Game of Thrones Episode 6: The Ice Dragon is the climatic ending to season one of TellTale’s episodic adventure. With it comes a lot of loose ends, a whole lot of blood, but not particularly that much storytelling to go along with all the choices you’ve made in the previous 5 episodes.
Reader beware, after this point there will be some spoilers for the lead up to episode 6
Conclusions for our characters are what we would expect fora season finale, but it’s not necessarily what we get here. Only one character through my play-through actually had a real ending to their story, and that was for Mira Forester who’s story I never really connected with until episode 5.
Hmm, I choose you!
Her political dealings in the capital only really become interesting so late in the story, that the abrupt possible conclusions for her story didn’t hold much impact for me in the end, and I really could have gone either way on my final choices. There didn’t seem to be any good way to end her story, though the last second portrayal of her true nemesis in the story was well done, and unexpected.
To the north, Garred finally discovers the North Grove. After so much time spent talking about it, and what it is, I was really looking forward to finding out more about it’s secrets. Unfortunately episode 6 failed to deliver in that regard, and although we do get one small secret revealed, we really learn nothing about why the North Grove is so important that we would risk so much to find it and keep it safe. We are left here with a pretty gruesome life or death choice, but the impact feels empty without the secret of the grove’s importance being revealed.
When have I been wrong?
Meanwhile in Ironrath we get to experience the more dynamic of all the endings. Your choice of who to save at the end of episode 5 creates great contrast in what you can do to try and save the Forester family. Though most of our choices end up in vile bloodshed and much life lost, we still don’t really get a full conclusion here. There are many loose strings left hanging with the hopes that TellTale is working on an yet unconfirmed season 2 to help answer some of these questions.
This place has seen better days.
In the end Game of Thrones from TellTale is left wanting. It feels like there is still another episode of content that didn’t get that would help answer our questions and give us more of a conclusion. Season 2 is yet to be confirmed, so it seems kind of unfair to the player to leave so many loose ends to chase. With all that does happen in this episode, and with the overall dark sense of the story, it’s also somewhat disappointing that it doesn’t feel like you really have any way to feel like you got a win in any of the possible endings. Each choice ends up either terribly, or terribly gray and it would be nice to at least have one character come out of 6 episodes of game-play in a better position than where you started. Though I still enjoyed my play-through I feel somewhat empty with it’s results.
As always, thank for reading and be sure to share and comment below. Let me know what choices you made in your game and how it ended.
Though still a very emotional and gripping story, Life is Strange Episode 5 falls for familiar tropes of time traveling Sci-Fi stories. The end episode of the series brings Max Caulfield’s story full circle with an emotionally gripping, if predictable finale.
Beware spoilers to follow!
When we left Max in episode 4, Chloe was dead, again, and Mr. Jefferson had been revealed as the big bad. Both of these were predictable outcomes from the foreshadowing of earlier episodes. I was disappointed with this “surprise” in episode 4, and I was disappointed even more by Jefferson’s total switch to psychopath here. The man basically becomes an evil cartoon villain with his heightened expressions and full 180 degree switch in behaviors. I was hoping to see a more layered villain, and not somebody off of the show Gotham.
What follows this opening scene is a series of time hops, and trial and error as Max tries to figure out how fix everything and make sure everyone survives as well. The usual rewind, try again approach that we’ve seen in previous episodes is here. We again lack anything new to try out early in the game or get any complexity added to our powers.
Look into my eyes!
After this initial escape scene, Max goes about her day of messing around with time, after seemingly learning nothing about messing with time before. What follows is a series of faux-endings as you jump back through time over and over to try and piece together the puzzle of how to stop Jefferson and save everyone else. The episode does it’s best to talk about fate and destiny without ever mentioning the words themselves.
Here Life is Strange does a good job of first pulling the strings on all your hard thought of choices, then giving you the happy ending you thought you wanted, only to pull that away too. The lead in into a trippy, paradoxical world of endless hallways, and Walt Disney like light up animatronic displays of all your choices once certainly and interesting way to go. It did a good job of literally highlighting your experience through the story, as well as feeding both the guild Max feels for her choices, as well as adding emotion to the game’s final choice.
