Introduction
The Wolf Amongst Us is Telltales follow up game to their excellent Walking Dead games. Again it is based on a comic book series, although this time its a less well known one: Bill Willinghams Fables. Don't let the fact you are not familiar with the series put you off though. If you are at all familiar with fairytales, myths and legends you will know all you really need to to enjoy the game. Do you know who the Big Bad Wolf is? Red Riding Hood? Beauty and the Beast? Then you will be fine.
For those wanting a bit more background to the situation, the basic (spoiler free) version goes like this: the people and creatures of the old stories are real, called Fables, and come from a series of worlds commonly referred to as the Homelands. A Big Horrible Conquering Mysterious Nasty known as the Adversary (because they dont know who it really is) started taking over the Homeland years ago and a bunch of these Fables escaped into the real world, and they are now hiding out in New York (apart from the ones that cant pass as human, who live on a secret out of the way patch of land called the Farm). Couple other things that are probably worth knowing: Not all Fables are well known characters, some of them are basically Villager #4 and the like. All Fables live a damn long time and are capable of healing from worse injuries than regular humans (referred to as Mundies). Exactly how long they live and how tough they are is based on how many Mundies know about them, making people like Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs damn close to immortal. Whilst the comics are (flashbacks aside) based in roughly the present day, The Wolf Amongst Us is based in the 80s. This last part is genius, taking something that could have been a bit cutesy and daft and turning it into a glorious 80s noir detective story.
Gameplay
Can I just point out that I agree with the opinion of a growing part of the gaming press in that I think "Gameplay" is a stupid, meaningless word that should be avoided as it often does more harm than good? Right, well with that in mind, I think I should also point out that this game is going to cause a bunch more "what is a game?" style arguments. If you have played the Walking Dead you probably know what I'm talking about already. There isn't much skill involved. There's a few action scenes, but they are just simple, easy to do quicktime events. Even then, if you fuck them up it either carries on regardless with maybe a changed line of dialogue or something, or you roll back a few seconds and have another shot at pressing the A button. Like the Walking Dead, it manages the rare feat of making quick time events not shit: they trick your brain into thinking you are under pressure and therefore inject drama into the scene, but they mostly avoid pissing you off by getting in the way of the story.
Other than that, the gameplay (*spit*) pretty much comes down to "click on the thing to advance the story", with only a few points where you can chose which way you make the story go. That sounds like a criticism, which is why I dislike the term gameplay. Its not a criticism. Its absolutely ok. This isn't a game that is giving you the freedom to create your own presence or your own story, its got a story to tell you and it gives you just enough interaction to immerse you in it a little more than you would be if you were watching a cartoon. You have some influence over some specific events, but the overall story is being told *to* you, not *with* you. That could be annoying if the story they were telling sucked. But it isn't, because it doesn't.
Sights and Sounds
It looks lovely. They have taken a similar approach to the Walking Dead, making it look visually close to a comic book, rather than trying to make it realistic in any way. Its a cleaner, sharper look than the Walking Deads hand drawn feel, which is coupled to strong but dark colours to give a really dark 80s grungy edge to everything. Although some of the animation is a bit clunky and jerky at times they have put care into the important bits, giving the characters real emotion and ... well, character. Its not cutting edge technology by any means, and you are not at any point going to stare at any of it making "ooooooh" noises like you might whilst playing something a bit more bombastic like the collapsing buildings in the new Battlefield. That doesn't matter though. The overall feel is far more important for this kind of game than something visually awe inspiring.
The voice acting is also good. The main characters gravelly voice is spot on, and the dialogue is well written. Its not going to blow your socks off, but it managed to raise a few chuckles at the appropriate moments. I don't know what more to say about that really. Have you played the Walking Dead? Its Walking Dead quality. So, its good.
Stuff that sucks
Honestly, not much. There were a couple of the action sequences where I was supposed to click on a thing and I found it momentarily difficult to click on the thing, but that's a problem inherited from the Walking Dead games. They do seem to have made it a little more lenient this time around as I am fairly sure it counted a couple of times where I had just about managed to click in the general vicinity of the thing. Other than that...its a little short, but its only the first chapter. Its about the same length as the Walking Dead chapters were. They could maybe have done with a little more explanation for people who are not fans of the comics, but I don't think it feels lacking without that. People who have not read them will still enjoy it, but people who have read them will enjoy it a little more. A bit of introductory spiel might have improved that a little. I'm really nitpicking there though.
Conclusion
I was worried about this game. I didnt enjoy the TellTale games before the Walking Dead, so I was worried that the Walking Deads excellence was a happy glitch, and this would be a disappointment. Its not. Its a bit early to tell, what with it only having the one chapter out so far, but the signs so far are excellent. It could just be that I am suffering zombie fatigue, but I think this game is actually an improvement on the Walking Dead. If you like the comics it is a no brainer. If you haven't read the comics, but you like 80s noir you should definitely give it a try. If you liked the Walking Dead games and not just because ZOMBIES! then you wont be disappointed. If you want to experience an interesting (and occasionally very surprising) story, buy it. On the other hand, you played the Walking Dead and didnt like the lack of freedom, this is not the game for you.
Score: Marks out of ten are stupid also/10
Oh, and if you are looking for something comicy to read and are not into the whole spandex thing, Fables is a damn good read. The story has got a bit loose and flappy recently, but that still leaves you with about 100 excellent issues, with issue 100 being a good jumping off point as most of the ongoing storylines have come to some sort of conclusion by that point (which I think is part of the problem with the issue after that, it all got a bit "well, now what are we going to talk about" after that).
