest criticism of the game is the fact that all dialogue is communicated via text boxes and the font is ridiculously hard to read. It’s an old style computer type from those text adventure things that makes ‘h’s ‘m’s and ‘n’s interchangeable.

Anyway, the story sees Tom travel from his home to some weird place in the middle of nowhere for a change of scenery and to escape some gangsters he has pissed off for some unknown reason. At the same time, he keeps having weird visions and nightmares of these black, shadowy zombie-like guys who chase him and look like they are going to kill him. This opening to the game is good at creating a feeling of horror and the music is apt as well. This, coupled with the fact that as the player, you have no idea what’s going on, does create a terrifying atmosphere.

Gameplay wise, you...have to do the job of a nightwatchman at the abandoned complex you work at. Or do you? You can actually do pretty much anything you want in the game within its own context. You get clues as to how to progress the game in certain ways but essentially you are free to do whatever you want. Like kill your supervisor with a fire extinguisher on the first day. Or steal his car.

The game is played in a 2D plane where you can go left or right and through doors. It’s a Steam port so the controls are a bit wonky especially when you have to use a gun. In fact, using the gun was probably the most difficult part of the game. It’s a bit of a shame that the controls are what influence this though.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 12 Achievements

With the open nature of the game comes a very varied and tricky achievement list. It is entirely possible to get through the whole game without unlocking any of them. There are essentially three endings that you need to unlock for respective achievements.

I admit, I did use a guide for this as I wanted to smash it out as quickly as possible. There are two achievements for collecting weird cassette tapes that are scattered around the place and one of them is needed in order to open a door during one of your playthroughs. I found the collectibles a little hard to see and there is another control failing here. I couldn’t work out whether I needed to use the A button or the RB button to pick stuff up and it seemed that the game didn’t either as it was wildly inconsistent when I was trying to pick stuff up.

All of the other achievements are situational ones that you will come across as you play. I will say this though, it’s an experience.

The one I struggled with was for shooting an android and actually this is where I wasted a lot of time with the playthroughs. The gun mechanics are difficult and unwieldy and when I tried to kill the android, he ended up killing me. This isn’t a game over though. It just changes the events you experience in game. This was massively problematic as it auto saves if you move too far and then you have to start your playthrough over again. So I had to do three and a half playthroughs rather than three.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Uncanny Valley was an interesting and varied few hours of gameplay even if I confess to not wholly getting it. It’s a solid 1,000 points to add to the score as well and doesn’t take overly long to get through all of the bits and pieces. The dialogue takes the main prize for originality despite being hard to read in places.

Crypt of the Serpent King

This is another one that I had to use my American credit to obtain which I did only after it went on sale. Before playing, I took the time to read some reviews and some of them are absolutely scathing. As soon as I dived in I was expecting it to be an absolute pile of garbage. I’m not going to lie, it’s not great but it didn’t deserve some of the ire it generated.

Firstly, it’s a case of you get what you pay for. The game retails at $1.99 so comparing it to likes of Skyrim is unfair. In fact, any major title from an established developer is unfair in terms of comparison and there is some real shit out there retailing at a lot higher prices.

Secondly, it’s a port of an Xbox 360 Indie title so the developers should probably get a little bit of credit for managing to create something so cheaply that has generated as much emotive response as it has.

On to the game itself, it’s a dungeon crawler where you navigate through corridors, collecting keys and hitting enemies with a weapon. Most levels can be cleared with a simple counter attack function where you wait for the enemy to try and hit you, step out of the way, then hit them and repeat. I didn’t know this when I first played so I ran in all guns blazing and got murdered by the fourth or fifth rat-like monster I encountered.

There are seven levels where you fight essentially the same enemy – they just look different. Level 2 is a little different as the keys are surrounded by fire rather than a moat of lava or spikes. A lot of people have complained about the jumping in this game too. I personally didn’t have any issues with it. I think I misjudged one jump but apparently there is a specific way to jump over the lava in level 4 so either the developers patched this out and made it easier or it wasn’t that hard to begin with.