An everyday hero.
Unfortunately, I found that this final choice was where Life Is Strange faltered the most. Though both choices available to you at the end play well emotionally after all the time spent with the two main characters, it feels like there was missed opportunity to go somewhere new here. And yes, as the title of the review says, I wasn’t surprised with the choices at the end. Either learn to live and die with your choices, or let fate and destiny do their thing and sort life out for you.
Overall, Life is Strange Episode 5 presented an emotionally gripping finale to Max Caulfield’s, and Chloe’s story. This emotional connection was well built up and established throughout the story and the episode, and mostly makes up for the fairly obvious plot taking place in the background. Choices made through the earlier episodes unfortunately make little difference here and weigh little into your final choice. In the end it would have been nice to see something slightly more original done with this story and it’s characters, but it is still very rewarding to play through Life is Strange and experience the powerful emotional connection of two friends, destined to make an impact on you regardless of your choices.
No caption required
As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to share your experience with Life is Strange Episode 5 in the comments below, and make sure to share!
All things end.This is the tagline for Kingdom, a simple, pixel art tower defense game with a whole lot of charm. It’s a whimsical journey into a vast land laid before you to conquer or fall depending on the choices you make.
This is the tutorial, that’s it, now go!
Almost everything in Kingdom is simple, except for success. As you drop into the simple, but detailed pixel art world, you’ll be given a short tutorial as to the basic functions in your procedurally generated world, with your also random king or queen. A few lines of text are all the instruction you get as you ride into the world. The concepts are simple too, collect gold coins throughout the world, and either give them to the denizens surrounding your camp, or use them to purchase and upgrade your camp itself.
You start with enough gold to start a basic camp, recruit a couple of peasants, upgrade them to archers or builders, and build basic defenses. From that point you have to figure things out on your own. Kingdom does nothing to let you know what to do next, except to explore, expand and survive.
As the sun arcs across the sky, and becomes night, the survival aspect becomes clear. Each night you will be randomly attacked by strange creatures. These creatures will throw themselves against your fortifications and steal gold coins and equipment from your peasants. If they attack your liege you will lose any coins you may be carrying, and eventually they will knock the very crown from your head. If you are unable to retrieve the crown before one of the demons does, it’s game over. These attacks will randomly include a red moon, which brings more fiends and creepy flying beasts that will literally suck up your workers and carry them into the night.
Well this can’t be good…
If you haven’t prepared well enough during the day, these attacks can be devastating, even if survived. It was common during my play-through’s to simply abandon hours of work after a severe attack as it would be nearly impossible to rebuild in time.
As you expand your kingdom outwards, and grow your encampment, you’ll find alters and monuments throughout the world that will assist you. The game however makes you experiment with these the first time around to figure out what they do. After a few runs however, you’ll discover that there are only a few of these and you’ll stop finding surprises. The only thing that will change from run to run, will be the location of these monuments, but eventually with enough planning and patience you will be able to unlock everything regardless. This felt like a missed opportunity from the developers to throw in new snags to each game of Kingdom by either limiting which monuments spawn, or by throwing in a few others with random properties that may or may not spawn with each game. This would have added a nice layer of replay-ability beyond just the random spawn locations.
Because of these limitations, once you get the idea of the game, only you, the player can create new challenges for yourself. It’s fairly easy to create a bustling kingdom if you know how, and it’s easy to repeat the steps over and over in order to reach the game’s win condition of protecting the crown. Once you figure this out, the only challenge remaining is to create your own obstacles by deciding where not to spend your coins and where to make the game harder. The lack of a difficulty setting, or more random events or options puts a big limit on Kingdom’s longevity.
Other issues that reside in Kingdom is the balance of pace, and the usefulness of your liege. As king, or queen, your only ability is to collect and spend coins to recruit and build. As night falls, all you can do is watch to see if you did enough during the day to survive. There is very little interaction or any real type of micromanagement available beyond deciding what to build, when and where. These means a lot of long nights where you either watch your defenses mow through dozens of enemies, or see your kingdom fall as all you can do is run around and try to avoid being taken down yourself. The rest of the time, you’ll find yourself running back and forth through your eventually massive kingdom to collect the necessary coins to expand to the next wall or point of interest. Near the end, it can take you a whole day of game time to simply run from one end of your kingdom to another.
Progress!
Issues aside, Kingdom is still a very solid game. Though it eventually lacks some re-play-ability and the pace isn’t always great, most of these issues can be easily solved through creating your own challenges, or potential updates down the road from the developer Noio. The procedurally generated world, and learning curve will still give you hours of play time in order to secure your crown.
As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to share your experiences with Kingdom below in the comments.
Follow Noio on Twitter for more information on Kingdom and other projects
What do you get when you mix zombies, classic beat-em-up game-play, gorgeous hand drawn visuals and Norse mythology? Zombie Vikings! From the clever folks at Zoink Games bring their humor and creativity to life in Zombie Vikings.
Zombie Vikings is an homage to classic 90’s side scrolling, button mashing, couch co-op. Choosing random maps in arcade mode, or jumping into story mode gives you access to one of the 4 initial playable characters. Each character is a viking, brought back to life by Odin to help retrieve his stolen eye from Loki. Every character comes with a basic attack and combo from multiple hits of the attack button, the ability to grab and throw both objects and small enemies, and a unique magical attack. You can charge your attacks by holding down the appropriate button.
Each mission plays out in 2.5D as your 2D animated characters do battle with various monsters, vikings and cats, lots of cats. You’ll encounter a variety of these enemies, and though many of them share similar attack patterns, Zombie Vikings does a good job of mixing each one up slightly, and also adding a diverse grouping of them in each encounter. Mixing it up in between even more, there are a ton of bosses, mini-bosses and chases scenes to break up the button mashing and you think a little more strategically, or just race across the beautiful hand drawn backgrounds in order to out run a giant slug.
Avast! Ax wielding slug things!
Throughout each zone you’ll also find side quests to embark on. These are usually pretty straight forward find-and-return quests, but the quirky characters and their specific and amusing needs keep these fresh and interesting throughout.
Sprinkled further into this mix, are a huge variety of bizarre weapons that you can find throughout the game, or purchase for gold at shops you’ll find along the way. You’ll also be able to equip magical runes to your characters that will give a variety of different buffs to your health, magic or attack.
The artistic style of Zombie Vikings is where it’s at. The 2D characters and backgrounds are all hand drawn with extreme detail. Each zone you encounter if full of the ridiculous, the surreal and the downright weird to catch your eye as you battle along. Though these landscapes are great, it would be nice on occasion to see more animation amongst them to help them really feel alive. Characters in the background stand motionless, and there is no interactivity for you to play around with. This feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to add even more fun and hilarity to the game.
It’s a witch! On a stick!
Hilarity is in the heart of this game. Zombie Vikings is full of humor. As you play through the story missions you’ll be exposed to the tongue in cheek laughs throughout each short cut scene. They are wonderfully silly and full of puns. These cut scenes along with each character are fully voiced as well. The voice overs are solid and energetic, and each character really feels like their own individual.
Umm penguins, help?
When you combine all these aspects with a few friends online or locally, Zombie Vikings is a load of fun. It does an excellent job of reaching it’s goal of bringing back to feel of old school gaming, sitting on a couch with a group of your friends vying to power through the game in one sitting. Though the game is not hard, it offers enough challenge and variation to keep you amused throughout. Currently available on PlayStation 4, Zombie Vikings will also be released in the near future on Steam, and a stream of content and new characters already seems to be in the plan for future updates. I suggest you check it out!
As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to comment below and let me know about your experience with Zombie Vikings if you’ve played it!
Welcome to a gorgeous, stylistic adventure RPG for the explorer in you. Brought to us by indie developers Pera Games, Overfall is staged to be an open world exploration RPG set on the high seas in a beautifully hand drawn environment. They have recently completed their Kickstarter campaign and full development is under way.
I got a chance recently to play through the demo for Overfall. You quickly set sale into the hand drawn environments with a couple of characters in tow. A brave fighter is accompanied by a very useful cleric as the starting classes available in the demo.