The game has a levelling function and this is where I started to question just what was going on. You can increase three stats; agility, strength and endurance. Of the three, only agility makes any bit of difference to the gameplay so it’s totally pointless. You can also buy weapons, of which only one upgrade is really necessary and the only difference it makes is that you need to hit enemies two or three times instead of three of four times to kill them (except for dungeon bosses.)

The other element that got me was the music. It’s really poorly constructed and not in keeping with what’s going on in the game. There’s an audio cue when a bad guy sees you but this is very selective and I got attacked from behind several times because I wasn’t expecting an enemy to be there. Also, the volume picks up and goes ‘epic’ and loud for literally no reason. This part of the game does feel broken but I didn’t get any of the graphical errors that other gamers experienced.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 21 Achievements

As I’ve said there’s not a lot to the game so maybe that’s why the achievements are specifically designed to make you play the game three times to get them all. You get an achievement for each level completed on each of the three difficulty levels so once you master the step-in-hit-step-out technique, it’s a doddle, just a bit boring.

Downloadable Content – N/A

The Crypt of the Serpent King is a not a good game. It is underdeveloped and the lack of benefit from stat increases is the worst part of it. That said, it costs $1.99 and you get what you pay for. If you’re expecting it to be masterpiece then you’re expectations are too high.

Nightmares from the Deep 2: The Siren's Call

As it stands there’s only one more Artifex Mundi game to go after this one which probably means I’ll be picking up Outlast again soon and addressing more challenging things in the gaming universe. Just not Crackdown 2. However, since I drafted this paragraph another two games have been released so there’s actually three… oh well.

Anyway, The Siren’s Call, sees you step back into the shoes of the protagonist of the first Nightmares from the Deep game as a fish man comes to deliver a package you are not expecting in the middle of the night. This in itself contains a lot of questions. Why would this be happening? Why would you go to such lengths to open the package without any explanation? Especially after the last time this happened it didn’t go particularly well. As expected it all goes horribly wrong and after the initial scenes, you go sailing off to Tortuga to save the world from the Kraken. It couldn’t be more Pirates of the Caribbean if it tried.

My biggest issue with the game is that of your sidekick who you have actually come to Tortuga to help. He is completely useless, gets beaten up twice so you have to save him and then, later in the game, he has the audacity to turn around and say he can’t help you unless you go and get him a disguise. It’s the most ridiculous storytelling ever. I get that it’s driven by the game but seriously, did everyone forget you came here to help them? Fuck.

The gameplay is the standard faire of hidden picture scenes and puzzles and there’s no real new stuff. I did think there was a lot of backtracking required which was nice as you didn’t know when you were fully done with some scenes. This is more in keeping with the older Artifex Mundi games.

In addition to the hidden picture scenes, you can also play Mahjong and this is where the game being originally built for PCs suffers a bit. Having to move the highlighted tile around was troublesome to the point where I couldn’t actually select the one I wanted from time to time as it was in an isolated position and the cursor wouldn’t go there.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 30 Achievements

In terms of the achievements, outside of the main game, hidden picture scenes, not using hints, blah, blah, blah there are two things you need to do to get 100%.

The first thing is collectibles. They have actually made this much more challenging than previous games. You need to find three sets of collectibles which include parrots which morph in and out of existence, octopi which are just normal collectibles but are sometimes quite tricky to see and hidden seahorses. There are only seven seahorses but in order to find them you have to click on things you wouldn’t normally click on to get them to show up. And they break the convention of having only one hidden item per scene – in one scene, there are two seahorses to be found!

The other thing is completing all of the Mahjong games which means two playthoughs of the game are required. You also have to complete one of these puzzles in less than 1 minute and the only real way to do this is by switching to Mahjong after finding the last item in a hidden picture scene. This tricks the game into thinking you done a Mahjong game in under a minute.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Nightmares from the Deep: The Siren’s Call is a relatively quick completion despite the second playthrough requirements. It’s one of the better games in terms of gameplay too. The story is good despite the questionable behaviour of some characters so all in all it’s a solid game as well as an easy 1,000 Gamerscore.