The early beginnings of multiple classes and races?
Though the current available archetypes for each character are relatively straightforward, the fighter deals massive melee damage, and the cleric works on healing and buffs, there is still a lot of potential for unique characters within the fantasy setting. The world is filled with interesting characters and creatures, from giant pig men, to goblins, to pirates and of course elves. These characters are set aside from other games by the cartoonish, but extremely detailed artwork.
This artwork expands into the environment as the backgrounds are gorgeous, and filled with color and life. The high seas are also filled with activity and dozens of islands to explore, though only a few were available in the demo.
So many places to explore, many on fire though…
The other thing that will grab you in this game is the witty dialogue. It happened more than once through my play through that I would think something quite witty and funny to myself, just as my character on screen would almost read my mind and say something similar. The developers obviously know how to make fun of both themselves and the general tropes of similar games and take advantage of that to instill a great deal of humor into the game.
Combat takes place in turned base format on a hexagonal map. A unique twist added here is the use of various combat stages for each turn. All characters can take multiple actions each turn this way, with a variety of different abilities available depending on what stage they are in. Rather than using magic points or something similar, these skills are all on cool downs and can’t be used two turns in a row, meaning you will have to carefully plan how to use your skills each turn or be potentially stuck in a prickly position.
Combat! Comedic Characters! The letter “C”!
If they continue on this path, Pera Games should have a winner for themselves. Though the Kickstarter is over with, you can certainly support the development by following the developers on Twitter where they have shown to be active and supportive of their community.
As always, thanks for reading and be sure to comment or like below.
Average guy named Joe, meet the apocalypse! The Silent Age, originally released for mobile, and now available on PC, is a story driven point and click adventure where it’s up to you to save all humanity. Shouldn’t be too difficult for a run of the mill janitor who just happens to show up at the right place and the right time.
Okay Doc Brown
Being at the right place and time is the core of the story of The Silent Age. In fact it’s also key to the game-play itself. Starting on a an average day in the life of Joe, a janitor for a large tech manufacturer, his life is suddenly changed when he’s given the responsibilities of his former fellow employee, who mysteriously quit. After gaining access to new areas in the Archon building, Joe quickly discovers strange things going on throughout the building. These discoveries soon lead him to an old, mysterious man dying from a gunshot wound.
This encounter quickly leads Joe on a quest to save the world, as the old man describes the end of days, and tasks Joe to save all humanity. His only tool to do so, a small device that sends him into the future of 2012 where humanity is dead, and the world is a strange, barren place.
This quick encounter sets you up to explore both the present and future in order to solve various puzzles along the way. The game play is simple, click to move back and forth through each area, finding useful items scattered around to help you solve the various puzzles. Most of these puzzles will require you using the time device to shift from the intact 1972 to the desolate, falling apart future of 2012.
The story weighs heavily on our hero
Most of these puzzles are really clever, and need a bit of thought to get around. Though you’ll rarely get stuck it may still take you some time to figure out the right sequence of items, how to use them and in which time period to do so. There are also various secrets to find along the way. though you can still save the world without discovering everything, it’s still fun to uncover these tiny bits of the story as in whole they add quite a bit to the experience.
During your adventure, you’ll get a chance to interact with a few other characters. Each character has a bit of back story with them for you discover, and generally feel like real people. All of these characters are also fully voiced which makes them feel even more unique. The voice acting throughout is pretty solid and you’ll likely sit back to enjoy each of these scenes as they play out.
Well it is the 70’s afterall
The real jewel to find here, is the exploration of character. Joe is a regular guy, caught up in things far beyond both his control and his understanding. As he works to help humanity avoid it’s downfall, he grows from this simple man to a man willing to sacrifice everything to see it through. This level of depth of character is quite amazing for a game that can be completed in under 4 hours. It’s a credit to the writers for taking us on the tale.
The subplot to this main story, is classic sci-fi fare, tales of man overreaching his limits. Going to far to fast, and causing destruction among himself, always for the greater good they’ll say. Though it’s a well used story, and has been seen often, it’s still true, and there’s enough connection here with Joe to overlook this somewhat overused idea.
I barely knew him, no really, I didn’t.
Though the conventions in The Silent Age are not new, the blend of story, character and overall charm make it stand out among other similar point and click adventures. This game is certainly worth checking out if you have a few hours to kill to explore humanity and its drive to destroy itself.
As always, thanks for reading and be sure to comment and like below and let me know what you thought of The Silent Age.
Check out another solid indie game with Cosmnautica.
Space. The final frontier. What waits for us, out there? Awesome trading opportunities for us to make tons of cash of course! Welcome to Cosmonautica. A cute, funny, fairly solid game with a few issues that help it become just not that good. Release on July 31st this year, Cosmonautica does have a lot going for it, but struggles in a few areas that would make it a great, highly addictive game otherwise.
When you first load up Cosmonautica, your given the choice of following the story driven campaign, or the open world where you can do whatever you like with no linearity getting in the way. In either game mode however, you will take control of a small ship and head out in a mostly 2D adventure into space.
I gots trades!
At the beginning of either game, you’re given a ship and a lump of cash to get started off. Cash, or credits, are primarily used to buy upgrades to your ship, which come in the form of upgrade-able rooms that you can place throughout. Rooms range from basic living quarters, to washrooms, to medical and science facilities, and of course weapon rooms. You can place these rooms wherever there is adequate space in your ship, and get access to a side view cross section of your ship in order to due so. Beyond efficient space use however, there doesn’t’ seem to be any advantages or disadvantages to where you place these rooms.
Once your ship is prepped with the basic rooms, you need to hire crew to fill various roles on board. Pilots quicken your pace, and add maneuverability in combat, scientists conduct research and operate your shields, gunners shoot, and so on. Each of these classes generally have a room specified for their use, and though you can recruit them with the proper room, it’s pointless as they will be of little use and gain no experience. Experience levels your crew up, and gives them special skills, along with upgrading them with skill points which you can either assign to their main skill, or a random new skill to help fill out your ship’s needs.
What you’ll spend most of your time looking at
Regardless of whether you choose story mode or open world, you will primarily spend your time roaming from planet to planet. Each planet offers a randomized arrangement of trade able goods, missions and personnel to hire. Most of your early missions will have you transporting goods or people from planet to planet in an effort to make enough credits to upgrade your rooms, or ship entirely. All the missions are pretty straight forward, but do come with time limits, as each jump to another planet takes time and you need to balance your missions carefully with travel time. Take on too many missions may face you with heavy fines if you are not able to complete them in the given time.
Later on you’ll be able to engage in more dangerous missions like smuggling and combat. Smuggling missions are a simple act of making sure your tech, rooms and crew members are of high enough level to disguise whatever contraband you may have on board, and area really just deliver missions not unlike the other early quests. Combat missions however turn the game on it’s nose.
The local solar system
Entering into combat in Cosmonautica is almost game breaking. Battles are slow, long winded affairs. Ships are equipped with only a few weapons at most, and limited ammunition. There’s no phaser or laser fire here. You have limited maneuvering control of your ship, and are basically restricted to four flight patterns, circle around, fly by, collision course, or flee. None of these seem to work well however. You are also very limited by how much ammo you can store. These battle are long, really long and most will end with both ships running out of ammo, and you having to hail the other ship to settle terms. These terms generally ending up being 0 credits, and are really just time wasters. If I didn’t mention it before, battles are long, so long in fact during one occasion my crew actually went to sleep during battle, causing me to not be able to activate shields or fire my weapons, as both my scientist and gunner had gone to bed. The reward for the battle I eventually won was minimal and felt like a huge waste of time compared to the really lucrative option to earning credits, trade.
Yes, my gunner is sleeping in the middle of the fight
Trade in Cosmonautica is by far the easiest way to earn funds. Each planet has a list of exports and imports, and trade is as simple as taking advantage of low price exports, and trading them at planets that are in need of those same items as imports. Most of your time in Cosomnautica will be spent looking for deals, and adding cargo space to your hull in order to carry more goods. You will spend a lot of time trading, traveling and avoiding combat during your time with the game. Luckily a fast forward option is available for travel.
Story mode has you following a loose chain of linear missions revolving around your captain’s memory loss, and a mysterious box he was found with. Though the story is mostly well written and funny, once you get into the game, there’s never really a huge urge to continue on with the story, it’s usually more interesting to just try and build up your crew and ship as much as possible. There’s also no time limit to story missions, so no sense of urgency is ever given to complete them. There’s also no real choice as to how to proceed through the story outside of a few minor decisions, and it seems to waste the potential of the open galaxy environment.
Hi Lady!
Cosmonautica brings with it a lot of visual charm. The colorful, cartoon-like graphics are a lot of fun and there are tons of details throughout both your ship and the world to look at. As you travel from planet to planet, you get a side view of your ship to look at. Zooming in opens up the cross section view, and you can watch your crew busy at work, at play, or showering as needs be. It can be fun to watch this for a time, though generally you’ll find yourself fastforwarding and not paying them much attention.
Outside of this, there are several other mechanics at play. You’ll of course do research as you fly around, researching new rooms, and upgrades to existing rooms. You will also have to research the solar systems and galaxy to advance to new areas. There is also a needs simulation a la Sims that you need to address as you level up your crew members. Higher level crew members expect more, and you have to build the appropriate facilities or upgrades to keep them happy. Crew members also have traits which affect how they get along with other people. This can result in bonuses as happy crew members will catch fire and work more efficiently, or adversely go on strike and stop performing their duties. You’ll have to carefully balance your crew’s levels with the appropriate need fillers as you proceed.
Two of the three basic weapons you can buy
All of these factors give you a bit to juggle, but I never felt overwhelmed at any point. The game offers tons of helpful hints as you proceed, or you can choose to turn these off and figure it out for yourselves.
Terrible, terrible combat aside, there’s still a lot to enjoy about Cosmonautica. The trade system is well built, and it can be addictive trying to build up your crew and ship. The downside here however is there are limited choices as to what you can build, and how much you can upgrade them, meaning after awhile there isn’t much left to do except explore, or earn more credits. Hopefully the developers can address these downfalls in later updates, and especially work on the combat to make it more fun and interactive. Cosmonautica is available now on Steam, and is definitely worth a try if you are into space trading sims.
As always, thanks for reading, and be sure to comment and like below and let me know what you think of Cosmonautica.
The story of Life is Strange is nearly at an end, and with episode 4 comes the biggest emotional roller coaster so far. There’s a good deal of feels here, and some foreshadowed plot twists finally coming to pass.
Episode 4 drops us right into the alternate present created in the previous episode. One major change in history has unraveled the complex structure of time and created a new world. In this new world, tragedy and happiness are mixed in equally and you are left to decide the fates of the character’s closest to you. Despite what you choose to do, this first scene ranges from heartwarming to completely heartbreaking and is filled with tough choices. The realization for main character Max Caulfield by the end of this chapter is that these powers of rewind may be more dangerous than helpful as previously thought. We also lose some of the sting of the scene, as we immediately traverse back to set it right.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
After this early heartfelt scene, you’re lead directly back into the mystery aspect of what is going on in Blackwell Academy. Though a slow paced episode, clues as to the reality of the situation are regularly found as you progress. There is also a lack of the redundant quests here. Almost every action directly supports the main story line, rather than feel like filler to keep you in the game longer. Though the pacing is quite slow, this fact alone makes the episode feel more full and important than some of the previous episodes.
Meanwhile, outside of this mystery of missing persons, and drugs, outlying factors continue to change around you. The vision Max had of destruction at the very beginning of the series, seems ever prevalent, as signs of it are emerging more frequently. Beached whales, dying birds and strange weather patterns are constantly focused on by the characters. This with clues of other bigger events going on around the town are regularly mentioned in the same sentence with the game’s primary nemesis the Prescott family. Whether these strange occurrences have something to do with them, or are entirely related to Max’s powers of rewind have yet to be revealed.
When it comes to Max’s powers themselves, expect to be a little disappointed, as this episode of Life is Strange reverts greatly in their use. Only one puzzle in the episode requires their use, and only really one scene in particular about mid way through the episode urges to use them otherwise. Though this step back in the frequency of their use does tie together somewhat with the overall story, it seems a bit of a waste that we aren’t give more choice as whether or not to use these powers now knowing that there may be some consequence from them. I feel leaving more choices like this in the hands of the player would have better reflected the game’s intent that these powers are as dangerous as they are helpful. We also don’t get anything new from the powers when we do get to use them. The same basic puzzle mechanic exists, and the same, go-back-and-change-your-last-choice mechanism is also unchanged. It is just a shame that these powers are not being developed with each episode as well as the story is, and seems like a major missed opportunity.
One new game play mechanic that is added to this episode, is a short scene where you must puzzle together all the clues you’ve found so far. Though it only takes a few minutes to figure out the fairly simple puzzles, it does at least give you something different to do and adds another small opportunity to use your powers when you screw up.
Detective Max hard at work.
As the story unfolds we get our first really major plot twist near the end. Those of you were paying close attention during early episodes however, would have likely seen the foreshadowing of this particular plot point already. That aside, the twist still works well, and is otherwise executed well. The end scene still has enough shock value, even if you saw some of it coming already to be a very good cliffhanger entry into the final episode.
Though most of the grounded portion of the mysteries of Blackwell Academy have been revealed at this point, there’s still a significant amount going on that hasn’t been made clear. Whether the strange going on’s around the city of Arcadia are due to Max’s powers, or something else that may have inadvertently caused Max’s powers in the first place is still in play. There is still a major mystery to be solved here, and potentially some major reworking of history as well to resolve it all.
What do you suppose that is?
I do hope however that the writers are able to find a unique way to end the story, and not go the fairly overdone route that most time travel stories such as this tend to go with the heroes going back in time to stop themselves from ever existing, or affecting the time stream. We’ve seen this a great deal already and unfortunately it does feel as though this game my end on a similar note which in my mind would be quite disappointing. The characters in this story are well written enough that they deserve a better end than this.
In the end, episode 4 gives us a ton to think about, and makes you feel a variety of emotions throughout. This range of emotions throughout Life Is Strange Episode 4 creates one of the better episodes yet in the series, and we can only hope the conclusion takes on a similar ride.
As always, thank for reading, and be sure to like and comment below. What decisions did you make in this episode? What was your experience like?
Welcome to Game of Thrones, episode 5, or “I’m Glad I am not a Forrester”. The penultimate episode of Telltale Games 6 part series, episode 5 starts off slow, but quickly escalates into the best episode so far.
Episode 5 drops us right back into Forrester lands where we get to enjoy, a long, slow, and sometimes literally torturing opening sequence, with actual torture! There’s a great deal of gruesomeness here, but I didn’t really feel like my choices were impacting too much what happened. Though most of what happened still felt quite important, the end to this sequence was slightly cliched. This scene did really grow the cruelty and sadistic nature of our primary nemesis however, Ramsay Snow, leading up to what I hope will be a great final encounter in episode 6.
Nope, I saved just before this…
In the next scene we find ourselves back in King’s Landing, where we get to meet up with Mira Forrester again, though her part in this episode is small, she does get to interact with fan favourite characters like Tyrion the most which is always fun. The dialogue here doesn’t’ quite live up the TV show’s standard, but it’s still pretty solid. This scene is quite short, and continues the somewhat slow pace of Game of Thrones Episode 5.
This episode doesn’t really pick up until we get to play through Asher’s scenes. The bulk of episode 5 really happens when either he, or his brother Rodrik are on screen. I have no problem with this at all, they are both the most likeable characters in the story so far. It’s not until you take control of Asher or Rodrik that you really feel you are making a major change in the story and that your choices matter, and boy do they matter.
How to kill a man?
Asher and Rodrik’s scenes both really remind me of TellTale game’s The Walking Dead series, where every scene ends with the choice of who will live and who will die. Now that we are so close to the end of this series these choices truly weigh heavily with each click of the mouse.
As Asher you get to finally recruit a grand ole’ group of ruthless killers to join your cause and protect your family. How you do this is a lot of fun in game, and involves the heaviest amount of action and quick time events in the episode. Rodrik’s story revolves around the choices he has made as a leader, and how they have reflected and changed him. The interesting component here is how both characters are learning about how to lead their people from entirely different perspectives, with the culminating ending really putting you under pressure to decide the Forrester family’s fate.
This episode does lack a little bit of action this time around. Most of the scenes played out here are dialogue heavy and you really only get two great scenes of action throughout the experience. Spending a good deal of time just watching and waiting for your chance to add input to the game is sometimes a drag, but luckily most of the dialogue is great, and I sometimes forgot I was playing a game and just sat back and watched. I often had to rush back into place when the game suddenly asked me to answer an important question or engage in a quick time event.
Ewww, creeepy
Sluggishness aside, this is still one of the best episodes so far in the Game of Thrones series. The happenings are heavy and often, and the choices both make sense and are extremely difficult to choose quickly. A few scenes here feel somewhat disconnected from the rest of the story, but are still very solid on their own merits, it will be interesting to see how these stories are intertwined with only a couple of hours of gameplay left to go in the final, episode 6 of Game of Thrones.
As always, thanks for reading and be sure to let me know about your experience with episode 5 down in the comment section below.
Who’s going to save Princess What’s-Her-Name from a bunch of power grabbing mutants and a flying cow? None other than Earthworm Jim of course! This side scrolling Sega Genesis classic is hard to forget for anyone who’s played it. Inspired by other classic games like Sonic, and popular comics and toy lines like The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this 1994 release is a bizarre but great blend of both.
Wait are we underground or not?
Imagine your life as a simple earth worm, eating dirt, and avoiding feet during a rain storm, when suddenly a super powered suit falls on you, giving you the power to save princesses and fend off wave after wave of crazy mutants. That’s the plot in a nutshell. There’s no deep seeded reflection, or violent beginnings here. Just enough exposition and explanation to get us started on an adventure.
It’s the quirky nature of the game that really helps this game stand out. The levels are comic like and colourful, and full of enemies. Most of these levels have a stranger, eerie, alien like subterranean feel to them. You’ll encounter mutant frogs, birds, and grannies along the way. Yes, mutant grannies. With a rogues gallery that includes the likes of Queen Slug-For-A-Butt, Psy-Crow, and Major Mucus, you can imagine some of the artistic leeway the developers were given here.
Have a cow man
Gameplay here is really similar to another classic of the previous era Bionic Commando. Jim’s power suit gives him the ability to think and act like a human. Besides the usual running and jumping, Earthworm Jim’s suit also happened to come with a handy gun that can fire off several rounds in quick succession. When in a pinch, Jim can take advantage of his still elasticity worm body to whip across the screen and grapple from point to point. If that doesn’t work, he can blow his head up into a balloon and float down to platforms, or use the buoyancy to float up through water.
This side scrolling adventure is broken up by various different levels. Some levels are basically rail shooters, where you have to pilot Earthworm Jim around on obstacles on increasingly ridiculous devices as you fire at enemies along the way. One level in particular has you protecting Peter Puppy, a seemingly harmless pup with Jekyll and Hyde tendencies that often get Jim in trouble if he should happen to run into harm’s way. These different levels break up the pace well, and keep you doing different things along the way.
What do you mean you’ve never seen an earthworm in a super suit riding a hamster before?
Boss battles are common to encounter at the end of each level, and are pretty classic patterned events. They are of course set aside by Earthworm Jim’s overly clever sense of humour, and completely over the top villains mentioned earlier.
Wait. Is this really fair?
Consider among one of the best games to ever come out during the 16-bit era, and one of the best characters ever, Earthworm Jim brought a lot to the table. Though later sequels would eventually show a decline in character, charm and gameplay, the original game still stands as one of the best. With it’s quirky sense of humour. Literally down to earth protagonists, and smooth easy to get into gameplay it’s very hard to argue.
Thanks for reading, and as always leave a comment or like below, and let me know what you thought of Earthworm Jim.
MicBeMac Games 